Spinning Around

Spinning Around

I was gonna…

The much-hated clip for one of Kylie’s most unpopular singles, by Melbourne avant garde director Dimitri Basil.  I have to say, I love it (sorry, not sorry).

Kylie: showgirl

 

Resplendent in the brass-and-plush-velvet foyer of the Victorian Arts Centre is this free exhibition of stage costumes by hometown showgirl Kylie Minogue. These range from her Hajime Sorayama robo-muse (circa “Can’t get You Out of My Head”) to Aussie-flag emblazoned and heavily shoulder-pad-endowed 1980s jackets.

Kylie’s disco Christmas

 

A bonus track from the French and Italian versions of Kylie’s re-issued Christmas album of last year (dubbed the Snow Queen edition.) This continuation of her Christmas project consists of an oddly winning formula of high-calibre Minogue pop, quirky renditions of Christmas standards and knowingly camp Baz Luhrman-esque renditions of nineties club hits – plus this. Somehow, it all works.

Do it Again..

Kylie’s Glacier of love

Kylie Minogue took the stage this week as a surprise guest of singer John Grant, to perform a verse of his song “Glacier” in response to the Orlando massacre.

It was, to my mind, the perfect gesture – poised, eloquent and angrily heartbroken.

Listen to the lyrics carefully.

Retroooooo!

The Kylie Christmas Album: My Thoughts

Like many long-time fans of La Minogue, I was distinctly nonplussed by the announcement of a 2015 Christmas album. Here is a woman who had once set the charts alight, one of the globe’s great pop stars and a singer who had always exhibited exemplary taste: collaborating with Nick Cave, Towa Tei and Dev Hynes, appearing in Holy Motors and Moulin Rouge, being photographed by Stephane Sedanoui. Kylie’s great strength has always been her willingness to lob perpetually surprising career curve balls at her fans, and win them over and now here she was – this veteran of unexpected rock directions, collaborations with Japanese rappers and extended tours of South America – wallowing in her twilight years in that the nadir of pop music sophistication, the Christmas Album.

Depressing.

Except – it isn’t.

Having now heard the album I have had to totally re-evaluate my stance. Because many of the songs on it are, to be frank, pretty good. The standards are sung beautifully with joy and a complete absence of cynicism, together with covers like Only You, an early eighties new wave hit here covered as a duet with a hitherto-unknown-to-me UK Television comedian. But against all odds, its lovely. Another track, Christmas Wrapping, sees her team up with Iggy Pop (!) on a song where she raps (!!) pretty well (!!!!). White December is classic Kylie, a heat-seaking missile of a melody that buries into your brain and the disco-tastic 100 degrees is an explosion of Studio 54 disco goodness, shimmering through the snow, bedecked in tinsel.

It strikes me now that Kylie has, in fact, just performed her signature move again. She has bucked against her fans’ hopes and expectations – this time that she be “edgy” and current – swept aside their (and by that I mean “my”) prejudices, and shown them that they actually wanted her like this all along.

Unexpectedly, the Kylie Christmas album is a low-key triumph.

I’m so high

While Kylie gently bops…

How did I never hear this?

Nostalgia Princess

Kylie has recently announced a concert at London’s Hyde Park with another of this blog’s favourite fashion and culture icons, the one and only Grace Jones. Meanwhile, I recently stumbled upon this great online stash of Kylie pictures from a (rather obsessive) Brazilian fansite. The pictures on kylie.com.br document the singer’s  90s “indie” phase when she teamed up with French photographer (and then-boyfriend) Stephane Sedanoui for the imagery of her ultimately ill-fated (or was it?) “Impossible Princess” album. That disc that marked the nadir of her commercial appeal but also a creative revival. Looking at the pictures here it is hard not to be nostalgic because even as her record sales plummeted, these images remain some of her best work. Perhaps its true what they say afterall about dark clouds and silver linings?

…and more Kylie

Some of the sounds of (my) 2014

From Brazil:

From Korea:

From America:

From UK:

From Australia:

From China (and Taiwan):

From the Gay World:

From other places:

Kylie throws a curveball

…with this unexpected tidbit. Here she is singing the signature song “Crave U” from Sydney nu-disco heads Flight Facilities, seemingly in an East London squat. Does this mean she is on their upcoming album?

Kylie is back on tour

In Europe anyway. The Kiss Me Once tour has been getting strong reviews (in contrast to its unfairly maligned namesake album). But seeing the news reminded me of this: the tour projections from the X Tour, which I saw – memorably – in Sao Paulo.

And after all, there is never a bad time to reminisce about Kylie.

Thiago Pethit is a Romeo

Brazilian troubadour Thiago Pethit who previously made this great video is back with a flesh-flashing (NSFW) update of Kylie’s “Some Kind of Bliss” video concept! The song is a free download from his website.

And in case you missed it earlier (I did) here is his very sexually confused video for “Moon”:

Ruffle my feathers

 

New Kylie song leaked here.

Kylie appeal – crystallized

I saw the new Kylie X Scissor Sisters X Blood Orange charity track described online as “your gay uncle’s favourite song”. It was supposed to be disparaging, implying that Kylie had retreated to her core audience, unable to keep up with the Rita Oras and Miley Cyruses of the new pop landscape, but actually I thought the quip summed up the song pretty well – a glittery, bittersweet and melodic thirty-something gay party jam.

Experimental Kylie is back!

Wunderbar!

Sexercise!

Sexercise, single 2 from the brand new Kylie album “Kiss Me Once” didn’t appeal to me at all at first. In fact, it seemed offensively stupid and sluggish with its witless, lowest common denominator lyrics. The all-too-literal (if beautifully filmed) video clip did not help. But somehow over the last few days the song has succeeded in getting under my skin, with its nagging sexercise-sexercise-sexercise refrain in ascending pitch and its new tumblr-tastic hipster mulitmedia page, sexertise.tv featuring a range of animations inspired by the song and three different versions of the clip – the official, a gay male parody version by new York underground star Ssion and this retro-kitsch version. I guess I under-estimated Kylie after all -its a smart way to package a dumb song.

Kylie is back