Kylie’s saved lockdown
The dance floor is a place of lost love as well as holding the possibility of bliss
THE BIG RELEASE KYLIE
DISCO BMG ★★★★★
IT’S difficult to review any music at the tail end of 2020 without asking yourself whether it helps or simply pours fuel on to the pile of burning trash this year has been. Does a record of bangers just make you realise what you’re missing out on? Does melancholy just make you feel worse?
In Kylie Minogue’s case, Disco is an album of disco-inspired numbers that treads the line carefully – an endorphinreleasing home listen that holds the promise of future fun.
In fact, it holds plenty of present fun too in 12 shimmering tracks that swoon with the romance of the dance floor. It’s a welcome return to what Kylie does best after her 2018 detour into country territory with Golden. She seems to have been inspired by some of the current pop girls as well as the 1970s originals – Real Groove wouldn’t sound out of place on Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia, while Kylie hits peak campbrilliance on Supernova, with its robot voices and an intergalactic simile pushed to cosmic breaking point. But there’s also some sort of melancholy about these tracks – the dance floor is a place of lost love as well as holding the possibility of bliss, while the very act of dancing is seen as a form of displacement activity for experiencing real emotion.
In a way, then, this is the perfect concept for a record of 2020 – all those lockdown hobbies that we tried to distract ourselves with, all those nights out we regret not going on, encapsulated in one determinedly upbeat album. Even if your dance party is taking place in the living room over Zoom rather than a packed, sweaty venue, Disco is an irresistible tonic to real life. Thank God for Kylie Minogue.