Album Review: Kylie Minogue Disco (2020)

 

Album cover for Disco, by Kylie Minogue, 2020.

Kylie Minogue, 2020.

In my 2014 review of Kylie Minogue’s album Aphrodite, I coined the term “KylieWorld,” to describe the universe in which her songs take place. KylieWorld is a wonderful place, where things are almost always good, and romance can be just a dance away. The concept of “KylieWorld” has proven to be an influential one in Kylie Minogue studies, or Minogueology, as it’s formally known. It was widely cited in Jane Andujar’s influential 2017 Ph.D. thesis “Does your disco really need you? Identity and cross-intersectionality in the music of Kylie Minogue.”

I’m happy to say that KylieWorld is open again for visitors, and if there’s ever been a time when the world has needed Kylie Minogue, it’s 2020. Released on November 6, 2020, Disco reached number 1 in the UK and Australia. Disco became Minogue’s 8^th UK number 1 album, and she became the first female artists to have number 1 albums in the UK in 5 different decades. Disco has already been certified Gold in the UK, for sales of more than 100,000 units.

Disco is a fun album, and something of a return to form for Minogue after 2018’s country-tinged Golden. The deluxe edition of Disco sports 16 tracks, all of which feature Minogue as a co-writer. The tone throughout is upbeat escapism, and nowadays, even the simplest things can make one nostalgic for pre-COVID times. Like in “Monday Blues,” where Minogue sings about the letdown that follows the celebratory weekend, and you suddenly remember, “Oh, that’s right, days of the week used to feel different from each other! I used to do stuff on the weekends!”

Minogue’s music has borrowed heavily from disco ever since she fully embraced dance-pop on her 2000 album Light Years. So, it’s not entirely a surprise that Kylie would make an album like Disco. But it isn’t as though Disco is stuck in a time-warp—there’s little on the album that sounds like it’s from 1979.

Two of the strongest tracks are the singles, “Say Something” and “Magic.” (There’s a fabulous clip of Kylie singing “Magic” on Stephen Colbert where she’s wearing this fantastic dress that’s half-feminine and half-masculine.) The pleading refrain of “Say Something,” “Can we all be as one again?” is a fitting sentiment for 2020.

There are catchy moments all through the record: the soaring string/synths on “I Love It,” the guitar intro to “Monday Blues,” the hyper beat of “Where Does the DJ Go?” Throughout the album, the positive attitude of KylieWorld is ever-present, including the album closer “Celebrate You,” which finds Kylie crooning “I celebrate you” in the chorus.

One of my favorite songs is the bonus track “Fine Wine,” which finds Kylie imploring us to “Jump in my ride/beep beep/we’re gonna have a good time.” Sounds good to me. “Fine Wine” is also an apt description of Minogue herself, as she looks and sounds the same, year after year.

Minogue isn’t a showoff vocalist, but what her voice has is warmth. She’s a fantastic pop singer, and she sings songs that fit her voice perfectly—she’s not Mariah Carey or Barbra Streisand, and she isn’t trying to be.

If you want to get a glimpse of what makes Kylie Minogue special, watch her “Life in Looks” video from Vogue, in which Kylie looks through a book of 17 of her most iconic looks from 1988 to the present. It’s very sweet and ends up being very emotional. Kylie seems like a real person, even though she’s been famous since she was a teenager and has enjoyed so much success over the last 30 years. In a business where careers can be measured in weeks and months, that’s a substantial accomplishment.