UPDATE 11/1: Watch Kylie Minogue’s magnetic performance of “Say Something” from the forthcoming ‘INFINITE DISCO’ worldwide Livestream this Saturday, November 7th. Get your tickets here.
It was a rapturous reception that greeted Kylie Minogue on June 30th of last year, when she took to the “Pyramid Stage” at the Glastonbury Festival for the venerated “legends slot.” And that was just the cherry to crown an already awesome year and six-month stretch. In 2018, Minogue not only issued her finest album to date with Golden, she took it on the road to applause; further commemoration of her stature as an enduring musical force came with the unveiling of Step Back in Time: The Definitive Collection. That retrospective entered shops the same weekend as Minogue’s record-breaking Glastonbury show.
This flurry of activity represented Minogue redefining what it meant to be a star of her caliber approaching middle-age. However, never one to rest on her laurels, the Australian singer and songwriter dove headfirst into the sessions for her fifteenth studio album.
Almost immediately, an explicit demand for Minogue to “go back” to dance-pop was issued from that one sect of ever contentious fans and certain corners of the music press that hadn’t come to terms with the forward-thinking guitar-pop and country mechanics of Golden. When Minogue coined “grown-up disco” as a descriptor of what was to come with her forthcoming effort, a roar went up on social media from those cited collectives and depressingly began to inform the critical discourse around the project before it had even gotten off the ground.
Kylie Minogue’s fifteenth studio album ‘Disco’ arrives in stores November 6th
With this week’s reveal of Disco and its lead-off single “Say Something” all but confirming this supposed “return to form,” was the long player and its opening salvo an (unnecessary) acquiescence from Minogue or something more? Thankfully, it is the latter.
Penned by Minogue in conjunction with familiar writer-producer peers Jon Green, Ash Howes and Richard Stannard, “Say Something” is a vibrant nu-disco midtempo flecked with funky guitar riffs and streaked with incandescent synths. Expected remix treatments will tease out its requisite floor-filling potential, but in its current layered state, “Say Something” benefits from a filmic sweep in its arrangement that interlocks faultlessly with its vocal and lyrics.
More than likely—like many of us—Minogue has been horrified by the global discord kicked up in 2020 with COVID-19, fraught racial tensions and the ceaseless stream of conservative political disinformation. But, “Say Something” isn’t a social protest song in the purest sense. Rather, she uses a typical romantic story of connection as a subtle allegory for the broader reflection and unity much needed in the world today. The effective emotional communication of “Say Something” rests on how Minogue sings it—it’s a gorgeously understated performance. The composition feels genuine, enthused and adult throughout its run time—hallmarks of what made Golden and its singles so successful.
Minogue’s ability to locate that right blend of the conventional and the subversive remains uncanny as “Say Something” demonstrates. The song has her utilizing a familiar sonic device with a confidence won as a direct result of meeting her own artistic threshold versus being held hostage to any restrictions from the public. One can assume that Disco will possess more of the same when it is released on November 6th.
Go ahead Ms. Minogue, we see you baby!
Quentin Harrison recently published Record Redux: Kylie Minogue, the fifth book in his Record Redux series. The ambitious project traces the rise of the Australian pop vocalist from soap actress star to international pop powerhouse by examining every single and studio album in her repertoire. Record Redux: Kylie Minogue follows previous entries from the Atlanta, Georgia based author centered on Carly Simon, Donna Summer and Madonna. Order Record Redux: Kylie Minogue here (digital) and here (physical). An overhauled version of his first book Record Redux: Spice Girls will be available in late December 2020.
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