Kylie: X

Elly Roberts reviews

Kylie: X
Distributed by
ParlophoneCover

  • November 2007
  • Rating: 4/10

The Princess of Pop’s crown loses its shine.

Kylie Minogue has always lived in the shadow of Madonna. Xfurther proves why she’s 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 hasn’t been that great, and again on thisalbum things haven’t 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 album’s unimaginative title, matches the equally unimaginative writing.If you’re not the best of writers, which Kylie ain’t, then leave it totally toothers to help you make a proper comeback. It’s as if there been a bit of arush job going on, and it shows at every level. There are numerous songwriterswho’ve helped the Sugababes, Britney, Jamelia, Spice Girls, including Robbie’old cohort Guy Chambers, who still fails to save the day. Basically, there’stoo many cooks.

It boasts she’s been a co-writer on seven of them (3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13) butwe don’t exactly know what she’s, 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 isn’t akiller track, with 2 Hearts being the worst.

Much of what’s 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 Madge’s Musicalbum. Heart Beat Rock is a disjointed attempt at R’n’B, wheras The Onetries to copy classic Spinning Around and fails miserably.


Stars is surely destined to be the next single – full of dance formulawithout Spinning’s hot chorus. Balladeering effectively shows her weaknesses,and this is confirmed by the saccharine-like Cosmic. For once, just maybe,and it’s 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 she’s made her millions from.

When Kylie’s on song – Spinning Around, Can’t Get You Out Of My Head etc,she’s hot pop, but the song isn’t 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

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