In the ephemeral world of pop, marionettes that sing and dance to other people’s tunes are ten a penny. Artists who can stay on the chart roundabout for more than a couple of rotations are rare. Those that start as soap characters and become truly beloved entertainers over two full decades, and survive personal trauma in the process? Now we’ve narrowed the field to precisely one woman.
After months of making X, her tenth studio album, Kylie Minogue made a resplendent return to the public eye at the 2007 Music Industry Trusts’ Award ceremony, sponsored by PRS and PPL. Her exuberance in accepting the trophy as the first female recipient among its 16 honorees to date was matched only by her enthusiastic live performances on the night with Jamie Cullum and with Jake Shears of Scissor Sisters.
Minogue’s place in the nation’s hearts was well established even before she experienced the ordeal of breast cancer. But her stoicism in facing that battle, and the openness with which she talked about it, did much to destigmatise the disease. When she returned late last year to the reconvened Showgirl tour, after the enforced hiatus of 18 months, she took the word ‘heroine’ beyond mere fan-worship into something more profound.
'something had changed in me and you can hear that on the album'
If there really was anybody left who doubted the live vocal credentials of Britain’s favourite Australian pop superstar, they’d have been obliged to scuttle out of the MITS ceremony at the Grosvenor House Hotel, discredited. But Minogue has made it her business to see off the cynics, by virtue of an extraordinary work ethic and an attention to detail that she applies to her sound and her songcraft every bit as much as her image.
As she celebrates the chart success of the album’s effusive first single, 2 Hearts, Kylie admits to plenty of butterflies about how X will be received. ‘I’m proud, but I’m also nervous, which I am every time I’ve got a new album or single,’ she says. ‘I think if I’m not nervous, we should all go home.
‘A year and a half, I’ve worked on it, and a lot of the songs which didn’t make the album in my mind have as much importance as the songs that did, because they were the stepping-stones to get there. I just want it to be out now and let it do what it’s meant to do. ‘’Go on, X. Run free!’”
The dramatic turn in her own life in recent years has been hugely informative to the character of the album. ‘I think it’s safe to say I’ve never had to prepare like I have for this album. Before, I think I just rolled on, and this one is much more of a celebration than anything I’ve done before, with some room for reflection as well, which was good.
‘The preparation for it was probably finishing my Showgirl tour, because at that stage I just thought, ‘’I haven’t sung in so long, I don’t know how strong I’m going to be.’’ But I had to get back into the studio just to test myself and get some things off my chest, which I did, then went on tour, then finished the album.’
Both of necessity and choice, the album has been far longer in gestation than any other she’s made. Minogue travelled halfway around the world in making it, recording more than three times as many songs as she could ever include.
‘I started in Brighton, then I think it was London...New York, I did some there...Paris, Sweden and back to London. Forty songs is possibly an understatement. I haven’t tallied up how many there’ve been but I think forty was the figure a little while ago, and I’ve done a few more since then. That’s in a year and a half, with a tour. Not that I write on tour, but that took up a few months, and I wasn’t pressured. ‘It was kind of a gentle beginning, just to get me in there — although I didn’t feel that gentle when I first went back into the studio. I was like a mad woman, with the kind of fire and anger, just wanting to get stuff out. We got there in the end.’
'my goal, throughout the illness and afterwards,was to get back on stage'
With characteristic tenacity, Kylie approached the new challenge determined not just to overcome it, but enjoy it too. ‘I was just so excited to be back in the studios, to have that opportunity to do this and knowing that some of it would be different than before,’ she says. ‘But the basics aren’t. It’s the same old thing. It’s like riding a bike. You get in and you do it, but something had definitely changed in me and I think you can hear that throughout the album. And as I always do, I tried to have a lot of fun doing it.’
If ‘fun’ is a keyword in the Minogue lexicon, so is ‘collaboration.’ The extensive cast list of co-writers and producers, many of them big names who knew to check their egos at the door, reflects her preference for everyone mucking in together. She may be a pop princess, but she’s no drama-diva.
‘I started work in TV, which is an industry where you all have to pull together. It isn’t about one person, so I didn’t come into this business thinking “It’s all about me.” I love to be involved, I love people. I love the collaborative importance, with recording, visuals, videos, touring. There’s a whole lot of people involved.’
Minogue began the writing process for X before she resumed touring, working with the Scissor Sisters on White Diamond, which ironically didn’t make the final cut. 2 Hearts is written by the London electronic four-piece Kish Mauve, while other tracks employ the services of such stalwart British writers as Cathy Dennis, Guy Chambers, Richard Stannard and Karen Poole.
'the songs that didn’t make the album have as much importance as the songs that did'
Dennis and Chambers, Ivor Novello-celebrated writers both, contribute Sensitised, and as usual when they collaborate, Minogue knew she was getting the cream of the British writing crop. ‘I saw Guy at a function just over a year ago and he said, “Have I got a song for you!” I was like, “All right, where is it?” He said “I’ve still got to do a bit on it, but trust me, you’re going to love it.” It transpires he’s spent four years working on this track. I love it, it’s hot.’
‘Cathy’s very finicky with the recording process and the delivery and the tiniest things make a big difference. You don’t just go through and sing it a few times. There’s a way she hears it, and she’s right.’ Poole, once of Alisha’s Attic but now one of the UK’s most in-demand composers, has no fewer than four co-writes on X. Kylie herself co-wrote Heart Beat Rock with Poole and Adam Wiles, while Karen worked on two others, Nu-Di-Ty and No More Rain, with Bloodshy & Avant, the latter also with Jonas Quant.
Bloodshy & Avant, the Swedish team otherwise known as Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg, have a formidable showreel of their own, never bettered than on their masterful production of Britney’s Toxic.
‘Nu-Di-Ty is great,’ says Minogue. ‘The first time I heard it, I didn’t get it. It took me maybe three listens to figure it out, and once you have, it’s really fun latching on to the odd beats in it.
‘No More Rain has a history. It’s another track, like Cosmic (composed with Ivor winner Eg White) where I’d written the lyric. Karen Poole, Bloodshy & Avant and myself, we’d all worked on another track called Cherry Bomb which didn’t make the album and we thought we’d start something entirely new from no backing track. ‘I went, “Mmm, I really like this, Kaz, what do you think of this?” and I sang her the melody I had for that, so we got the song recorded. We ended up handing it to Greg Kurstin, who re-produced it and I think he did a great job, obviously taking cues from what we’d started in Stockholm with Bloodshy & Avant. ‘But I really had to fight to get that song on the album and it’s important to me, because my goal, throughout the illness and afterwards, was to get back on stage, and I guess I wrote No More Rain as almost like a mantra.’
With a little help from her friends and from millions of well-wishers that she’s never even met, Kylie’s work and life have a new sense of, yes, locomotion. ‘I was trying to picture myself on stage and what it might be like to be back there,’ she says. ‘So, on No More Rain, “Wave of love coming over me” is the audience, and “Got a glitter drop fall and I’m on my knees, got the sound of you ringing in my ears,” is the noise. It does sum up where I was, and the help that I got from all kinds of people.’