kylie - x

yes, i saw reviews that were pretty harsh at the time of the release, and to be honest, after a few listens i too felt let down by the album. there was something about the lightweight scatter shot nature of the production, and the quite frankly cringesome lyrics that left me untouched, but then something strange happened.

waiting for the the disappointment to settle i returned to see if the necessary x-factor was embedded within the albums delicate electro pop layers, and this time, i totally fell under the lipstick gloss-n-pop spell.

certain tracks that initially didn’t stand out became ones i found myself enjoying a lot more than was to be expected, no real reason for it, just that i guess i had tuned into kylies need to basically party and have fun.

of course the album is dominated by the glam stomp of lead single 2 hearts that took the goldfrapp glitter stomp and refined the elements into a perfect pop single that even now has yet to descend into the depths of over familiarity a la can’t get you out of my head. such perfection opening an album is always a risky move, and perhaps its choice to make 2 hearts track number one was part of my initial disappointment as there was little chance of anything that followed this classic was going to knock me over in quite the same manner.

however, as mentioned, other favourites now include the 80s synths of like a drug, the harp filled jittery filtered disco funk of speakerphone, the addictive life reaffirming chorus, ‘i’m the one, love love me love me’, of the one, and the gorgeous stars. in fact i would suspect that it’s not long before i will be listing every track as a favourite as each spin just makes me love the album more. when you hear no more rain on the radio next year, you’ll be kicking yourself as to just why you believed all the negativity surrounding the album.

of course the key point to the success of a pop album is in the production and styles chosen by the people involved, and for x, the a-list production teamsn behind these creations appear to have been absorbing a lot of the blogspheres love for thin-n-crispy electro along with some booty shaking crunk styled pop (as in the pretty disposable nu-di-ty) that have dominated the hangouts of the beautiful people in recent times. the various studio boffins have, as expected, smoothed out the underground focussed hard edges, then fused their radio friendly experiments with kylies trademarked whispered girl sing-talk vocals, sometimes twisting and tweaking snippets of kylies parts into an art of noise styled result.