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Elly Roberts reviews
Parlophone
- November 2007
- Rating: 4/10
The Princess of Pops crown loses its shine.
Kylie Minogue has always lived in the shadow of Madonna. Xfurther proves why shes called the princess and not the queen of pop.Madonna mutates to sustain her career in addition, in most cases, writing herown material.
When Kylie tries to reinvent, it hasnt been that great, and again on thisalbum things havent moved on in the shiny world of Kylie. Behind all the CD’sglittery imagery we get more of the same, though in this case the songs aresubstanially weaker.
The albums unimaginative title, matches the equally unimaginative writing.If youre not the best of writers, which Kylie aint, then leave it totally toothers to help you make a proper comeback. Its as if there been a bit of arush job going on, and it shows at every level. There are numerous songwriterswhove helped the Sugababes, Britney, Jamelia, Spice Girls, including Robbieold cohort Guy Chambers, who still fails to save the day. Basically, therestoo many cooks.
It boasts shes been a co-writer on seven of them (3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13) butwe dont exactly know what shes, sort of, done really. Considering its beenfour years since her last, not much thought or effort has gone into this.There seems to be more emphasis on sound effects (instrumentally and vocally)than real (universal) pop songs. Unlike some previous singles, there isnt akiller track, with 2 Hearts being the worst.
Much of whats going on here is poor: Wow and Nu-di-ty being primeexamples of pathetic efforts at 21 century disco. The voice, as ever, isequally as thin (in a teenage way) and weak. On Speakerphone, she daresto imitate Madonna, with voice altering F/X, like something from Madges Musicalbum. Heart Beat Rock is a disjointed attempt at RnB, wheras The Onetries to copy classic Spinning Around and fails miserably.
Stars is surely destined to be the next single full of dance formulawithout Spinnings hot chorus. Balladeering effectively shows her weaknesses,and this is confirmed by the saccharine-like Cosmic. For once, just maybe,and its probably way beyond her smiley Kylie credentials, it would be reallysomething to hear some genuine emotion in her singing instead of the roboticand clinical delivery shes made her millions from.
When Kylies on song Spinning Around, Cant Get You Out Of My Head etc,shes hot pop, but the song isnt here. When she drifts from the biggies andtries to be clever or even remotely arty, she stumbles at the first block.One occasion on a Princess Trust slot made Kylie look embbarrasing. She wasshown up by a much better singer Christina Aguilera, who will always beahead of Kylie in terms of credibility alone.
Weblink:kylie.com
The full list of tracks included are :
1. 2 Hearts
2. Like A Drug
3. In My Arms
4. Speakerphone
5. Sensitized
6. Heart Beat Rock
7. The One
8. No More Rain
9. All I See
10. Stars
11. Wow
12. Nu-di-ty
13. Cosmic
Elly Roberts passed away in 2011, but he was a man who was so passionate about all types of music and loved meeting his musical heroes, such as Mick Hucknall at a book signing at the Trafford Centre, Manchester in 2007.
A former teacher and also a music journalist, DJ and radio presenter on local community station Calon FM, plus appearances on BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru and BBC Radio 2, Elly started doing reviews for DVDfever.co.uk in 2004 and he did the majority of the CD and concerts reviews on the website.
I know also that he loved getting away for the summer to Spain and I hope that wherever he is now he is enjoying the hot sunshine and, as one of his friends has said on his Facebook page, that he is interviewing his musical heroes.