Kylie Minogue - Light Years (2000)

UK release date: September 25th 2000
UK album chart peak: #2
Australian album chart peak: #1

Buy Light Years here (Amazon GB)
Read my Kylie Minogue album anniversary celebrations here

Pop scholars far more eloquent than I will rightly wax poetic about the artistic merits and shimmering millenial return of one Ms Kylie Minogue. During the 90s, Kylie had her own creative blossoming, from exerting more control over her image and sound with PWL (via the Rhythm of Love and Let's Get To It albums) to pushing her musical barriers via her DeConstruction releases (Kylie Minogue and Impossible Princess). If that latter album, released in 1997, showed her most expansive and artistic expressions of work to date, then Light Years evidenced her capability to channel that expression through solid gold, commercial pop. In short, the album was (and is) a triumph. Everyone will have their own favourite Kylie Minogue albums and this remains at the top of my list (along with Enjoy Yourself and Kylie Christmas, though Golden is nipping at their heels). I find joy and solace in every Kylie album, but this one just makes me feel happy. From start to finish it felt like a Greatest Hits album from an alternate world just a sliding door away. It effortlessly went from 60s kitsch and 70s disco right through to contemporary grooves and futuristic electronica, yet never felt disjointed or uneven. In short, Kylie took you on an exhilarating pop journey and she sounded like she was having the time of her life in doing so. This is warp speed pop and just as ravishing all these years later...

The singles:

• Spinning Around ~ I love it when my favourites collide (part 1)! Paula Abdul kept me spellbound with her sizzling dance-pop concoctions in the late 80s and early 90s so to find that her song all about a pop renaissance had been gifted to Kylie was manna from heaven. I mean, sure the gold hotpants from the video got a lot of attention but it was this song that reintroduced Ms Minogue to the masses - and remains just as thrilling to this day. With infusions of sumptuous strings and a funky bass, the song was a redefinition of disco and yet sounded fresh as a summer's day. It oozed elegance and sensuality whilst still giving us lyrics that felt intimate, personal and empowering. It struck a chord with fans both ardent and casual, becoming her first UK single to debut in the number one position (and started a run of 16 consecutive top ten UK singles which exceeded her PWL run of 13).
• On A Night Like This ~ just a few weeks before the album was released came a second single and what a euphoric gem it was. Who doesn't love a celebratory ode to the pleasures of nocturnal adventures? Kylie clearly did and gave seductive pop purring for the ages through corralling thumping beats and a glittering chorus that lingered long after the song had finished. The blend of nu-house and euro-pop made this a bedroom-eyed floor filler that practically commanded you to gravitate to the dance floor. It was another smash hit, debuting (and peaking) at number two in the UK (held off the top slot by Lady by Modjo) and becoming her sixth chart topping single in Australia. 
• Kids (duet with Robbie Williams) ~ sure, this felt more like a Robbie single (released only 5 weeks after On A Night Like This; b-sides solo Robbie tracks) but it did bring together two of the biggest pop stars in the country at the time and unite them on one soaring anthem. There was no subtlety in the potent sexual chemistry of the lyrics and the lascivious video (with one of pop's greatest cliffhangers) only added to the simmering allure of the song. I'm pretty sure it was only not number one because it already featured on both Light Years (which had already sold by the bucketload) and Robbie's Sing When You're Winning (which had sold by the shedload). Still, another number two UK hit was not to be sniffed at.
• Please Stay ~ it was like the halcyon days of Lewis Martinez (Pet Shop Boys Domino Dancing; Debbie Gibson's Red Hot; anything by Expose) were back. I could practically feel winter warming up thanks to this Latin-influenced pop bop. The array of dazzling remixes gave you summer salsa fever (whilst the Santa Baby b-side was a coquettish slice of Christmas fun). Despite being the fourth single from the album, it still managed a top ten placing at one of the most competitive times of the year (the race for the Christmas number one). Little note - her previous duet star Robbie was the only other top ten new entry that week!
• Your Disco Needs You ~ You are never alone/you know what to do/do not abandon your people/your disco needs you! While my head tells me that Spinning Around was absolutely the right single to launch Light Years, my heart will argue to the end of days that it should have been this high drama masterpiece. With a stomping groove and textured backing vocals that all act as a rallying call to arms, Kylie is the leader of this pop mission to reclaim the dance floor. While it may not be as sophisticated a pop rhythm as Spinning Around, it certainly knew how to grab your attention and have you marching to the beat of Kylie's drum. Like Madonna's Into The Groove, it celebrated dance for dance sake. Like Village People's Go West it coalesced the masses into emphatically agreeing with its narrative. An absolute triumph - and a pop crime that this was never given a full release. Remains one of my all time favourite Ms Minogue songs to this very day.
• Butterfly ~ talking of pop crimes, how on earth did Light Years not get a full release Stateside? At least the record label dipped its toe into the waters via some sumptuous club remixes of Butterfly. Co-written by Kylie with her long-time musical collaborator Steve Anderson, it was the album's most banging track with a beat that practically spanked you into submission. Plus the emphatic glittering power of that middle 8 still gives me goosebumps even though I've listened to the track umpteen times. Those Mark Pichotti mixes merely extended the magic that was already there (and sent it galloping with its house beats all the way to no.14 on the US Club Chart).

The album:

Picking singles from this album was like shooting fish in a barrel (whatever that means). Almost every single song could have been destined for chart success at some point or the other dependent on which way the wind was blowing. And every single Kylie fan will have an opinion about what songs they would have picked. For me, it is the work with Steve Anderson that stands out most. So Now Goodbye is marvellously swirling pop song all about the heartbreak of betrayal, yet romantic freedom has rarely sounded so liberating as it does here. Those daring synth blasts and glistening groove bring out the fiery emotion of the song with a sing-a-long chorus for the ages. It is positively theatrical. The theme of farewell continues on the album's only ballad (and surely a precursor to the Abbey Road Sessions which Steve Anderson curated), Bittersweet Goodbye. Kylie sounds utterly bewitching on this piano-vocal-strings slow dance number, saturated with heaving passions and aching yearning. You get the sense that Kylie is singing only because keeping it all inside is too painful. Her cathartic yet introspective finer feelings are just lovely to behold. Oh, and I can't forget Disco Down - not a Steve Anderson song but I'm sure he said it is one of his favourites. Synth pop and electronica collide with the genre of the title, making this an entirely thrilling blend of styles (that foreshadowed the sound of her all-conquering Fever album a year or so later).  One of my all time favourite Kylie album tracks.

Kylie steps back in time on Kookachoo to give full on 60s psychedelia. Like a more mellifluous and sinewy Austin Powers, the song embraces the chic of pop from that era, mixes it up with some beguiling yet slightly bonkers musical sound effects and delivers kitsch for days in the chorus. Similarly, I'm So High takes its direction from the likes of Cathy Dennis' Am I That Kinda Girl and channels it through Kylie's own kaleidoscope of pop whilst Loveboat  (the third Robbie Williams collab on the opus) is finger clicking goodness. All three conjure up images of retro floral dresses, free love and the glorious sunny beaches of Saint Tropez. And while it might not have been as sixties as the three aforementioned songs, Ms Minogue's audacious take on Love Unlimited's I'm Under The Influence of Love put orchestral swooping strings alongside a kinky beat. Her vocals was as captivating as the hook she was singing. She was unleashed and loving it - recapturing the so-called "sex kitten" days of her Rhythm of Love reinvention from a decade earlier. One can only imagine what the videos for these songs might have been like but the cavorting around on her On A Night Like This tour gave fans a good idea...

The title track is, rightly, as futuristic as it gets and a song that I was longing to be a single. Light Years begins with a slow and steadied countdown which builds both tension and excitement for the beat drop and song commencement. You are a complicit partner in the pop odyssey journey Kylie is going to take you on and those pulsing beats and intoxicating electro-effects were a slow tease that was practically musical edging. Even though the song never has that explosive crescendo, it doesn't need it as is a masterclass in mesmerising pop. Oh, when they added Donna Summer's I Feel Love into the mix for the KylieFever2002 tour, it was done with such breathtaking precision that I felt it should have been released as a single there and then (and still had the ability to top the charts).