Review: Kylie Minogue’s Disco Is a Sugar Rush Worth the Hangover

The Aussie pop singer’s 15th album is content to bask unapologetically in nostalgia.

Kylie Minogue, Disco
Photo: Darenote

In my review of Kylie Minogue’s 2018 album Golden, I not-so-boldly predicted that the country-influenced set would set the stage for the Aussie pop singer’s inevitable disco comeback. It wouldn’t be the first time she pirouetted away from the dance floor only to make a triumphant return to it. In fact, Minogue seems to have made a decennial tradition of it, having previously re-embraced dance music on 2000’s Light Years and 2010’s Aphrodite.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Minogue’s follow-up to Golden is titled Disco. In a way, such genre-targeted albums free her from opting into current pop trends—though, it should be noted, 2020 has already seen its share of disco revivalism. But if Róisín Murphy’s Róisín Machine and Jessie Ware’s What’s Your Pleasure? represent a deep dive into the admittedly diverse genre, Disco is content to mine its more superficial virtues.

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The first song released from Disco, “Say Something,” made for a deceptive introduction to the album: A midtempo synth-pop sleeper in the vein of past lead singles “All the Lovers” and “Into the Blue,” the track, with its wobbly bassline and funk guitar licks, works better as a momentary respite among Disco’s otherwise frenetic middle stretch. Dance anthems like the bass-driven “Supernova” and the unrelentingly catchy “Last Chance” are Minogue’s most unabashedly aggressive in years.

Nothing here reaches the high camp of Minogue’s 2001 single “Your Disco Needs You,” but the infectious “Monday Blues,” which boasts intertwining strands of disco DNA from both Chic and Kool & the Gang, makes a valiant attempt. Occasionally, Disco ventures into parody, with on-the-nose references to Studio 54, “I Will Survive,” and Earth, Wind & Fire, among others, scattered throughout. But while the album might be a purely derivative work, its period arrangements—all sweeping disco strings, Nile Rodgers-esque guitar licks, and indiscriminately deployed cowbell—are executed with aplomb.

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Disco’s opening track, “Magic,” sweetens its mix of squelchy bass synth and staccato horn stabs with just a dollop of schmaltz: “Do ya, do ya, do ya/Do ya believe in magic?” The album’s lyrics are generic and vaguely uplifting enough to project onto any personal or global disaster: “Oh, we all got wanderlust in the darkest place,” Minogue sings on “Say Something.” Vocally, her voice sounds tinny throughout, a mixing deficiency that similarly plagued her last few albums, but the singer effortlessly slips into her head voice on “Magic,” heightening the song’s buoyancy, while talk-box effects and digital editing add some sonic interest to “Real Groove” and “Dance Floor Darling.”

Minogue has made a version of this album before. The filter disco of “Miss a Thing” and “I Love It,” co-written and co-produced by longtime collaborator Richard “Biff” Stannard, would fit comfortably on 2000’s Light Years or 2001’s Fever. For better or worse, though, Disco doesn’t attempt to adapt the classic titular sound in a contemporary context like those albums did, instead content to bask in unapologetic homage. In the end, it’s a sugar rush worth the hangover.

Score: 
 Label: Darenote  Release Date: November 6, 2020  Buy: Amazon

Sal Cinquemani

Sal Cinquemani is the co-founder and co-editor of Slant Magazine. His writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, Billboard, The Village Voice, and others. He is also an award-winning screenwriter/director and festival programmer.

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