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Post by Admin on Nov 13, 2020 4:52:11 GMT
 It's been 20 years since Light Years came out. Do you have any untold stories about the making of that record? I just stopped myself swearing there. Twenty years, wow. Well, we certainly didn't have cell phones. There's about two photographs of the making of that album because someone had a camera with film in it. Making Light Years was an exciting time because I'd had five years with an independent dance label, which was really important in its own way. Myself and the team, we were all on the same page: We were just going back to pop, and that's what we did. The first thing I would think of is "Spinning Around," of course, but also working in Dublin with Biff Stannard, who I did "Say Something" with. That was the start of a long-term relationship. Even my current A&R, the first time I met him was to sign that contract to that label. The gold pants are symbolic of that time. Just gold pants and the "Spinning Around" video. It was a shiny new start. It was strong and the planets were aligned. Do you have any dream collaborations at this point in your career? I've done quite a lot of collaborations over the years—I absolutely love doing them because you get to dip your toe into different water and color your performance by the other artist. There's an unspoken understanding and camaraderie. Certainly, I'd love to collaborate with more women, because I haven't done much of that. You could say any of the top girls right now: Dua is definitely having a great time. Lady Gaga. I love Miley [Cyrus]. I admire so many of these women. There's been talk about Madonna and I doing a duet for, it feels like, 20 years. If that were to happen, that would be amazing. I was dressing up in my bedroom to Madonna, to Whitney Houston, to Cyndi Lauper, and then Fleetwood Mac, ABBA, and Donna Summer. Diana Ross was going to go on tour this year and she had to cancel that. There's so many people I would jump at the opportunity to work with. Have you started thinking about what your next record would sound like? Is there a certain direction you might take? I haven't thought about the direction, but I have thought about writing again. Maybe that's because the schedule isn't like it's been for every other album of my entire life, where you're flying around to different cities and different countries. Now that I've got my setup at home and you can do remote writing sessions and recording sessions, there's a little bit of me thinking, I'd just love to write more music. I don't know what that would be. Now there's quite a lot of promo to do. If I had the option to dive in and song-write for another couple of weeks, I'd leap at it. It's something I love doing—and you don't have to get out of your track pants. |
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Post by Admin on Nov 17, 2020 6:45:27 GMT
Among the many perversities of 2020 is how much disco there’s been for a year without discotheques. From Róisín Murphy to Jessie Ware to Dua Lipa and Lady Gaga, musicians collectively longed for the unattainable dancefloor. Most of it is quite good, and none of it needs to advertise itself, with pay-attention ALL-CAPS, as DISCO.
The idea of Kylie Minogue “going disco” is more than a little redundant: She’s made several decades’ worth of the stuff, including several modern classics. She has recorded (excellent) tracks called “Disco Down” and “Your Disco Needs You.” Kylie claimed in a recent interview that she never envisioned the album as “a concept”—dubious, since her next words were about how she imagined the title as DISCO from the start. But she built a home studio, immersed herself in deep cuts, leveled up her production skills, and engineered for the first time, all to prevent the album from becoming “a tribute record.”
Whatever the album was that she conceived, the album she recorded is just that: a polyester-thin fabrication that sounds as if she just learned of disco’s existence during quarantine. While making the album, she redirected her producers to Earth, Wind & Fire YouTubes whenever the record started sounding like “electro-pop”—i.e., like herself. The lyrics drop names like Wikipedia: Studio 54, “I Will Survive,” the Electric Slide. Kylie works against her voice, trying to studio-contort her vocal into a dancing-queen diva or multitrack herself into a gospel chorus. If Golden sounded like Kylie LARPing country music, DISCO frequently sounds like Kylie LARPing dance—which shouldn’t happen. No one better expresses the record’s essential uncoolness than Kylie herself: “Gramps is on the dance floor. It makes me picture David Brent busting out his dad moves.”
Uncool is not bad, and if anything, DISCO could stand more of it: to evoke actual disco in all its frisson and desperation, rather than the remembered-40-years-later version, full of kitsch and clip-art disco balls. The album, with a couple exceptions, has two modes: overly tasteful cruise-ship programming, and gauche rehashes. Kylie front-loads the weakest material—maybe passable in a set, but fatal in an album, where there’s no club to leave. “Magic” has a fizzy, sparky chorus, the sinuous melody of “Miss a Thing” has a little “Confide in Me” to it, and “Real Groove” pulls Kylie’s voice into rubber and sends it ricocheting, but none of the tracks go anywhere, and lose their energy less than halfway. “Monday Blues” doesn’t bring up energy so much as yank it back, coating its spangles in flop sweat. A “Celebration” remake that’s lawsuit-level blatant, it’s so studied it forgets to celebrate.
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Post by Admin on Nov 20, 2020 19:47:58 GMT
Pop star Kylie Minogue has become the first female artist to have a number one album in the UK in five separate decades.
Her 15th studio album, Disco, topped the charts with 55,000 sales, meaning it has also scored the best opening week of any new release in 2020 so far.
It is her eighth number one, meaning she has overtaken Elton John, Cliff Richard and George Michael in the all-time chart leaderboard.
"I'm lost for words," said the star.
"Thank-you to everyone who has supported this album. I'm so touched that it's made its way to your hearts. I love it."
Only five other acts have topped the Official Chart across five consecutive decades: Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Paul Weller, Bruce Springsteen and David Gilmour.
The Beatles, Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan have also landed chart-toppers across five decades, though not consecutively.
Kylie's chart-topper was made in the middle of the lockdown, with the star forced to buy recording equipment and learn computer software so she could record her vocals at home.
She told BBC News the project had been a lifeline when quarantine threatened to overwhelm her.
"It's hard to dig deep and stay positive," the 52-year-old said, "and I had a moment like that, during the first lockdown where I had to confess to someone else that I was struggling.
"And actually, if I wasn't able to work on the album, I perhaps would have gone the other way."
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Post by Admin on Jan 2, 2021 7:37:48 GMT
Kylie & Dua Lipa - Real Groove (Studio 2054 Remix)
“I feel like you, Joe Biden and Dua Lipa are the only people that had a good 2020,” Jimmy Kimmel joked to John Mulaney last month. Kylie Minogue agreed, tapping her dance-pop peer for a “Studio 2054” remix of “Real Groove,” the third single off her recently release album Disco.
The original song was a perfect slice of dancefloor disco-pop, blending a throbbing funk bassline with Minogue’s Europop-inspired vocal melodies. The remix speeds up the original, adds some more layered instrumentation and features Lipa layering her vocals over Minogue’s sultry coo. With her fantastic disco-pop second album Future Nostalgia – which Rolling Stone put at Number Five on our best albums of 2020 — Lipa stands as Minogue’s heir apparent. Consider the “Real Groove” remix as much torch-passing as like-minded collaboration.
Lipa’s Thanksgiving-weekend Studio 2054 livestream was a smashing success: It drew 5 million viewers — a number that Lipa’s team said was a new record for livestreams — and brought a starry guest list that included Minogue performing the original version of the track.
“Even when touring comes back, I think this’ll be part of the new model,” Ben Mawson, co-founder and co-CEO of Lipa’s management company, told Rolling Stone. “It’s a new creative form for live, and when it’s done right like I think Dua did, it works well. We’ll definitely do it again — when, we don’t know. Certainly for the rest of our artists, we’ll do more.”
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Post by Admin on Jan 2, 2022 3:03:06 GMT
@years & Years and @kylie Minogue perform ‘A Second To Midnight’ ✨ BBC
28,513 views • Jan 1, 2022
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