When all else has failed (to attract interest), Kylie Minogue has always returned to her dance floor roots. The ones that launched her to international fame in 1988 with “The Loco-Motion,” which appeared on her debut, Kylie (a name she has just as much right to mononym’ing as Jenner, which is why she blocked the other Kylie’s attempt to trademark it). It’s what brought her back into the American consciousness in 2001, with “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” from Fever. While some musicians have chosen to cater the tone of their music to the dark pall of the times (even plucky Taylor Swift has gone “indie” on Folklore), Minogue is steadfastly defying the trap of writing slow jams or sad songs just because we’re one minute closer to midnight on the Doomsday Clock. No, instead Minogue is going more tried and true than ever in terms of sticking with the sound that made her.
Thus, we’ve been given “Say Something” from her forthcoming fifteenth record, Disco–because what else would it be called? On the heels of this theme being well-played by both Dua Lipa with Future Nostalgia and Lady Gaga with Chromatica (and each of them offering cheap imitations of what Madonna did in 2005 with Confessions on a Dance Floor anyway), Minogue still wants to remind us all that she’s had her hand in the genre for decades, and, indeed, it’s what has made her an icon of camp, therefore the gay community–even if she herself has admitted she doesn’t fit the usual mold of what constitutes that, at least in terms of not having a tragic background (in her words, “There’s been no tragedy in my life, only tragic outfits”). And yet, her knack for getting people (gay men or otherwise) on the dance floor is where she shines the most, as bright as the refracted light of a mirrorball. Which, of course, she does with the likes of “Say Something,” in keeping with her usual sonic flair. A “return to form,” some might even say, after the country stylings of 2018’s Golden.
She even makes the effort to address the changed state of the world with the opening lyrics, “We’re a million miles apart in a thousand ways/Baby, you can light up the dark like a solar scape.” Kylie’s acknowledgement of lockdowns and social distancing measures aside, “Say Something” is very much in keeping with “the usual” from Australia’s most beloved pop star. Opening with a dreamy, ambient vocal before segueing right into the same beats and rhythms that have comprised the majority of her productions, it’s getting harder and harder to engage in the Pavlovian response Minogue has instilled within us to start dancing. For this is the first time she’s released music in such an undeniably depressing time. Many would argue, of course, that this is, thus, the most important moment to keep morale boosted with her brand of dance pop.
To drive home that point, Minogue sings, “Oh, we all got wanderlust in the darkest place/So we’re going with our heart, yeah, it’s all the rage.” But the meaninglessness of these words, a pretty arrangement signifying little other than perhaps an unintentional allusion to Americans going with their “heart” in deciding not to wear masks, is not what the world needs right now. In fact, it’s already stocked full up on frivolity. That’s part of the reason the “guardians” of the Earth have dug themselves into such a deep hole–constantly giving into the “release” of the froth provided. And Kylie has long been someone to provide that froth in Ibiza-level quantities. In comparison to Madonna, the pop star Minogue has been compared to in terms of being a “wannabe” since the beginning of her career, she’s never much relished the notion of giving her audience a political message. Perhaps she just doesn’t see it as her place. Alas, if even Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey have been forced to get political by now, this surely underscores to the likes of Minogue that it’s unavoidable. That to be apolitical is essentially impossible in 2020.
And yet, she still wants to try, proffering, “’Cause love is love, it never ends/Can we all be as one again?” [answer: were we ever really? Unless we’re talking about the Pangaea days, one supposes]. It doesn’t do much to attest to her artistic growth, but maybe Kylie just wants the world to dance until we’re dead, living like there’s no tomorrow because there might not be. In the same spirit as at the end of the 70s, when hedonism and disco took a complete hold of the world during a major recession. Through this lens, her reversion to this era makes perfect sense considering the present economic crumbling. Except that Minogue seems to be forgetting the 70s can never again truly be re-created by sheer virtue of the fact that no one is allowed to touch each other now, and the existence of screens makes it all the more facile to adhere to that pandemic-centric rule. So yes, there’s a certain lack of bacchanalian, orgiastic cachet with which to take to the nonexistent public dance floor while listening to this song.
