Album Review: Kylie Minogue Reaches for the Familiar in ‘DISCO’
Though lacking innovation, Kylie Minogue’s 15th studio album is a solid choice for any quarantine dance party.
Written by Delaney Davis
Photo courtesy of Slant Magazine
Kylie Minogue’s music has always been tinged with the glittery synths of disco. The “la-la-la”s of 2001’s “Cant Get You Out of My Head” could have been the soundtrack to a rowdy night at Studio 54, if released 25 years earlier. After experimenting with country in Golden, the Aussie pop star returns to the genre that made her famous in her latest release, DISCO.
The album is like cotton candy — sugary sweet and light but without much substance. Still, despite its lack of depth, the record’s return to disco is a welcome hint of familiarity in a year that has been plagued by the unknown.
Opening track “Magic” is the dictionary definition of a neodisco record, in both sound and lyrical content. The song features a blend of horns and upbeat percussion that simmers underneath Minogue’s hope for a brighter future. The song’s position at the beginning of the album sets the tone for what the audience can expect for the rest of the project: a great reinvention of the wheel that is disco music, but a reinvention nonetheless. If listeners were expecting Minogue to take risks, DISCO will be a disappointment.
“Real Groove” is the closest the album comes to innovation. Instead of relying solely on electronic pulses and staccato keys as in the other tracks, the song is driven by the smooth thumping of a bass guitar. Minogue trades uplifting reflections about love for a biting message to her lover’s new woman. Of course, the track is still unmistakably disco. But “Real Groove” takes the genre forward to the 21st century while staying true to its musical roots — something that DISCO should have done more holistically.
One of the low points on the album, following track “Monday Blues,” is simply unmemorable, which is hard to believe given how much Minogue tries to create the quintessential disco track. In between acoustic guitar strums and lively handclaps, she makes references to several disco era staples: the hustle, Earth Wind & Fire, and ‘disco ballin’.’ The post-chorus is equally unimaginative, with Minogue simply calling out the different days of the week. The song would have fared better if she strayed away from clichés and toned down the track’s production.
Without a doubt, DISCO’s standout track is “Say Something.” As the song’s music video suggests, the song is a sparkling, dizzying mixture of guitar riffs, electropop beats, and ethereal vocals from a background choir. Lyrically, Minogue is at her strongest, singing:
We're a million miles apart, in a thousand ways
Baby, you could light up the dark, like a solar scape
And I can almost feel you coming, and your heartbeat race
So I want somebody, something, in the joys we make
Here, she is able to draw from disco’s best elements without tripping on overused lyrics and instrumental patterns, much like earlier track “Real Groove.” The track is the closest she gets to the magic of her older songs like “Love at First Sight” and “Spinning Around.”
Later tracks “I Love It” and “Where Does the DJ Go?” are earworms worthy of a place on any party or pregame playlist, if the listener is willing to overlook both songs’ lack of creativity in both lyricism and production. In the former, Minogue invites her lover to “dance through the darkness” over an all-too-familiar backing of strings and a horn choir, while the latter features the same instrumentation as she sings about finding solace on (you guessed it) the dance floor. “Dance Floor Darling” is another album highlight, mostly for the song’s chaotic, but entertaining, ending. About two minutes and 30 seconds in, the track quickly speeds up into a flurry of synthesizers and robotic vocals. Clearly, Minogue has taken a page out of Charli XCX’s production playbook.
Image courtesy of Darenote and BMG
Closing song “Spotlight” sees the songstress take a more toned-down approach to disco, avoiding the overwhelming high energy of songs like “Last Chance” and “Dance Floor Darling.” The song gets inventive with vocals, backing Minogue with a robotic synthesizer during the track’s chorus. The song embraces common disco themes (“Everybody dancing so crazy”) but somehow manages to steer clear of sounding like a boilerplate neodisco track.
DISCO is exactly what it says it is — a disco album. But, unfortunately, it isn’t much more than that. Minogue does little to modernize the genre or add her own spin to the typical funk guitar strums and euphoric dance floor themes. She sometimes leans into the disco theme too much, almost becoming a camp parody of the genre (“Monday Blues” comes to mind.)
But for what it’s worth, DISCO is a real joy to listen to. The fervor of “Supernova” and the dreamy vocals of “Celebrate You” are enough to make anyone forget the darkness of 2020. Not every album needs to be groundbreaking; sometimes an album can just be fun to listen to. And DISCO is exactly that.