Jark presents... ULTIMATE KYLIE: THE COUNTDOWN (#1 is...)

Shocked has got better with age. Although that might have a lot to do with that sort of Deeelite hippy-disco-pop that was big in 1990 now being sort of timeless and fabulous :disco:
 
7. Come Into My World
from Fever



one of the joys of following Kylie over the years is having your personal favourites of her many different incarnations as a popstar. I personally love cosmic Kylie (unrelated to the 0/10 abomination of a song Cosmic) and Come Into My World is just that: a slinky banger that sounds beamed in from some distant galaxy where everything is very sexy and very cool. the synth riff that opens the song makes it clear within about 1.5 seconds that you're about to be taken on a TRIP! for some artists this would be a legendary lead single — from Fever, it had to settle for fourth and final. but it still feels like quite an essential and well-loved instalment in her fabulous back cat.

big love to the video by Michel Gondry which, along with Slow, is the absolute pinnacle of the Euro arthouse aesthetic that several popstars tried on for fun during the 98-03 era. I miss the days of visual experiments like that, when labels splashed the cash for fun.


6. Your Disco Needs You
from Light Years



desperately seeking someone
willing to travel
you're lost in conversation and
useless at scrabble :disco:

part of me feels like a bad gay for not placing Your Disco in the top 5. and a part of Kylie should feel like a very bad mother to the gays for not going ALL OUT with this as a single! skipping the UK was an act of violence. I don't think it's easy to make a song like this — it's so clearly engineered to be a gay anthem that it could easily come off as pandering. but Kylie has all the tools for the job, her vocals swooping from a silky coo in her upper range to a commanding call for arms. La disco á besoin de vous!

the superfluous French middle 8, the final build, Kylie taking us to the opera on the outro... it's all so delicious, and it has aged wonderfully. I love the way it goes down at her shows like one of her biggest hits ever. we reclaimed the narrative! a classic "we don't deserve her" moment.
 
have a cheeky recap!

06. Your Disco Needs You
07. Come Into My World
08. The One
09. Shocked
=10. More More More
=10. All the Lovers

11. Breathe
12. I Believe in You
13. On a Night Like This
14. Where is the Feeling?
15. Butterfly
16. Say Something
17. Better the Devil You Know
18. Heartstrings
19. Get Outta My Way
20. In My Arms

21. Still Standing
22. Fever
23. BPM
24. I Love It
25. Miss a Thing
26. Time Will Pass You By
27. In Your Eyes
28. Giving You Up
29. White Diamond (Showgirl Homecoming)
30. Things Can Only Get Better

31. Made of Glass
32. Magic
33. So Now Goodbye
34. Dangerous Game
35. Cowboy Style (Showgirl Homecoming)
36. Better Than Today
37. Padam Padam
38. What Do I Have to Do
39. Dancefloor
40. Feels So Good

41. Aphrodite
42. Sensitized
43. Tightrope
44. Speakerphone
45. Into the Blue
46. Your Love
47. Timebomb
48. Sweet Music
49. Shelby '68
50. Kiss Me Once

of the 5 songs still to come, one was not a single. can anyone name all 5? @Turkey (d)Inner do your worst!
 
no.

Jark Frosty the Snowman said:
BUBBLING UNDER

tumblr_luuu8aUAxP1qggfapo1_500.gif


Like a Drug

I was a longtime Like a Drug truther, but in truth it doesn't go quite hard enough. a shame as it's got all the ingredients. the X2008 version however was everything!
​
Click to expand...


the non single is from the period 2000-2003.
 
God if Fragile is this high given bloody More More More is it’s a crime.

My money is on Love Affair
 
"Come into My World" is very good, i might prefer the remix though.
 
Devil said:
God if Fragile is this high given bloody More More More is it’s a crime.

My money is on Love Affair
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all guesses so far are a bit off track. there is a clue in the post with #7 and #6 though. more to come later!
 
Oh my god your charts stress me out. :D

What the hell did you forget to include first time around?!

Anyway I’m going to guess Slow is comfortably number 1 here. I thought maybe Please Stay might make a shock appearance but have just seen it’s in the bubbling under section.
 
Jark Frosty the Snowman said:
better do this or it'll never happen.

fun fact: due to an accounting era my top 50 actually contains 51 songs, so at #10 we have a good old-fashioned double-A side :disco:

=10. More More More
from Fever



I think it's such a statement of intent to open an album with a tune like this. More More More is five minutes of slinky, sexy seduction, a disco glider sung largely in 00s Kylie's trademark breathy register that seems to roll on and on, infiltrating the bloodstream with each repetition of the chorus. a total slow burn of a track, but also highly infectious, and by the time Kylie's voice ascends into an ecstatic higher register, you're in her hands. it's both sleek and retro, and makes me pine for a proper '70s influenced groovy disco record from KM Air.
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I had to remind myself what this one is. I started out thinking it was all a bit lightweight and was affronted at it sharing a position with All The Lovers but it definitely reveals its charms as it goes along.
 
5. Love at First Sight
from Fever



it's so difficult now. I believe Love at First Sight is as close to the perfect pop song as anyone has ever made. it could easily be #1 on this list... maybe a minor degree of overplay over the years is responsible for this top 5 finish. but what a song. the filtered French disco vibe to the production is super classy, and gives it a constant sense of build and release, but pop hooks don't come any more pristine than this. there's a reason she's tried a hundred times to recreate it — it feels like that rush of euphoria that's so Kylie™, bottled. I would like some more adventurous live arrangements going forward, it feels like one of her least reinvented songs in a tour context. but as the terrible US radio remix shows, why fuck with perfection?
 
Pingu said:
I’ve always kind of thought Love At First Sight to be a teensy bit overrated. Maybe it’s just a bit overplayed (by her).
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Yeah I'm not wild about it. File it with Toxic as another heavily lauded pop track that just doesn't quite get there.

I much prefer In Your Eyes.
 
4. Slow
from Body Language



god the video for this is an all timer. surely one of the most stylish pop videos ever? I remember watching the making-of on some music video channel at the time and being pissed as hell because after the ad break they PLAYED PART ONE AGAIN by accident. I had to wait like TEN YEARS for YOUTUBE to see the rest. also responsible for the Piscina de Montjuïc becoming my favourite spot in Barcelona, and perhaps my (final) gay awakening, so THANK YOU KYLIE!

anyway, Slow may indeed be a pop song by Kylie Minogue, but one might argue it's something closer to a religion. it's the thinking man's banger: a song with production so minimal as to be skeletal, one hypnotic riff stretched and spun around Kylie's elastic vocal, which is not so much sung as purred. it's... sex. and it's a pretty out-there lead single, the kind of risk she has never since taken with her music (despite it going to #1). Kylie apparently received the song almost as we know it today and simply added the spoken word "read my... BODY LANGUAGE." which says a lot about her, because that part is exceptionally cunt. :disco:

maybe the real reason this song has had such an incredible life and legacy over the past 20 years is that its simple structure lends itself exquisitely to reinvention, and almost every single version she and Steve Anderson have served us on tour has been a triumph and a slam dunk. it switches all the time but perhaps my favourite is from Les Folies, which begins as big band melodrama before transitioning into a massive rave banger.



mother me, Kylie. :disco:
 
The LAFS write up is on the money. It really is a perfect pop song and the kind of Kylie in a jar moment that sums her up. I’d also put it around here, maybe at about #3…there’s nothing wrong with it at ALL, but I have another couple that I personally prefer.

Non-shock though - I adore the Britney-ified US mix :disco:
 
I preferred the US remix initially, just because it was what I was used to probably. But it hasn't aged as well as the original.
 
Jark Frosty the Snowman said:
4. Slow
from Body Language



god the video for this is an all timer. surely one of the most stylish pop videos ever? I remember watching the making-of on some music video channel at the time and being pissed as hell because after the ad break they PLAYED PART ONE AGAIN by accident. I had to wait like TEN YEARS for YOUTUBE to see the rest. also responsible for the Piscina de Montjuïc becoming my favourite spot in Barcelona, and perhaps my (final) gay awakening, so THANK YOU KYLIE!

anyway, Slow may indeed be a pop song by Kylie Minogue, but one might argue it's something closer to a religion. it's the thinking man's banger: a song with production so minimal as to be skeletal, one hypnotic riff stretched and spun around Kylie's elastic vocal, which is not so much sung as purred. it's... sex. and it's a pretty out-there lead single, the kind of risk she has never since taken with her music (despite it going to #1). Kylie apparently received the song almost as we know it today and simply added the spoken word "read my... BODY LANGUAGE." which says a lot about her, because that part is exceptionally cunt. :disco:

maybe the real reason this song has had such an incredible life and legacy over the past 20 years is that its simple structure lends itself exquisitely to reinvention, and almost every single version she and Steve Anderson have served us on tour has been a triumph and a slam dunk. it switches all the time but perhaps my favourite is from Les Folies, which begins as big band melodrama before transitioning into a massive rave banger.



mother me, Kylie. :disco:
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My main memory is my Aunt lying on the kitchen floor recreating the video :disco:
 
Love At First Sight should have been number 1 but Jarky boy has summed it up quite well, so i'll give him credit for that

It really is just pure pop heaven from start to finish. I remember watching it on the box music channel back in the day as a 13 year old thinking wow I love this!!

And then that's it all of a sudden I was GAY :disco:
 
one more?

3. Spinning Around
from Light Years



I think Spinning Around comes top 3 in almost every vote/countdown of Kylie's best songs. I know a lot of the fans find it a bit passé or not that exciting. but frankly that's ON THEM! in a thousand tries you couldn't construct a more perfect comeback vehicle than this. Spinning Around is a meta, cleverly wink-wink acknowledgment of where Kylie had been (lost in the commercial wilderness for much of the '90s) and where she was now: back, in hot pants, headed for number one. but the genius of the lyrics is in how universal they feel. Threw away my old clothes, got myself a better wardrobe — I've got somethin' to say: whether it's a career reinvention, a breakup or just a new year, new you, who hasn't been there?

lest we forget, this is a woman that spent the latter half of the '90s singing challenging, largely off-key indie-rock and techno songs with lyrics about drowning and the end of the world. I don't think the public was gagging for anything from Kylie at this point, but if her fans were it was this — a straightforward disco-pop track that radiates joy and optimism at every turn. in many ways, with her indie phase in the rear view, Spinning Around became the blueprint for how Kylie should sound, carefree and confident, unburdened, optimistic always.

I love the way it launches straight into the chorus so you know exactly what you're in for, I love the richness of the production, and the way every single moment of this song is a hook. but most of all Kylie's vocal elevates Spinning Around into something exceptional. her mid-register has always been her sweet spot as a vocalist, and here she sounds the best she has ever sounded, with all the (intentional) bum notes of her 90s vocals sanded away to leave only a rich, creamy diva commanding her public back to her. for any other artist, Spinning Around is a career-best. for Kylie, it's one of three.
 
Spinning Around is the ultimate comeback and prelude to CGYOOMH (have we had that yet :eyes:)

Love that it was written for Paula Abdul, I presume for a shelved fourth album, but it ended up in the right place.
 
2. Light Years
from Light Years



have yourself a taste of foreign glam-our
speeding on our way to something new
missing for a night, but gone forever...
the crew are here to take good care of you :disco:

you know you're in for a good time when a song opens with a cunty countdown from ten. Light Years' title track, and the best album track of Kylie's career, then drops into a nasty, bass-heavy synth beat that sounds like the soundtrack to pre-drinks on a distant star. if you're a gay who's not like the other gays, this one's for you. like Say Something and I Believe in You, Light Years has a simple chorus, two lines repeated, but the dreamy melody and Kylie's ascendant vocal capture some magical alchemy that takes you on a trip (I'm desperate to fly KM Air once in my life).

the song has a weird structure — about halfway through it bursts into a spoken word section (presumably inspired by the Prince song International Lover) in which Kylie plays air hostess over a short, sharp stabs of bubbly, bouncy Eurobeat that sounds like a mid '90s happy house banger put through a cosmic filter. the whole song straddles a fine line between really quite strange and deliriously feel-good, and the synth work (it was co-produced by Biff Stannard) is some of the very best you'll hear on a Kylie song.

gorgeous, stunting and trippy, Light Years takes me in its capsule out of here.

 
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