Review: With Kylie’s latest album, ‘DISCO’ days aren’t over
The princess of pop is on her way to becoming the queen of disco thanks to her new album

It’s always a sure thing with Kylie Minogue — fun and great grooves that is. What's more admirable is that even though she released one of the greatest pop albums of the century nearly 20 years ago (“Fever” for those pop heathens out there), she keeps trying to outdo herself. Her 15th album moves her closer to that goal post than ever before. The 12-track set, simply titled “DISCO,” is a cohesive playlist for an exceptional dance-heavy experience

First three singles stand out from the dozen songs with their infectious hooks and synth-pop rhythms. “Say Something” has an engaging electric guitar riffing; “Magic” brings on some hot staccato keys and handclaps on top of a hopeful message; while “I Love It” is unabashed pure disco love.

The rest of the tracks mix Daft Punk-esque undertones like “Dance Floor Darling” and “Real Groove” with some unusual Auto-Tune, play with speeds and even opaquely sample from ’80s hits, as “Supernova” goes all out funk. Lyrically, Minogue — who is a co-writer on all the songs — swings from searching for cosmic love to looking for the light of the stars to wanting to dissolve the night away on the dance floor.

“DISCO” feels a bit like a fantasy electric blanket on a cold night – it will bring comfort but also shock you into joy from time to time.

Kylie Minogue, Disco, review: the perfect tonic for these dark hours ahead
3/5
Kylie's uplifting disco anthems match an admirably defiant spirit that has seen her weather everything from cancer to a broken heart

What do you imagine Kylie Minogue has been up to during the pandemic? Dancing around her iamspamspamamito disco songs, or taking a crash course in audio engineering to master Logic computer sound recording? Both, as it turns out.

Kylie’s 15th album, Disco, is a set of streamlined retro style glitterball dance pop created in quarantine conditions, with the star dragging duvets and blankets around her London flat to build a sound booth and record her own vocals. “I thought if 11-year-olds can do this in their bedroom, I can figure this out,” she said in a recent Billboard interview, in which the 52-year-old geeks out about microphone models (she favours the Brauner VMX apparently). “It’s good to add new skills to your set.”

That spirit of pluck and determination is a huge part of Kylie’s career longevity. She has enjoyed an extraordinarily long run for an artist rooted in fizzy, hooky, dance-oriented pop, surely the most competitive and youth-fixated of all musical genres. Almost all her Eighties contemporaries had been relegated to package nostalgia tours long before Kylie was serenaded at Glastonbury last year. Back in 1987, who could have imagined 200,000 festival revellers singing cheesy europop smash I Should Be So Lucky as if it was an eternal classic?

Like most great pop stars, Kylie’s appeal is as much personal as musical. Of course, it helps that she is gorgeous, and has dazzled us with an endless parade of hot pants and headdresses. But her secret weapon has been a spirit of joy that has kept us avidly following her travails through cancer, chemotherapy and broken engagements, taking heart when she bounces back smiling. So who better to lead us on to the dancefloor in these dark hours when nightclubs have closed their doors?

“Now that it’s iamspamspamamidisco for most of us, you have to create your own world,” according to Kylie. Crafted with a team of the usual journeymen Swedish-American producers and programmers sending digital files back and forth via the magic of the internet, Disco offers a set of familiar grooves. The theme is love on the dancefloor, driven by slick Chic guitars and gilded with the syncopated parps of synthetic Motown horns and washes of make believe Philadelphia strings.

It is uplifting, spirited, sweet, and all in good fun, even if the tone is a bit more cut-price cocktails at a high street nightspot than champagne on ice at Studio 54. Only witty late-night anthem Where Does the DJ Go? and daring time-shifter Dance Floor Darling offer the kind of surprises that might make dancers skip a beat. Kylie’s soft, pinched vocals remain perennially airy and girlish.

Even in middle age she has acquired none of the imperial emotion of a genuine disco diva. Her comfort zone is effervescence and escapism, in the pursuit of which Disco stays light on its feet and easy on the ear. We’ve heard it all before, but Kylie has the floor, and, honestly, she sounds like she’s having a (glitter)ball.

ALBUM REVIEW: Kylie Minogue searches for her inner Donna Summer on ‘Disco’

DISCO, the 15th album by Australian dance queen Kylie Minogue, brings full circle a career that began way back in 1987, with a decidedly disco cover of 1962 doo-wop song “The Loco-Motion.” Over the three decades since, the pop singer-songwriter has dabbled in other genres, such as on 2018’s pop-country record Golden—but her North Star has always pointed to throwback dance rhythms. On DISCO, a flirtatious, close-dancing and sultry album, Kylie Minogue doesn’t obfuscate the message.

It’s a slick record—with all shiny dance floors, rainbow spotlights, mirror balls, thumping kick-drum, synthetic string arrangements, funk-drenched bass, muted guitar and Kylie Minogue’s saccharine voice. Once this sonic party starts, it only slows a few times, and that’s for dramatic effect as it builds back up.

“Do you believe in magic?” Minogue asks a lover on “Magic,” the keyboard-led album opener. It’s a song that bypasses the events of 2020 (otherwise the answer to her question would be a resounding “no”). Still, Minogue wrote and recorded parts of DISCO from home amid quarantine. She’s even talked about having to familiarize herself with at-home studio hardware and software—something most divas don’t historically bother with. While listening below the sonic explosions of some songs, Minogue reveals more bittersweet emotions like loneliness.

“We’re a million miles apart in a thousand ways,” she sings on “Say Something.” “We all got wanderlust, in the darkest place.” The single may be the strongest material on DISCO, blending elements of synth-pop. The echoey bass synths that propel the song forward take full advantage of stereo sound, playing speed pingpong with our ears. The influence of Earth, Wind & Fire is evident from start to finish—yet Kylie Minogue name-checks Studio 54 on “Dance Floor Darling” and recalls Gloria Gaynor on “Where Does the DJ Go?”

“Watcha waiting for? Get up on the floor,” she sings in a hushed tone on the former. It’s a sort of mid-tempo rollerskating song for the first two-thirds until a break, at which point a squelchy lead of processed vocals brings the song into overdrive. Studio 54, indeed. “I will survive,” Minogue sings on “Where Does the DJ Go?” hammering the theme home. And if you’re looking for more, listen to “Last Chance” next to Donna Summer’s “Last Dance.” It’s the sort of tribute that would have Summer blushing.

However, not all of the songs on DISCO strike gold. On some the fromage outweighs the homage. “Monday Blues,” for example, recalls Rebecca Black’s “Friday” more than love or grinding through the week or whatever the message is; I couldn’t help but change the words in my head.

The use of third person on album closer “Celebrate You,” singing to a woman named Mary, has some structure that could have fit in on Golden. The verses sound Swiftian and country-esque before the the chorus swings the pendulum back to disco.

Still, the contagious joy of this record can’t help but seep out. Kylie Minogue was a co-writer on every track and picked her words carefully. There’s a sense of optimism that in a year of anxiety and illness can be mistaken for colorblindness, but more likely is a prayer for celebrations to come—for the times in the distant and hopefully not-too-distant future where everyone can leave 2020 behind.

Kylie: Disco – album review – “pure escapism and joy”

It’s no secret since 1987 I have been a huge Kylie fan. Therefore, I consider myself to be lucky, lucky, lucky to be reviewing her forthcoming, much anticipated 15th studio album ‘DISCO’ ahead of its worldwide release on 6th November 2020.

Much has been said about the recording of this album which is the follow up to her 2018 number one country-influenced album ‘Golden’. A lot of this album was written and recorded during Lockdown with Kylie creating a recording studio in the lounge of her London home, as well as utilising video calls to learn how to record and master her vocals, so much so that she not only has writing credits on all the tracks on this album she also has an engineers credit too. I was overjoyed when it was announced that Kylie would be releasing a new album this year and being called ‘DISCO’ it seemed that Kylie was coming to save us from 2020.

The first single from the album ‘Say Something’ was released in July with a premiere on Radio 2’s breakfast show. An obvious choice for a lead single due to the lyrical content of the song, which was written last year before the pandemic took hold, but seems perfectly appropriate as Kylie sings “love is love, it never ends can we all be as one again”.

This song as described by Kylie herself as “galactic disco” is a pulsating electro-pop dance song with soaring vocals, emotive lyrics and a choir. The accompanying video directed by Sophie Muller sees Kylie riding a giant golden horse in a nod to Bianca Jagger famously arriving at the legendary disco club Studio 54 on horseback back in the 1970s. Kylie said in 1998 at the time of her ‘Intimate and Live’ tour “if in doubt apply more glitter” clearly this concept was applied to the spectacular video. A photograph of me (see here) recreating a scene from this video was retweeted by Kylie herself!

The second single released ‘Magic’ the album’s opening track, is a more traditional disco sounding song, more in line with what people were expecting Kylie’s version of disco to be, it is a funky and uptempo song, which instantly reminds me of both ‘Cherish’ by Kool and the gang, as well as the theme music from ‘Hill Street Blues’ this is classic Kylie with her practically purring “Do you believe in magic”. Another dazzling video directed by Sophie Muller.

To give everyone a further taste of what to expect from ‘DISCO’ Kylie released a third song ‘I love it’ ahead of the album’s release, as well as teasing fans by revealing the tracklist on social media, including sending song titles by direct message to some fans – sadly I wasn’t one of those lucky fans!

So, what can we expect from ‘DISCO’? Well, its clear from the singles that this is not just a paint by numbers disco pastiche, there is a lot of influence from the classic disco sounds of the 70s and 80s as well as current music, this is Kylie’s interpretation of disco. The influences I hear include Giorgio Moroder, Nile Rodgers, ABBA, The Jackson’s and Donna Summer, as well as a nod to fellow Australian Olivia Newton-John.

‘Magic’ – the second single a great opener to the album, welcome to Kylie’s disco…’Miss A Thing’ – is a more sultry and slinky groove with lower, breathy vocals and double handclaps galore “dance, dance, dance like no one is watching” this is a call to the dance floor for anyone not already there. ‘Real Groove’ – rumoured to be the next single, showing the album’s diversity, sexy and sassy with a slightly funky R ‘n’ B feel, more handclaps and vocoder backing vocals. Lyrically this is Kylie saying “look at what you could have won” to some foolish fella who let her go.

‘Monday Blues’ – my least favourite on the album, its an uptempo poppy song celebrating the weekend, it’s not terrible, I just don’t love it. ‘Supernova’ – now we are really getting going, this is one of the album’s standout tracks. A thoroughly modern-sounding dance song with strong confident vocals and galactic lyrics as the title suggests, with a reference to her 2000 album ‘Light Years’, this is I am sure a future Kylie classic and destined to be a fan favourite. ‘Say Something’ – as discussed above the first single from the album, is one of my favourite Kylie singles, classic Kylie.

‘Last Chance’- one of the songs that I instantly loved on hearing it, reminding me of ABBA’s ‘Voulez Vous’ a very strong, very danceable disco song. Could anyone other than Mary Poppins and Kylie use superfragicalalistic in a song? ‘I Love It’ melancholy lyrics set to a catchy dance backing track with great horns, easy to understand why this track was released to showcase ‘DISCO’ it’s not the best track on the album, but still a great song. ‘Where Does the DJ Go?’ starts slowly like a Donna Summer song, this soon literally explodes, this is Kylie at her best with a ridiculously catchy chorus, that I literally can’t get out of my head! There is also a nice lyrical reference to ‘I will survive’.

‘Dance Floor Darling’ – my absolute favourite song on the album, another thoroughly modern-sounding song, more great vocals building to a great big chorus, before Kylie asks “what you waiting for?” before the tempo shifts and the song goes off like a box of frogs, this song left me a sweaty mess, I love it! ‘Unstoppable’ – if this isn’t a single then there is no justice in the world. Reminiscent of The Jacksons this is just a great song.

‘Celebrate You’ – a fitting end to the album. The perfect end of the night song, a slower tempo with a big rousing chorus, if I ever get married (open to offers if anyone is interested…) this would be a song I’d want played. I admit I shed a tear listening to this, I imagine this will be a highlight of future Kylie live shows, it is, in essence, a love song, but to me sounds like a love song from Kylie to her fans similar to ‘Sincerely yours’ from the ‘Golden’ album.

So in conclusion, ‘DISCO’ is exactly what the world needs from Kylie in 2020, pure escapism and joy. Don’t be expecting it to be a personal or deep album it is very upbeat, very disco. I haven’t stopped dancing or smiling since listening to it, this is the Kylie album that will make her fans very happy. Kylie sounds better than ever on this album, the songs are all very well produced and sound fresh and familiar at the same time. And yes I am a huge fan of Kylie but I don’t just blindly love everything she does I am critical when I needs to be, after all, we’ve grown up together, but I don’t have anything negative to say about ‘DISCO’. On ‘Where does the DJ go’ – Kylie sings “The world’s trying to break me I need you to save me” a lyric that sums up exactly how I feel.

Kylie is releasing ‘DISCO’ on CD, Deluxe CD with four bonus tracks, cassette and four different coloured vinyls, as well as digitally. If ‘DISCO’ makes it to number one, which it deserves to, it will mean Kylie has had number one albums in five consecutive decades, no mean feat for someone who was initially dismissed as a one-hit wonder back in the ’80s.

Whilst discos around the world remain closed due to the ongoing pandemic this album will enable us all to have our very own disco at home, be that in the iamspamspamamior lounge or wherever, push the furniture out of the way dust off the mirrorball grab a glass of Kylie’s own range of wine and “dance, dance, dance like no one is watching”.

Kylie Minogue’s latest album proves ‘DISCO’ days aren’t over
“DISCO” feels a bit like a fantasy electric blanket on a cold night — it will bring comfort but also shock you into joy from time to time.

It’s always a sure thing with Kylie Minogue — fun and great grooves that is. What’s more admirable is that even though she released one of the greatest pop albums of the century nearly 20 years ago (“Fever” for those pop heathens out there), she keeps trying to outdo herself. Her 15th album moves her closer to that goal post than ever before. The 12-track set, simply titled “DISCO,” is a cohesive playlist for an exceptional dance-heavy experience.

First three singles stand out from the dozen songs with their infectious hooks and synth-pop rhythms. “Say Something” has an engaging electric guitar riffing; “Magic” brings on some hot staccato keys and handclaps on top of a hopeful message; while “I Love It” is unabashed pure disco love.

The rest of the tracks mix Daft Punk-esque undertones like “Dance Floor Darling” and “Real Groove” with some unusual Auto-Tune, play with speeds and even opaquely sample from ’80s hits, as “Supernova” goes all out funk. Lyrically, Minogue — who is a co-writer on all the songs — swings from searching for cosmic love to looking for the light of the stars to wanting to dissolve the night away on the dance floor.

“DISCO” feels a bit like a fantasy electric blanket on a cold night — it will bring comfort but also shock you into joy from time to time.

Showy yet subtle, Kylie Minogue's Disco sparkles with hope

★★★ ½

Kylie Minogue is a master of reinvention. Three decades and 15 albums deep into her recording career, Australia’s pop princess continues to surprise and delight. Her latest offering Disco does exactly what it says on the box, presenting 12 polished, flirtatious pop tracks that take their cues from the glitz and glamour of the 70s and 80s. Even the album cover is a time machine back to an era when mirror balls reigned supreme.

Like many of us in lockdown this year, Minogue turned to her favourite nostalgic music – namely Prince and Earth, Wind & Fire. In an interview with Billboard, she discussed the process of putting the record together, returning to these formative influences when her collaborators veered too far in the “electro pop” direction. There is a place where these genres intersect, and Disco nails it – the sound here is fresh and modern, while paying obvious homage to the music that inspired it (and providing a bit of a throwback to some of Minogue’s early work). In someone else’s hands it could lean too far into the saccharine, but Minogue manages to be both showy and subtle at once, balancing the trademark kitsch of the genre with razor-sharp songwriting and her careful ear for melody.

It’s a return to her usual tricks after 2018’s Golden, which saw a detour into country-pop territory with varying success. What stands out about Disco is an overwhelming feeling of optimism, which in a year marked by sadness, uncertainty and anxiety feels like a refreshing reset. It’s fitting, perhaps, that Minogue has just locally released her first wine, a Côtes De Provence Rosé – the album and drink together seem like a cleverly-timed marketing move for the euphoric summer ahead, after the trials and tribulations of this year.

While it sometimes dips into the cheesy or obvious – the upbeat Monday Blues has a touch of inane “TGIF”-style office water cooler talk – for the most part Disco is a sanguine collection that focuses on feeling good. Of course, some songs speak clearly to the experience of the pandemic – the thoughtful yet groovy Say Something reflects the loneliness and distance of 2020 (“we’re a million miles apart in a thousand ways”, “can we all be as one again?”) – but the record manages to avoid being bogged down in the specifics of the present.

Instead, many of its sentiments revolve around the universal, from the sugar rush of new love (Magic) to the propulsive, addictive pull of live music and the dance floor (Where Does The DJ Go?and album highlight Dance Floor Darling, which unexpectedly picks up the pace two-thirds of the way in, transforming from a mid-tempo disco number to a glittering, manic frenzy). In typical Minogue fashion, there are sensual moments, too, notably the slinky Miss A Thing.

Golden was the first album since 1997’s divisive Impossible Princess on which Minogue served as co-writer on every track. That continues with Disco, where she’s again had a hand in putting each of the album’s songs together. While both those albums were intensely personal, though, it does feel like there’s a bit more distance between Minogue and this latest batch of songs. Some of this is in the name of experimentation – Celebrate You is written in the third person about a character named Mary who, Minogue revealed to EW, is “anyone who’s feeling a bit down and needs to know that we’re loved or that you’re more than enough”. Though such an idea borders on trite, it comes down, again, to this idea of the universal – of the collective experience of living right now. There’s little insight about Minogue’s personal life, but there’s a strong feeling of unity that feels utterly suited to the moment.

While there are no songs here as instantly classic as some of Minogue’s most enduring hits, like Love at First Sight or Can’t Get You Out of My Head, many of the tunes on Disco are growers, revealing more with repeat listens. Dance floor fillers when dance floors are a distant memory seems a strange thing to offer, but there’s something charmingly freeing in the earnest joyfulness of this record, like the first hints of a rainbow after the clouds have parted.

It’s always a sure thing with Kylie Minogue – fun and great grooves that is.

What’s more admirable is that even though she released one of the greatest pop albums of the century nearly 20 years ago (Fever for those pop heathens out there), she keeps trying to outdo herself. Her 15th album moves her closer to that goal post than ever before.

The 12-track set, simply titled Disco, is a cohesive playlist for an exceptional dance-heavy experience.

First three singles stand out from the dozen songs with their infectious hooks and synth-pop rhythms. Say Something has an engaging electric guitar riffing; Magic brings on some hot staccato keys and handclaps on top of a hopeful message; while I Love It is unabashed pure disco love.

The rest of the tracks mix Daft Punk-esque undertones like Dance Floor Darling and Real Groove with some unusual Auto-Tune, play with speeds and even opaquely sample from 1980s hits, as Supernova goes all out funk.

Lyrically, Minogue – who is a co-writer on all the songs – swings from searching for cosmic love to looking for the light of the stars to wanting to dissolve the night away on the dance floor.

Disco feels a bit like a fantasy electric blanket on a cold night – it will bring comfort but also shock you into joy from time to time – Review by Cristina Jaleru/AP

2020 has been a year marked by shadow, shrouded in darkness, and coloured in black. Shards of light have been few and far between, which is perhaps why it’s becoming absolutely imperative for Kylie Minogue to grace us once again with a new album.

‘DISCO’ wears her influences on its sleeve. Hell, it’s there in the title – this is sheer, unashamed, upbeat disco, a fusion of vintage and modern flavours, one that would feel equally at home with the glitz and the glam of Studio 54 and South London dress-to-sweat dugout Horse Meat Disco.

‘Magic’ is an effervescent opener, its gentle pulse peeling you away from the raw pessimism of 2020’s ongoing dystopia. ‘Miss A Thing’ moves the tempo up a notch, adding a dash of Daft Punk’s retro-fetishism for good measure. ‘Real Groove’ more than delivers on its title, with Kylie channelling house abandon against those lush keys. - ‘Monday Blues’ dials back the disco elements in favour of summery pop, its slight Mediterranean flavour providing the perfect dose of escapism. ‘Supernova’ meanwhile is an absolute Giorgio Moroder style onslaught, its slinky Euro-centric perversions adding a dose of strings to her lyrical double entendres.

‘Say Something’ leans once more on those bubbling electronics, recalling Robyn’s ‘Honey’ is its cutting edge digi-pop. The catalogue of Nile Rodgers permeates the Chic-style beat that drives ‘Last Chance’, something that ‘I Love It’ amplifies in its symphonic, orchestral glamour.

‘Where Does The DJ Go?’ is perhaps a prescient question with lockdown part deux now upon us, while stylistically its a homage to the twilight reinvention that frames ‘Saturday Night Fever’. ‘Dance Floor Darling’ offers up raw 80s chart sonics with its buzzsaw guitar chords, a slo-mo transition piece that knocks at the door of club bumper ‘Unstoppable’.

Closing with the unashamed pop of ‘Celebrate You’, ‘DISCO’ is the sound of Kylie Minogue re-connecting with her roots. 2018’s ‘Golden’ was a country-pop crossover marked by matters personal, the lyrics delving into highly personal areas of her life. ‘DISCO’ by way of contrast is sheer escapism from start to finish, an exit point from the darkness that has fallen over 2020.

It’s not subtle – at some points the references may as well be put up in fluorescent lights – but that’s OK, since the aim is to be direct, to move people, and to entertain. As an ode to the pleasures of the dancefloor, Kylie has delivered her most unashamedly fun record in almost a decade.

8/10

Words: Robin Murray

Last year’s utterly joyous Glastonbury set underlined her international treasure status, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy these days to make a satisfying Kylie album. Recruiting Pharrell Williams and Haim producer Ariel Rechtshaid to update her glossy dance-pop sound resulted in 2014’s ‘Kiss Me Once’: an often enjoyable but somewhat disjointed affair. But if you try something different, much like 2018’s country-flavoured ‘Golden’, you risk the complaint that “it just doesn’t sound like Kylie.”

The pop stalwart’s 15th studio album avoids both traps by embracing what Minogue has called “grown-up disco”: a terrific fit for this seasoned showgirl who’s been bringing out bops and bangers since the late ‘80s. ‘Dance Floor Darling’ has a delirious spoken word bit that recalls Minogue’s high-camp romp ‘Your Disco Needs You’, but elsewhere this album succeeds because it feels like Kylie doing disco in her own cute way: measured, affectionate and sincere, not an exercise in tongue-in-cheek pastiche.

Crucially, there’s enough variety here to keep things interesting. Echoes of Daft Punk’s modern disco classic ‘Random Access Memories’ illuminate ‘Miss A Thing’ and ‘Where Does The DJ Go?’. Current single ‘Magic’ is an exuberant, horn-fuelled romp that deserves to soundtrack a post-Covid roller disco, while the funky strut of ‘Real Groove’ wouldn’t sound out of place on Dua Lipa’s recent ‘Future Nostalgia’ album. The lyrics are generally as introspective as a pair of hotpants – gold, naturally – but definitely capture the giddy thrill of dancefloor abandon. “Nights are for having fun, summer’s for loving,” she sings on ‘Last Chance’. “Sometimes we fall in love, all of a sudden.” It’s a perfect Kylie couplet.

‘Disco’ has no disasters, only charming minor indiscretions. ‘Last Chance’ is perhaps a little too melodically similar to Abba’s ‘Voulez Vous’, while the living-for-the-weekend rush of ‘Monday Blues’ could feel cheesy if you haven’t downed a sambuca or two first. More often, Minogue and co-writers including longtime collaborator Richard “Biff” Stannard and Little Mix regular Maegan Cottone execute the “grown-up disco” concept with stylish self-assurance. When she sings “Can we all be as one again?” on ‘Say Something’ – a cosmic slow-burn with Bowie-esque guitar licks – it’s an elegant nod to pandemic ennui.

And on ‘Where Does The DJ Go?’, Minogue even wonders: “Where does the DJ go when the party’s over tonight?” No other pop star would be quite so considerate. The result is a consistently uplifting set that feels like Minogue’s best album since 2010’s ‘Aphrodite’. Her sister Dannii is rumoured to have claimed that “Minogues don’t sweat”. In that case, let’s say that ‘Disco’ shimmers with a warm glittery glow that’s just irresistible.

Following a relatively lackluster decade that included 2018's countrified diversion Golden, DISCO is a welcome return to the club-friendly dance-pop that defined Australian diva Kylie Minogue's early 21st century rebirth. Hitting the same highs as her triumphant 2000s stretch -- namely Light Years, Fever, X, and Aphrodite -- this glittery, feel-good set is nothing short of euphoric, a dozen near-perfect gems that pay respect to the album's namesake era while updating the production with thrilling results. Channeling icons like Gloria Gaynor, Donna Summer, and Chic, Minogue puts her stamp on the genre with expert finesse. While it's no surprise that she can pull this off -- she's nailed the disco sound at various points in her long career -- hearing an unbroken stretch of Kylie-branded dancefloor throwbacks is a rapturous experience. Mostly written and recorded on her own at her London home during the COVID-19 lockdown, DISCO also marks the first time Minogue has taken control of the engineering, resulting in a totally cohesive aesthetic and sonic experience. Hopping into a time machine set for Studio 54's '70s heyday, she resurrects the famed club's ecstatic highs without the hedonistic excess, a non-stop escapist trip complete with elastic bass, bell-bottomed struts, dramatic strings, and a flood of hand claps. After the mirror ball descends in the opening notes of the twinkling single "Magic," the groove locks in with "Miss A Thing," an evocative dose of bliss to hustle the night away. Lead single "Say Something" is not only a peak on DISCO, it's also one of Minogue's best songs to date, a rapturous anthem that unifies with its urgent plea of "Love is love/It never ends/Can we all be as one again?" On an album already packed with such treasures, other standouts include the intergalactic frenzy "Supernova"; the feverish, Bee Gees-indebted throbber "Last Chance"; and the talk box rush of "Dance Floor Darling." Even the relatively subdued closer "Celebrate You" is a welcome highlight, a moving ode that features Minogue's strongest vocal performance and songwriting on the album. Fifteen albums into her illustrious career, the pop chameleon shows no signs of slowing down, rebooting her catalog once again with what she does best: delivering joy and inspiration through the power of dance.

DISCO currently has a score of 81 on Metacritic

Hi. I'm new.

I love how this album has received all good to great reviews so far. I can't think of another time a Kylie album has been so universally praised by the critics.

Hi. I'm new.

I love how this album has received all good to great reviews so far. I can't think of another time a Kylie album has been so universally praised by the critics.

It is fitting that in 2020, a year when unexpected directions from beloved pop stars have been about as welcome as a second lockdown, Kylie Minogue has not only returned to her roots with a disco album, but also ensured that there is no margin for error by calling it Disco.

Two years ago everyone’s favourite Australian daytime soap star turned pop diva made an unconvincing detour into Nashville country, and there was real fear among fans that this might have begun a new exploratory phase in her career. What if she ended up on a jazz odyssey? Thankfully, Disco puts her back where she belongs: on a brightly coloured dancefloor, singing appealingly shallow words about DJs and supernovas, on an album rooted firmly in the 1970s and 1980s golden age of glamorous music that is ideal to stick on while dressing up and — for the time being — staying in.

Minogue’s 15th album, put together from her flat in London with the help of various producers and musicians on Zoom calls, lacks a killer track guaranteed to make everyone creak up from their chairs at wedding receptions forever more, but it is good-natured and upbeat, and just what we need from her right now. The style is classic Philadelphia disco, with handclaps, big piano chords, orchestral arrangements and that bittersweet melodic blend of escapism and melancholy all the best dance music has.

Meanwhile, Minogue has resisted the urge to give in to present trends and get all earnest. Instead, she sticks to such breezy themes as seeing your boyfriend dancing with someone else, getting over the Monday blues by thinking about the weekend, not wishing to miss a thing (not that there’s much to miss right now) and other lyrical themes that do not demand anything as strenuous as thought. And the best thing about Disco, coming at a time when hopefulness has been at a premium, is how optimistic it sounds.

“We’re a million miles apart in a thousand ways,” Minogue sings on the Donna Summer-like Say Something, which is the closest she gets to commenting on the conditions of the pandemic, but this is used as the starting point for a sweet and uplifting song about having something to look forward to. “Can we all be as one again?” she pleads. Coming from a less pure soul, such hands-across-the-ocean sentimentality would be trite. From Minogue it seems like a perfectly reasonable request.

Don’t come here for any personal revelations. This is pure fantasia. “Rock’n’roller, bring your body closer, shake it on the floor now, like Studio 54 now,” she suggests on Dance Floor Darling, and that’s about as deep as it gets.

There is a sad pop song at the end called Celebrate You in which Minogue exhorts a woman called Mary to feel better about herself, but in the main Disco aims for the simple, but noble task of providing music that cheers you up, while making you want to dance; “grown-up disco”, as its 52-year-old creator puts it. Right now, that’s all we need from Kylie Minogue. (BMG)

For a musical genre whose rapid rise and notorious fall has made it an easy point of comparison for everything from the dot-com bubble to the decline of Beanie Babies, disco music never really went away. Sure, there have been lean times ever since a crowd of rock and roll reactionaries formally declared war at a baseball game in 1979, and perhaps the genre had to lay low for a while in Europe, or smuggle itself to mainstream American listeners by way of hip-hop samples, indie-rock fellow travelers and big-room electronic dance music. But if unabashedly discophilic releases by everyone from Dua Lipa to Carly Rae Jepsen and Lady Gaga this year are any indication, the years of hiding one’s mirror ball under a bushel are a distant memory.

If anyone deserves a chance to capitalize on this, it’s Kylie Minogue. One of the godmothers of this particular style of postmillennial disco divadom, Minogue has been flying a flag for glittery four-on-the-floor anthems for decades, and every English-speaking territory except the U.S. has repaid her in kind (although even the States couldn’t resist her 2002 smash “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”). It’s one of pop music’s great puzzles why the Australian superstar’s appeal has proved so elusive on these shores — her four-album run from 2000’s “Light Years” to 2007’s “X” was as unimpeachable a streak as anyone from that period could claim — and it certainly hasn’t been for lack of trying. After a pair of solid yet unadventurous releases (and a brief flirtation with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation) in the first half of the 2010s, Minogue attempted a bit of a shakeup two years ago with the Nashville-flavored “Golden.” While hardly an embarrassment, the album rarely played to her strengths, and clearly some type of retrenchment was in the cards.

Her new album is titled “Disco,” and you can’t say it doesn’t deliver exactly what it promises. While Minogue has rarely ventured too far from her dance-pop comfort zone, “Disco” displays a particularly glorious single-mindedness, exploring the genre’s past, present and future with nary a ballad or a twangy guitar lick in sight. Minogue’s most consistent and cohesive album since her oughts-era heyday, “Disco” may not win her the Stateside approval she’s been chasing ever since “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” seemed to offer an opening, but if Americans still haven’t learned how to appreciate such uncut sugar-rush pleasures, the loss is ours, not hers.

Whereas her onetime role model Madonna always had a gift for making every slight stylistic pivot seem like a radical artistic shift worthy of doctoral dissertations, Minogue’s music stubbornly resists exegesis. This is largely due to her personality — guileless, approachably cheery, utterly unpretentious — but Minogue has always had an underappreciated willingness to try anything once, and here that manifests itself in surprising touches like the Roger Troutman vocoder homage on “Dance Floor Darling,” or the hyperactive “Monday Blues,” which marries a brash, vaguely Latin arrangement with a Manilowian melody. Like her younger contemporaries, Minogue has long been a student of disco’s more critically acceptable touchstones (Moroder-era Donna Summer, ZYX’s Italian exports, Grace Jones), but what sets her apart is her genuine affection for its chintzier, less reputable indulgences as well; for all of “Disco’s” thoroughly modern moments, there are just as many where you can practically smell the polyester and piña coladas. This, to be clear, is not even remotely a criticism.

As on “Golden,” Minogue has a co-writing credit on every song here, with producers Sky Adams and Teemu Brunila responsible for many of the album’s better tracks, and this core staff keep the proceedings ruthlessly on message, always ready to throw on a chicken-scratch guitar line, star-wipe string section segue or “ooh ooh” vocal interjection whenever energy threatens to flag. Minogue has never been one to let a lyric get in the way of a groove, and here she rarely strays from a few central themes: Dancing is good; love is better; finding love on the dancefloor is best of all.

Which is perhaps a curious choice, considering this album is entering a world deprived of the day clubs, lounge parties and Pride parades that ought to be its natural habitats. Most of “Disco” was recorded during lockdown, with Minogue often serving as her own at-home vocal engineer, but unlike other Covid-era creations like Charli XCX’s “How I’m Feeling Now” or Taylor Swift’s “Folklore,” that lonely backstory is rarely evident in the finished product. A few tracks, like lead-off single “Say Something” or the after-hours lament “Where Does the DJ Go,” have topical relevance if you squint just right, but on the whole Minogue is aiming to do nothing more than bring a splash of neon to the drabbest of Zoom rooms.

There are a few rough patches, to be sure. “Supernova,” with its heavily processed, monotone vocal tracks, is crying out for a more postmodern, Gaga-esque flamboyance than Minogue is willing to provide, and at times the album drifts too far into reverence, especially in the later-going when she gives shout-outs to Studio 54, the Electric Slide and “I Will Survive,” all obvious reference points that didn’t need such explicit underlining. But it would be churlish to linger on the missteps when the album gets so much right. On highlights like “Real Groove” — which would have been entirely at home on Daft Punk’s last album — or the breakneck “Last Chance,” Minogue simply focuses on proving that, at 52, she’s still capable of filling a dance floor as well as anyone half her age. And luckily for us, she is. Our disco needed her.