Kylie Minogue - The Impossible Princess

Someone's forcing open the balcony window! Scott Robinson, a local lad, rushes to stop the intruder, but the moment he manages to grab hold of them, he gets a resounding slap across the face. Surprise! From under the intruder's hat spills a cascade of brown curls, two huge sky-blue eyes and a pair of buck teeth. It's not a burglar at all, but the cheeky, insubordinate Charlene Mitchell, trying to sneak back into the house through the window so she doesn't have to face her mother and the usual telling-off.

For the teenagers following the soap opera "Neighbours", Charlene's arrival on screen in April 1986 is a genuine breath of fresh air: she's rebellious and spirited, dresses like a boy, and has even dropped out of school to work as a mechanic in a garage! But that's not all; the love story that Charlene goes on to develop on screen with the aforementioned slap-happy Scott over the following two years captures the popular imagination across the whole of Australia and England, where the sitcom is hugely popular – the episode of their wedding is watched live by over twenty million people. Scott is played by blond Jason Donovan, while Charlene is an eighteen-year-old Kylie Minogue.

No one could have predicted it at the time, but within a few years this slip of a girl would turn into one of the most enduring and beloved pop stars in entertainment. A skilled performer with an apparently eternal freshness, adaptable to trends and able to reinvent herself at just the right moment, Kylie Minogue is a guilty pleasure that plenty of people won't admit to, but that just as many have learned to love without shame. From the sugary bubblegum of her early days to her mid-90s indie period, from the disco revival to the fun but patchy radio-friendly techno-pop of her more recent albums, Kylie Minogue is the smiling sprite in skin-tight outfits who, for over a quarter of a century now, has lit up dancefloors across the planet with killer hooks and outlandish looks. Plenty of people criticise her for her perpetually perky attitude, without realising that this is exactly her strength: an irresistible youthful verve that lets her pull off the most varied material, and which, when needed, she can tune into shades of shadowy melancholy without ever losing her exquisite pop touch.

Those who hate her mostly do so out of sheer prejudice, in other words, because Kylie Minogue has every ingredient needed to win over the whole world – including a famous rear end worthy of top marks, which we'll get to later.

Bubblegum Kylie

Suburban life in Melbourne rolls along quietly, but it's hardly thrilling. Ronald and Carol Minogue work hard to support a family of three children, but rewards are slow to arrive. You're born, you grow up, you get married, you start a family and you die – anyone who's seen the cult film "Muriel's Wedding" will have a clear idea of the culture and expectations open to an ordinary girl from the suburbs, summed up perfectly by the famous line screamed at the end of that film by one of the bitchy rivals: "I'm married! I'm beautiful!"

But in the Minogue household, the passion for performing is taken seriously, even when the parents object. The eldest child, barely five foot nothing of curls and determination (though she describes herself as "of average intelligence"), Kylie has finished school to focus on dance, acting and, above all, singing, which is what she loves doing most. The effort and sacrifice are considerable, but by some twist of fate, after years of cameos, auditions, rejections and demo tapes sent out far and wide, when success finally comes knocking, Kylie "only" turns into a hugely successful television actress. The singing career, it seems, is meant for her younger sister Dannii, who's a sensation on the popular show "Young Talent Time", a format that anticipated the future Disney and X Factor machines, which would go on to produce the likes of Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Ryan Gosling and Miley Cyrus.

But things change fast. During a promotional performance alongside other cast members from "Neighbours", Kylie finds herself on stage singing "The Locomotion", an old 1962 radio hit written by the duo Gerry Goffin/Carole King. Watch her sing it: Kylie is so cute, how could anyone say no to her? Within minutes, the young star is pulled aside and offered a deal by a Mushroom Records employee, who sees in her a young face already famous with TV audiences, potentially exportable to the record industry too.

The gamble pays off straight away: the re-recorded version of "The Locomotion" becomes a decent local hit, promising enough to justify taking a shot at a full album. But who can knock out ten songs in a hurry without losing momentum? Easy; right around that time, in England, the terrible trio of Stock, Aitken & Waterman are perfecting a diabolically efficient production system: the three of them have essentially built an assembly line in the studio for churning out instantly catchy pop songs, using cardboard keyboards, tinny drum machines and interchangeable vocalists. However blatantly manufactured, the formula actually works in certain cases, see Dead Or Alive, Bananarama, soul boy Rick Astley with the ever-present "Never Gonna Give You Up", or the unmatched voice of legendary drag queen Divine. But more often than not the assembly line leaves a lot to be desired, just think of the skimpily-clad Samantha Fox, Sinitta, the fearsome Reynolds Girls or Mandy Smith (the latter chiefly remembered for being the barely-14-year-old mistress of a 47-year-old Bill Wyman…).

And yet, regardless of the quality of the product, success is more or less guaranteed for everyone involved: Stock, Aitken & Waterman productions – shortened to S/A/W – storm the European charts like a volley of candied fruit. Kylie Minogue plays the wild strawberry.

The new version, retitled "The Loco-Motion", is an instant smash that spills out from Australia into England, Europe and even America, where the song cracks the top 10 for the third time since it was first recorded back in the Sixties. In its own way, the hugely popular second single, "I Should Be So Lucky", can also be given some credit, as Kylie's faintly melancholic innocence, combined with one of the catchiest hooks of the era, makes it a chart-smashing success – so much so that she still enjoys performing it live today (usually in a segment dedicated to the 80s that would be an understatement to call kitsch). The path is thus well and truly paved for Kylie (1988), which promptly goes on to sell over 5 million copies worldwide, launching the performer onto the global stage; soon her old career as a TV starlet will be a distant memory. The only shame is that, aside from the two aforementioned singles, the rest of the album is pure 80s filler, hard to reappraise even with all the irony and goodwill in the world applied in hindsight. Worth noting that, in November 1988, the S/A/W outfit also signs on former "Neighbours" co-star Jason Donovan, and the duet between him and Kylie – carefully engineered to recreate the love story already played out on screen – is, of course, inevitable; "Especially For You" instantly becomes the chart-topping tearjerker of the moment, thanks above all to the promotional video in which the two exchange swoony, saccharine glances of mutual understanding. Long before reality shows, there were Kylie & Jason.

Dreadful yet unstoppable, Minogue's success is such that, from Kylie, that same year spring both "The Kylie Collection", a reissue padded out with five remixes of less than stellar quality, and "Kylie Remixed", a nine-track remix-only edition aimed at discerning Japanese fans, who promptly turn it into a gold record.

Why change a winning formula, as the saying goes; Enjoy Yourself (1989) is the perfect follow-up to the debut, put together in record time once again under the S/A/W banner. The single "Hand On Your Heart" again shoots straight to No. 1 in England, but perhaps the most memorable moment this time round is the circular melody of "Never Too Late", which, despite everything, still manages to conjure up a few blurry images of those terribly innocent years, all curls and smiles, even today.

The obligatory cover this time is "Tears On My Pillow", a song dating back to 1958, revived here in a pleasant if predictable doo-wop style close to the original, while a couple of musical-theatre numbers – the piano-bar ballad "Tell Tale Signs" and "My Secret Heart" – make the album a touch more varied than its predecessor. But it soon slides back into the usual run of whiny little ditties, drowned under one of the most merciless productions of the last century.

Enjoy Yourself once again sells by the million, and with it comes the “Disco In Dream/The Hitman Roadshow”, Kylie's first tour in support of her two albums, organized together with Sinitta and Dead Or Alive. It's a period of huge success and plenty of fun for everyone, but in the long run the legacy of these years amounts to little more than a flash in the pan.

Adolescent-Kylie

What if Kylie actually wanted to get serious? Two years into her career is still too short a time to build a name capable of lasting through history, but it's long enough for a performer who, until now, has been bounced from stage to studio like a parcel in the post, to decide that music really is her true passion, and start taking her first steps toward something more congenial to her. Kylie is young and inexperienced but very determined, and so she begins to insist on a co-writing credit on the songs she performs, and above all shows a willingness to work with other well-known producers in the business, in particular Stephen Bray (who worked with Madonna) and a funk legend like Rick James. After all, however far from cutting-edge she may have been, there's one thing Kylie seems to have grasped right from the start: those who don't reinvent themselves die.

Toward the end of 1989, while in Hong Kong for her “Enjoy Yourself Tour”, Kylie meets fellow Australian Michael Hutchence, the dark and excessive frontman of Inxs. Within the space of a single night, Kylie transforms in the eyes of the world from small-town girl to wild city popstar: she's photographed on several occasions arm in arm with Michael, staggering out of hotel rooms with dark glasses pulled down to hide the bags under her eyes from “late nights” – a euphemism suggesting that, in all likelihood, under Michael's influence, sweet Kylie is indulging heavily in sex and drugs. Her comment, many years later, is laconic:

Michael taught me... strange things

The details are not known, but given the tragic and bizarre way Michael himself would die in 1997, it's reasonable to assume that much of the reshaping of Kylie's public image can be traced directly back to him.

Of course, Rhythm Of Love (1990) is still very much a record stamped with the S/A/W trademark, and so it's not spared the usual parade of juvenile filler that inevitably drags it toward oblivion – just look at tracks like “Secrets”, “Always Find The Time”, the dreary ballad “The World Still Turns”, and the list goes on. This time, though, traces of a new sound start to emerge, one that's vaguely more grown-up, somewhere between a hint of New Order and a touch of Beloved, with some electronic, house-leaning backing tracks that, while not quite acid house, are at least sharper than the cotton wool still being churned out by the S/A/W studios – listen, for instance, to tracks like “Shocked”, “Things Can Only Get Better”, or a “Rhythm Of Love” that almost echoes the rising disco-soul star Lisa Stansfield.

“One Boy Girl”, though decidedly weak, even tries – somewhat randomly – to flirt with the African-American sounds of the new new jack swing phenomenon, and it's immediately clear that if there's one style Kylie will never be able to make her own, it's r&b, though at least in the context of this album the curiosity and willingness to try new paths matter more than the end result.

Fortunately, though, Rhythm Of Love doesn't just offer more carefully packaged fluff: it finally manages to deliver the much-needed career-saving single. That would be the thunderous “Better The Devil You Know”, which – despite still bearing the S/A/W signature – can rightfully be considered the first truly serious song released under the name Minogue. It doesn't take much, really: a crackling electronic backing track, a bulletproof melody with epic-disco overtones, and lyrics that are nothing short of tragic – a classic piece of auteur pop that struts like a mechanical peacock gliding across a skating rink amid glitter and confetti. In short, maybe Kylie really does want to get serious this time; the critical and commercial success of “Better The Devil You Know” seems to point the way forward:

The “Rhythm Of Love Tour” that follows shortly after shows the world a Kylie who's decidedly sexier and far more confident about the new direction of her career.

So, even though her contract with Pwl expired once the third album was completed, Kylie once again turns to the S/A/W outfit for one final record, this time taking even more liberties to co-write and personally pitch the songs she wants on the tracklist.

Undeniably, Let's Get To It (1991) marks a further small step toward maturity, a collection of songs now firmly rooted in the new decade, backed by production that isn't always gorgeous but is certainly less childish and more attuned to the dynamics of club culture – “Right Here, Right Now” is an almost soulful dance track, while “I Guess I Like It Like This” samples Salt-N-Pepa in a bizarre techno-western blend complete with a chanting stadium crowd in the background – tacky as hell, it must be said, but in its own way “creative”.

This time, what really stands out are the voice-and-guitar track “No World Without You”, and above all the smooth delicacy of “Finer Feelings”, complete with a noir-tinged video shot in autumnal Paris. Still too little to lift the quality of the whole record, but these last two tracks alone undoubtedly show the performer's full new potential – in fact, it's the second of the two that officially stakes its claim as the first truly “beautiful song” released under the name Kylie Minogue, so much so that years later it would be reinterpreted in an equally beautiful orchestral arrangement.

But the DNA of the S/A/W outfit certainly can't be rewritten in the space of just a couple of albums, so even Kylie & co.'s fourth record isn't free of distinctly below-average moments, like “Live And Learn”, which rides on the back of an anemic Patsy Kensit vibe, and the dreadful duet with Keith Washington, “If You Were With Me Now”, which is enough to give you an ulcer. Still, at least judging from the promo videos for “Word Is Out” – all rigorously black lace, vamp-style makeup and less teased hair than usual – and the cover of the old Chairmen Of The Board single “Give Me Just A Little More Time” – shot in elegant sepia tones – you're catapulted straight into the '90s, with Kylie now fully grown into a woman and ready to transform into a bona fide popstar.

The relative commercial failure of Let’s Get To It comes down entirely to the lack of a hit single, or more precisely a track capable of becoming a classic in the ears of the wider public, even if fans and devotees of proper sophisti-pop certainly point to "Finer Feelings" as a track definitely worth noting.

Time has not been kind, and Let’s Get To It has become one of the most overlooked chapters in Kylie's career, an album essentially without a legacy, the last batch of new material from an era of her career that was undeniably less brilliant and far harder to reassess. The European leg of the "Let's Get To It Tour", however, marked a further step forward; the costumes designed by John Galliano, worn by Kylie and her dancers on stage, signalled her entry into the fashion world that actually matters, and with it the beginning of her status as a gay icon.

The Pwl period comes to a close with the release of two remix albums, Kylie's Remixes: Vol 2 (1992) and the audio/video compilation Kylie's Non-Stop History 50+1 (1993), both released exclusively in the markets where she was most popular (England, Australia and Japan), as well as her first platinum-certified Greatest Hits (1992), a collection of 19 hits plus three new tracks, two of which were used as promotional singles — the bland "What Kind Of Fool (Heard All That Before)" and a poor but massively famous cover of Cool & The Gang's "Celebration".

Needless to say, the tracklist of Greatest Hits offers a complete overview of Kylie's first four years in the business, but the quality of what's collected here, at least in this writer's opinion, is all things considered skippable, or at best recommended only to the most die-hard fans of late-80s bubblegum. But the real adventure is just about to begin.

Indie-Kylie

For Kylie, things really could have gone the way they did for so many others: a run of hugely successful singles achieved in a very short time on the wave of a collective craze, followed by an inevitable, gradual decline, until, thirty years later, she'd find herself sitting next to Sinitta and Samantha Fox on the sofa of some nostalgia TV show, explaining to the audience what on earth she used to put in her hair to keep it so puffed up, while unflattering old photos from the era flash up on screen to make her cringe with embarrassment.

But Kylie is not exactly the medium-length one-hit-wonder her music had suggested up to that point. With the Pwl chapter closed (albeit on excellent terms), the girl allowed herself the luxury of actually living a little: she went out, hit the clubs, driven by a desire to have fun and curiosity about what the DJs were playing in the trendiest spots of the moment, and in doing so met plenty of people and won everyone over. With the perm gone and dressed with far more taste, photos from the period show Kylie with a new look on her face; adulthood sharpened that glamorous sheen mixed with sweetness and a hint of a sultry gaze, making her damn alluring, while still somehow making you want to give her an affectionate pinch on the cheek.

Her artistic maturity, meanwhile, was sealed by the surprising move to Deconstruction Records, a relatively obscure British label with roots in dance music, though also keeping an eye on the crossover with pop — Deconstruction had already racked up a few of the season's biggest hits with Felix, Italy's own U.S.U.R.A. and Robert Miles. Among the label's founders, moreover, was Mike Pickering, also the man behind M People, another hugely popular act of the era thanks to a sound blending house-pop with Heather Small's unmistakable soul-drenched voice (who doesn't remember "Moving On Up"?).

For Kylie, a period began of rediscovering the studio, her approach to songwriting, and the art of collaborating with multiple people, all in pursuit of the perfect formula. First came an encounter with two true connoisseurs of female voices, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, 2/3 of Saint Etienne, with whom Kylie recorded a couple of tracks that would never make it onto any album (one of them a cover of their hit "Nothing Can Stop Us Now"). But Deconstruction's management also schemed up collaborations with the most varied cast of characters; among others were Brothers In Rhythm, the Rapino Brothers, Gerry DeVeaux, and a heavyweight of American ghostwriting, Jimmy Harry.

The nearly 30 songs recorded by Kylie across various parts of the globe throughout 1993 were eventually whittled down to just 10, but that was more than enough for Kylie Minogue (1994) to finally take flight. Remarkably, in the space of just a couple of years Kylie seemed utterly reborn, a shape-shifting popstar able to pick up on what was happening out there and bend it to her own sensibility, bringing a decent dose of sensuality to the table without ever losing her dignity.

The crowning moment of this new direction is the gorgeous and successful lead single "Confide In Me", over five minutes of evocative trip-hop inlaid with Indian atmospheres and strings, a setting in which Kylie pines away in falsetto with languid mastery. Even the accompanying video is a little moment of pop art, with Kylie transformed into a television product to call on in times of need, a kind of confidante for life's woes that nonetheless seems almost to allude to the erotic chat lines in vogue in the pre-internet years.

The rest of Kylie Minogue confirms this fresh energy and a thoroughly contemporary sound: midtempo numbers with ear-snagging riffs ("If I Was Your Lover"), house-pop stretched into a more elaborate song structure than usual ("Where Is The Feeling?" — decidedly better in its video version), emphatic pop ("Put Yourself In My Place"), elegant, tasteful lounge ("Surrender", "Automatic Love"), or even a track best played in the privacy of the bedroom ("Falling").

Among the standout moments are the excellent, minimalist turn of "Where Has The Love Gone?", and "Dangerous Game", a ballad with a swaying rhythm that seems headed for the usual musical-theatre chorus, only to unleash, toward the end, jagged bursts of distorted jazz in a surprising, free-flowing climax.

All things considered, only the closing "Time Will Pass You By" still harks back in any way to the childish formula of the old S/A/W era, but on the whole Kylie Minogue pleased just about everyone: critics were largely favourable and the public rewarded it with very strong sales (roughly two million copies worldwide). Rediscovering it today is still a pleasure.

Kylie 2.0, then, was ready to land, and her forays beyond the boundaries of the mainstream kept on surprising. In 1995, Nick Cave approached her management begging to get in touch with her personally, because he wanted to record a duet to include on his funereal concept album "Murder Ballads" (1996). In his unsettling pitch, Cave confessed to having been obsessed with Kylie since at least 1990, the year he fell under the spell of "Better The Devil You Know", a song he himself described as "one of the most violent and harrowing lyrics in pop music". The situation stirred no small amount of curiosity, but a flattered Kylie accepted the offer on the spot, fuelling in turn some gossip of the period, which began speculating about a possible rivalry between her and PJ Harvey; the latter, in fact, had also been enlisted to appear on Cave's album, on "Henry Lee", but was at the same time embarking on a (disastrous) relationship with him, and reportedly made no secret of her disapproval of the meeting between him and "that popstar".

Gossip or not, Cave gets it exactly right; a damned soul blessed with an exquisite melodic gift, he turns Kylie into the lover who is stoned to death in a fit of passion; "Where The Wild Roses Grow" unfolds as a dialogue, as beguiling as it is unsettling, between an innocent victim and her killer – the song is universally praised, and becomes a major commercial success. But above all, the two form one of the strangest relationships in showbiz, a kind of bond between older brother and little sister, two souls who, however different, remain linked to this day by an inexplicable, unspoken complicity; a beautiful and moving example of this is the scene in the Cave documentary "20.000 Days On Earth" (2014), in which the two are shown chatting, with him driving the car and her sitting in the back seat.

The following year, the image of a popstar now far removed from her bubblegum past takes further hold – at least in England, her adopted homeland – when Kylie makes an unscheduled appearance at the Poetry Olympics at the Royal Albert Hall in London. To general astonishment, Kylie climbs onto the stage in a tracksuit, hair tied back and without a trace of make-up, and pokes fun at herself by reciting the words of her old hit "I Should Be So Lucky" as though it were a love poem. The audience takes it in good humour right away; it's a small divertissement slipped between one poem and the next, but the move is a stroke of genius. It becomes clear that Kylie is no longer just a pretty face, but rather a mature woman capable of wry, self-deprecating irony, who has by now served her time as a bubblegum act and is therefore acceptable even to serious critics (indeed, even to the world of poetry!).

Everything, in short, seems set for Kylie Minogue's official leap towards full recognition as a popstar in her own right, perhaps even capable of joining that wave of "pop and beyond" female figures who, at that very moment, were finding success while retaining a tougher edge, outside the usual conventions – Bjork, Shirley Manson, Elastica, Beth Gibbons, Skin.

Kylie's partner at this point in time is the French photographer Stéphane Sednaoui, a globetrotter passionate about fashion and music, who takes her along on his travels around the world, exposing her to experiences and sounds that go well beyond the comforts of the Western world to which someone like Kylie had by then grown accustomed, backed by a decade-long career that, between music and TV, had secured her considerable financial comfort.

The truth is that even for the ever-smiling Kylie, success brought moments of doubt, stress and depression, tied to relationships that weren't always stable, as well as the pressure of having to keep her public profile high at all costs. Her songwriting, then, turns into something like a diary, and with Deconstruction's initial blessing, the recording sessions for the new album follow the same approach as the previous record. But Kylie pushes further off the beaten path than ever, looking for people with whom she can strike the right balance and set what she's writing to music. It's a long and troubled process because, however much everyone insists on smoothing the edges, the new songs keep demanding a more distinctive, refined sound to clothe them (it's no coincidence that, this time around, the collaborators even include former Soft Cell member Dave Ball).

The result of over a year of painstaking work is called Impossible Princess (1997), and it's in all likelihood the finest long playing record of Kylie's career, as well as one of the most striking pop moments of the entire '90s from a popstar of her standing. Just listen to it, that's the best way; it opens with "Too Far", a surge of electric noise and frantic overlapping vocals that expand into a jittery, drum'n'bass chorus with a fading coda. On "Cowboy Style", the far west takes on Middle Eastern hues, offering a lounge interlude interrupted by swelling percussion before veering into an Irish-folk finale straight out of "Riverdance".

Hopelessly smitten with her, James Bradfield of the Manic Street Preachers insisted on taking part in the album's recording sessions, lending a hand to the string-laced britpop of "Some Kind Of Bliss" and to the even more bombastic, vintage-styled "I Don't Need Anyone", further embellished by a '60s-style flute section.

But there are plenty of electric guitars too on the scratchy "Did It Again", with Kylie playing a bratty, capricious riot grrrl, and on the distorted, convulsive acid-rock of "Limbo", where the kick drum veers into almost madchester-like territory.

The gorgeous "Breathe" unfolds at a trip-hop pace like a sinuous mantra awash in electronic reverb, but things quickly turn sticky with the hazy house groove of "Say Hey", which accompanies a passive-aggressive lyric full of needy fragility. "Drunk" ups the ante even further, building into a jungle crescendo inlaid with a lounge-pop string section while Kylie agonises, declaring "I'm not happy!". And the anguish grows even more languid and solitary on "Jump", with a dragging, bouncing vocal delivery that seems to struggle for breath. "Through The Years" is the record's noir moment, cat-like trip-hop with jarring acid-jazz arrangements, leaving it to the cinematic string section of "Dreams" to close out an album that genuinely disorients and takes your breath away. And who knew Kylie had an album like this in her? Spine-tingling stuff.

Granted, Impossible Princess isn't as immediate a record as its predecessor; it's clear that Kylie took the invitation to experiment literally, abruptly pushing her sound past the recognisable. But Deconstruction was a label with originally alternative leanings, and therefore the perfect outfit to understand the dynamics behind such a work, and to encourage a popstar to expand beyond the chart-friendly format she was known for, right?

No, this isn't a joke. Suddenly, something at Deconstruction starts to go wrong. After spending a fortune recording such an ambitious album, creating the artwork (in this case a beautiful but elaborate photo shoot conceived by Kylie's own boyfriend, Sednaoui), shooting the promo videos for the first two singles "Some Kind Of Bliss" and "Did It Again" (both excellent, especially the latter), and of course pressing the copies to ship to shops (including the costly special edition with a bonus disc of extra tracks and remixes, and the Japanese edition with a 3D cover), the label starts to stall, pushing back the release originally planned for early in the year month after month, using the excuse that Impossible Princess "isn't commercial enough". When Princess Diana Spencer dies in a tragic car accident in a Paris underpass on 30 August 1997, Deconstruction insists that the album's original title might prove too offensive to the sensibilities of the British public, to the point that, for England, the album is reissued under the hopelessly misguided title of "Kylie Minogue" – exactly the same as the previous album. The confusion only grows.

When Impossible Princess finally starts coming out in staggered releases – November 1997 in Japan, January 1998 in Australia and March 1998 in England – promotional efforts are minimal. Back home in Australia, things don't initially go too badly, but in the rest of the world the album passes largely unnoticed. Critics, for their part, go after the record with particular ferocity, harshly attacking Kylie's new direction as too indie, too pretentious and not nearly radio-friendly enough. Even more disappointed are her longtime fans, for whom an alternative Kylie is simply irreconcilable with the popstar image she had maintained up to that point.

Curiously, that same month – March 1998 – when Madonna releases the phantasmagoric "Ray Of Light" (an album every bit as stunning as it is ambitious, which curiously treads some of the same ground as Kylie's record), her new-age diva image catches on instantly like a seismic shock across the globe, earning near-unanimous praise from both the public and critics. But for the Impossible Princess, it's already too late to ride the mystical wave created by a black-clad Ciccone with henna-painted hands; the other two singles, "Breathe" (released, culpably, in a sped-up edit) and "Cowboy Style", generate only minimal attention, and Impossible Princess bursts like a soap bubble.

And then, out of nowhere, along comes sister Dannii, cracking the British top 10 with a (good) eurodance track, "All I Wanna Do", which would go down in history as the first hit to bear the Xenomania name – the songwriting/production team who, over the following decade, would establish themselves as a true powerhouse of British radio pop (and would go on to work with Kylie herself). In all honesty, Dannii's music career would always pale next to Kylie's, but at that precise moment, with her far more famous sister under fire from harsh criticism, her striking physical resemblance combined with a fashionable song briefly won her favour in the public eye, as if she were a Kylie clone brought out to console disappointed fans.

Deconstruction, at this point, is thrown into complete panic. Between them and Mushroom, still under contract to distribute Kylie's work in Australia and Japan, 1998 sees the release of no fewer than seven compilations, in an attempt to generate revenue and claw back what was lost from the failure of Impossible Princess (for which, of course, they are criminally responsible).

The Dvd/cd Intimate And Live is certainly worth a listen, documenting the tour in support of the aforementioned album and showing a Kylie who is absolutely capable and more convinced than ever of her new move, despite everything. What totally muddles things, however, is the presence of no fewer than six remix albums, all different from one another but with various reshufflings of tracks depending on the country of release (always between Australia, England and Japan). Mixes and Impossible Mixes focus on tracks from Impossible Princess, presenting versions that are certainly valid but badly put together, making for a listen that's too repetitive (my personal advice, in this case, is to track down the special edition of the album released at the time, which gives you everything you need from the period on two CDs without excessive padding — you'll find the two excellent b-sides "Love Takes Over Me" and "This Girls", plus all the best remixes).

The four volumes of Greatest Remix Hits Vol 1-4, on the other hand, retrace Kylie's career from the beginning, lining up an exorbitant amount of remixes, alternate versions, 7" and 12" singles, and video versions covering her entire discography up to that point. It's an overwhelming glut of material, drawing heavily above all from the four albums of the Stock/Aitken/Waterman period, in which, as already mentioned, precious little is worth saving; listening to the extended and dance mix versions of those works feels more like torture than anything else.

Not only that: a couple of years later, with the contract already over, two more Deconstruction-branded compilations saw the light of day. Hits + (2000) is certainly worth the price of admission, since it collects the singles from the label's two studio albums, plus rarities and a few b-sides from the period (standouts include "Tears", "Difficult By Design", the smoky jazz of "Stay This Way", a lovely acoustic version of "Automatic Love" and the over 9 minutes of the gorgeous, extremely rare, dreamlike ambient/trip-hop ballad "Take Me With You", as well as a super techno remix of "Where Has The Love Gone" courtesy of Roach Motel).

But Confide In Me (2001) turns out to be nothing more than a jumble of the two studio albums, containing half the songs from one and half from the other — a collection of good material but with absolutely no logic to it.

For Kylie Minogue, though, the toll of the so-called indie period is brutal. Just as she was starting to emancipate herself musically, she's dealt the harsh blow of a stinging flop and the scorn of both public and critics toward an album into which she poured heart and soul. It's like receiving one giant, figurative "Kylie, Kylie, get lost!" The episode deeply undermines her self-confidence, and from here on she will no longer have the nerve to experiment with the same boldness, even though there will certainly be no shortage of other great examples of rebirth, changes of direction and returns to success in the future.

Today Kylie speaks more fondly of this album — in fact she seems to be growing almost proud of it — but for years its existence was like a thorn in her side, highlighted above all by her reluctance to include its songs in her concert setlists (a couple of singles at most, sometimes not even those).

But that doesn't change the fact that today Impossible Princess enjoys a legacy all its own. Whether her more pop-oriented fans like it or not, this album captured one of the clearest snapshots of that strange mid-90s period, when pop and alternative fringes could almost travel hand in hand; it still sounds remarkably sturdy today, and it's creative, bold and ambitious, while never failing to move you with every listen. Let's remember it as the moment Kylie opened her heart to the world, and it turned out she had a soul entirely different from the curly-haired 80s girl everyone thought they knew — a soul some might even dare call indie.

Disco-Kylie

Dropped by her own label, alone and abandoned to despair after a flop that weighs on her like a tombstone, Kylie lifts her tearful eyes to the sky in search of help. As if by magic, the clouds part and, out of the dissolving smoke, two orange-haired, dark-sunglassed aliens appear in orbit aboard a flying saucer: it's the Pet Shop Boys, champions of the dancefloor with a self-appointed mission to rush to the aid of every diva in need (they had already worked miracles with two terminal cases like Dusty Springfield and Liza Minnelli). Chris hits a button and lowers the platform, Neil offers his hand, and Kylie climbs aboard the ship, headed for the light.

The result of the collaboration between the two parties appears on "Nightlife" (1999) in the form of "In Denial", a splendid ballad swollen with strings and lifted skyward by a redemptive choir. In truth, the "Nightlife" era isn't exactly one of the most celebrated in the Pet Shop Boys' career — quite the opposite — but it's an album with an unmistakable trance and eurodance backbone, and above all it's buoyed by the hit single "New York City Boy", a genuine tribute to the disco music of the golden age of Village People & co. Something, in short, stirs in Kylie's gut, a four-on-the-floor beat plants itself in her head; and as she's gently escorted back down to planet Earth, Neil leans in and whispers in her ear, "your disco needs you, darling".

No sooner said than done: barely six months into the new millennium, Kylie makes her triumphant return to the dancefloor, (barely) covered by a pair of tiny gold hotpants and belting out one of her most famous songs, the dazzling "Spinning Around" (snatched at the last minute from Paula Abdul, who had earmarked it as her own comeback single. Meow). Now, it's not as if Kylie went around covered in bearskin before the "Spinning Around" video, but the sight of her backside, perfect as a forbidden half-apple and put proudly on display by a pair of shimmering knickers that cover her like a second skin, triggers an effect that can only be described as viral, and for a moment the entire world stops to catch its breath, as she dances through the crowd and rubs up against the bar counter like a cat. "Kylie's body has the proportions of the ideal beauty of ancient Greece!", "a marvel of nature!", or even "if an alien landed on Earth today it would think Kylie's butt was the leader of the planet!" — and so on go the press's conjectures, among the funniest and silliest ever made.

Kylie takes her new role as sex symbol with irony and has a laugh about it, but the label once worn by Grace Jones in the 70s now sticks to her: the second millennium officially has a new Queen Of Gay Disco.

Light Years (2000), then, is the most proverbial of comebacks to the dancefloor. Under a new contract with Parlophone, Kylie goes back to her roots in dance music, keeping a few ties with people from her past (Steve Anderson chief among them), while also keeping a close ear on the trends of the moment. The second single, "On A Night Like This", is in fact pure eurodance with Balearic flavours, somewhere between Gala, Sonique and Eiffel 65, terribly symptomatic of its era to modern ears, but at the same time capable of creating a powerful wave of nostalgia.

Also helping to fully restore Kylie's image in the public eye is Robbie Williams, the eternal enfant terrible on the run from Take That, now in the midst of a hugely successful solo career; written first for himself and then turned into a duet, "Kids" is a husky britpop romp in which the two of them run around happily like naughty kids, and the song becomes a huge hit. Summery, Balearic gusts of flamenco guitar also adorn the irresistible chorus of the fourth single, "Please Stay", which will win over the public, even if it remains somewhat overshadowed by the success of the previous three.

Otherwise, Light Years is young and carefree, an album light years away from the troubles of its predecessor; proper disco music is paid tribute to in the very words of "Your Disco Needs You", a camp track if ever there was one, complete with a thundering male chorus providing backing vocals, as if sung by the sailors of a cruise ship run aground in Mykonos. Worth noting too is the slightly more modern and roaring, yet still epically danceable, "Disco Down".

Also appearing are some vintage little jokes like "Loveboat" and "Koocachoo" (the latter seems to sample the backing track of "The Beat Goes On" by the duo Sonny/Cher, reworked in electronic guise by All Seeing I a couple of years earlier). "I'm So High" also somewhat apes certain britpop more influenced by the sixties, while "Butterfly" is a techno blast with vague Indian flavours, and the title track plays with synthetic, minimal atmospheres (a brief taste of what the future would hold).

Unfortunately, the picture gets smeared with pastel-pink brushstrokes by the mawkish orchestral ballad "Bittersweet Goodbye", the syrupy remake of "Under The Influence Of Love" (a track written by Barry White for the vocal trio Love Unlimited) and a truly silly ghost track like "Password" (found in the pregap of the CD).

Deliberately carefree, Light Years is a dance-pop album that works precisely because of its genuine desire to entertain and get people dancing without reservations. With it begins the new phase of Kylie Minogue's career: success resettles her once and for all in her main core markets - Australia, England and Japan - with further forays around Asia and Europe depending on the moment - the 46 dates of the "On A Night Like This Tour" will sell tickets at record speed, racking up several sellouts. At the closing ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, she is the star of the moment, a tiny Australian icon dancing with delight as she sings "Dancing Queen".

To be fair, from this point on Kylie's new image will also often keep her somewhat trapped in her role as an inescapable gay icon; the variations on her theme will never again be as pronounced as the shift experienced between the 80s and the 90s, but will instead settle into a range of more-or-less successful attempts within the confines of radio-friendly pop. For a diva who is, all things considered, very famous and with as long-lasting a career as hers, Kylie will never be a megastar on the level of people like Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey, but Light Years gives her back - forever - that important core of loyal fans, as well as the love and respect of even the most unlikely colleagues.

But now it's time to contradict what has just been said, because the key moment is about to arrive.

September 2001; a yellow sports car speeds down the highway, heading towards a futuristic urban landscape rebuilt by computer with clinical precision. At the wheel is a tiny nymphet with her fringe falling over one side of her face, gripping the wheel and shifting gears with lascivious movements while humming a "la la la" as childish as it is sticky as hot glue. The song is hypnotic, its melodic sections interlocking with Swiss precision over a rhythm that sounds like deconstructed techno, curious glitch-derived ostinatos following one another mechanically, while the voice aches with an obsession that only longing and abandonment can create; I just can't get you out of my head... And success is immediate, on a global scale. Everyone is hypnotized by the simplicity of a song as spare and minimal as it is catchy, and Kylie is catapulted to the top of the charts in over 40 countries around the world, even cracking the elusive US top 10 - and for Americans, who at best might have remembered her as the curly-haired girl who sang "The Loco-Motion" 13 years earlier, the new Kylie, dancing half-naked in a snow-white hoodie with a plunging neckline, is quite the surprise. Add to that a female dance troupe moving with cybernetic precision, and "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" immediately establishes itself as Kylie Minogue's signature song, her most celebrated track ever as well as one of the best-selling singles of the 2000s.

But the real stroke of luck this time around is that such an iconic lead single is matched by an album that's just as well crafted from A to Z; Fever (2001) is one of the happiest moments in all of disco-pop, 12 tracks balancing admirably between techno, synth-pop, electro, nu-disco and a series of excellent melodic turns. "In Your Eyes" is the other hugely famous single with its damp synthetic textures and that iconic video of Kylie writhing against a wall of fluorescent lasers, while in the irresistible "Love At First Sight" she's seen descending a videogame staircase in a pair of decidedly casual sweatpants, yet still so playfully sexy. And this is without even mentioning the hypnotic "Come Into My World", which churns through a series of circular, brain-frying refrains, perfectly captured by the iconic video directed by Michel Gondry (the track would even earn her a Grammy for Best Dance Recording).

And the rest of Fever? It ranges from the irresistible synth-disco interlocking of opener "More More More" to the bouncy syncopated choruses of "Fever", from romantic nights spent dancing in clubs on "Dancefloor", to the laconic melancholy tinged with crystal-clear synthesizers of "Fragile" and "Love Affair", but when the occasion calls for it, there's also room for scratch marks on the back (and a phone number written in lipstick on the mirror) in "Give It To Me".

To close, two tracks of shadowy folktronica: "Your Love" and the irresistible synthetic splashes of "Burning Up". Of course, Fever too presents itself as pure entertainment, music to dance and grind to without overthinking it, but its weave betrays a damnably catchy melodic sensibility, thanks to clean, minimal production that cuts out any excess sweetness and makes it an album suited to adult listening as well.

In its genre Fever is a trendsetter, and alongside several other well-known acts of the period - like Modjo, Spiller and the arrival of "Read My Lips" by the enchanting Sophie Ellis-Bextor that same year - it ushers in a new season for European-style dance-pop that looks back to old-school disco while staying in touch with the technologies of the new millennium - goodbye reel to reel, cable plugged straight into the speaker, and stiletto heel pressed on the synth pedal.

The success of Fever is well beyond expectations (an estimated 6 million copies sold), and for a moment at least, at 33 years old and with a substantial career already behind her, Kylie Minogue becomes one of the most famous pop stars on the planet. Sponsored by Vodafone and Evian, with Dolce & Gabbana handling the costumes, the lavish "Fever Tour" tours Europe and Australia across 48 dates, raking in staggering box-office takings. Together with the previous one, the "Fever Tour" ushers in a new era of Kylie live shows, and the simple concert turns into a full-blown spectacle, with a great outlay of sets, dancers, choreography, interludes, twists and big-screen projections and whatnot.

Attending one of her shows becomes a cultural phenomenon. Fever 2002 (2002) documents it all on DVD + audio CD.

Single-minded Kylie

And so, strike while the iron is hot. Or at least that's what Parlophone wanted, having found themselves almost by chance holding the hottest star of the moment, and tried to put her under pressure to get a third album in three years. But Kylie insisted on taking some time off after the end of the "Fever Tour" and being able to work on the follow-up more calmly.

At first, the result is convincing for everyone: released on 3 November 2003, the new single "Slow" (co-written with Emiliana Torrini) is simply irresistible, a series of whispers unspooled over a bone-dry electro backing that would make plenty of far more celebrated colleagues envious. Helped also by the iconic video showing Kylie and her dancers grinding on a carpet of multicoloured towels by the pool, "Slow" conquers the top of the UK chart in no time (but it also does extremely well in Australia, Spain, Denmark and beyond), instantly turning into a minor classic (and according to her most recent statements, Kylie herself names it as her favourite track of her entire career).

A week after its release, Body Language is on shelves all over the world, but within a short time the thrill of the new arrival has already faded. Many talk of an 80s revival, of Brigitte Bardot (echoed in the stylish b/w cover art), and of an "electronic turn" - all of which, incidentally, is true: Body Language is an album that leans even more heavily on the synthetic side, exploring the same aseptic electro-acoustic mélange as Mirwais, or works like "Black Cherry" by Goldfrapp and certain moments on "Beautifulgarbage" by Garbage (remember "Cherry Lips"?). The problem is that - lead single aside - the songwriting this time round is almost totally lacking in spark, not unlike the S/A/W years. Over the course of one album, everything that was once irresistibly catchy turns into an endless parade of filler, all production and zero substance.

The disappointment is huge. A few examples? The bland r&b of "Red Blooded Woman" once again confirms Kylie's tendency to lose herself in black-leaning sounds (however watered-down), while the smooth ballad "Chocolate" is too diluted to really taste of anything (though the accompanying video is lovely). More curious is the synth-pop of "Still Standing", inspired by early Eurythmics: a good song that would have benefited from a more forceful performance.

As for the rest, Body Language drags itself between the affected electroclash of "Secret (Take You Home)" and "Sweet Music", all the way to the total anonymity of the sugary r&b of "Promises" (Jessica Simpson could have sung it), the gentrified urban sound of "Obsession", the sleepy chillax of "I Feel For You", "Someday" and "After Dark", and the ballad "Loving Days", which gets lost in a storm in a teacup despite a backing track that echoes the glories of the old "Confide In Me".

What's undeniably commendable about Body Language is its refusal to rest on its laurels and simply retrace the grooves of its successful predecessor, showing instead a stubborn desire to experiment with new sounds regardless - with 15 years of career already behind her, Kylie Minogue still has plenty of ideas and a hunger to reinvent herself. But the result simply doesn't convince; thin, flimsy melodies, paired with a meticulous but overly glossy production, dissipate across 12 tracks everything that had been so carefully built on the previous record. Sales will turn out decent overall, but clearly below Parlophone's expectations.

With Body Language, Kylie would have to abandon once and for all any ambition of worldwide success and return to her core audience. For the record, though, it should be noted that this album does have a solid following around the globe, and several fans actually seem to love it more than anything else she's done.

The oddly near-identical compilations Greatest Hits 87-97 and Greatest Hits 87-99 (2003) offer a somewhat scattered overview of the situation, the first focusing mainly on the 80s and a bit of the 90s, the second stretching a little further into the late 90s, but honestly the point of the whole exercise gets lost. The other compilation, Artist Collection (2004) - boasting possibly the ugliest cover in the history of music - once again gathers the most beautiful but unlucky tracks from the 90s plus assorted rarities, but we're still off target (the relentless urge to cash in on Kylie's "dark" period in light of her new success is at times almost baffling. Why not put together a couple of nice deluxe editions instead of chopping up the material into dozens of hastily assembled compilations?).

As a result, the best compilation from this period is without doubt Ultimate Kylie (2004), which offers a solid overview of nearly all her singles from the start of her career right up to the latest tracks from Body Language. Not only that - to launch Ultimate Kylie, two excellent new songs were included: the delightful "Giving You Up", penned by Xenomania, is a moment of viral disco-pop in the vein of Sugababes/Girls Aloud, but the real winner is "I Believe In You", a genuine masterstroke crafted by Kylie with Jake Shears and Babydaddy of Scissor Sisters - in short: one of her finest songs ever, a true showstopper at every concert.

And speaking of concerts, after a long period of preparation, March 2005 finally saw the launch of the "Showgirl: The Greatest Hits Tour", clearly conceived not so much as support for Body Language but rather as a way to parade a carnival of hits and sequins around the world.

But the bandwagon soon came to a halt of the kind that's no laughing matter: just a month after the tour began, a medical check-up revealed that Kylie Minogue had been diagnosed with breast cancer. The news shook the entire world; it's striking to see how even a beautiful, wealthy, famous popstar, only 36 years old and at the peak of her career, could be laid so bare overnight. Photos showing her pale, thin, with a scarf covering her bald head, quickly circled the globe, moving everyone. For over a year Kylie withdrew from public life, comforted by her family and her sister Dannii, and even the media granted her the privacy she needed.

Needless to say at this point, but of course the small, determined Australian soon proved to have a tough, resilient spirit: after treatment and convalescence came the long-awaited good news from her doctor that the worst was over. Still shaken but heartened, Kylie reintroduced herself to the world with a timid smile in the documentary "White Diamond", which captured her preparing for her return to the stage, more determined than ever to finish the tour she'd had to abandon halfway through. When the bandwagon finally set off again, with 34 dates across Europe and Australia under the new name "Showgirl: The Homecoming Tour", the response was floods of tears and raw emotion from both audience and Kylie alike - the Sydney date would be captured on DVD + CD, Showgirl Homecoming Live (2007).

Everything, in short, was now set for Kylie's return with new material; in the meantime, anticipation among fans was running fairly high - God knows how much the record industry loves building hype around a star's "big comeback". The more than 13 million people who had already tuned in for the live TV broadcast of the "White Diamond" documentary now seemed to be eagerly awaiting her next move - were they all ready to buy the album? "Quick, let's put it out!" you can almost hear them shouting from Parlophone's offices.

So what does Kylie do? She obeys, sure, but on her own terms: she blows a little kiss, and that's it, goodnight. No point denying it - we've all done it: frantically scanning the lyrics in the X (2007) booklet, searching for the seed of the big comeback, the tear-jerking power ballad, the lament of an Ariadne torn apart by the Minotaur, the cracked mirror of the psychotic black swan, basically anything capable of satisfying the voyeuristic urge to get inside Kylie's head and uncover the pain from her recent ordeal, so one could then proclaim to the world "it's a masterpiece!". Instead, the closest thing to introspection on offer is the sunny chorus of the breezy vintage-pop tune "No More Rain":

And that's as much as Kylie lets on about her experience with cancer. Full stop. For the rest, X picks up exactly where the previous album left off, with new producers, a new sound and plenty of good, entertaining songs in its back pocket, but the attitude is essentially the same as ever: dancing, laughing, flirting and shagging as if nothing had happened. Kylie plays Kylie.

Certainly, from a strictly pop standpoint, X may well string together the best run of four singles from a single album in her whole career: "2 Hearts", a spacey synth-glam-rock number all whispers and coy poses; "Wow", a refreshing disco moment flavoured like strawberry-and-melon vodka; "In My Arms", essentially a textbook example of how to write the perfect pop song from A to Z; and above all the wistful, evanescent melancholy of "The One", another song destined for the pop history books, this time courtesy of the genius production duo Freemasons (who also crafted the over-eight-minute "Vocal Mix" version, which is simply over the top).

But piling on even more atomically precise killer choruses are also "Like A Drug" (essentially a glimpse of how great Body Language could have been had its production been filled with melodies like this one), the curious western-britpop detour of "Sensitized", co-written with Guy Chambers (Robbie Williams' regular co-writer) and featuring a sample of Serge Gainsbourg, and the other electro-rock splash of "Stars".

In short, on paper X is undoubtedly a solid pop record that lacks for nothing – it even has its filler tracks: "Speakerphone", a sort of botched electro experiment dreamed up by Bloodshy & Avant, and "Heart Beat Rock", which weakly apes the Gwen Stefani of "L.A.M.B" – plus the usual neither-fish-nor-fowl standard fare like "All I See" and a "Nu-di-ty" that looks, in every respect, like an imitation of the post-"I'm A Slave 4 U" Britney Spears. From the collaboration with Eg White comes instead the romantic, if admittedly rather teenage, "Cosmic".

Whichever way you look at it, X is undeniably an enjoyable album that flows as refreshingly as rosewater on a flushed face, and it boasts a few genuinely praiseworthy pop moments. Sales are good but not spectacular, critical response ranges from lukewarm to favourable while always maintaining a certain respect, and the promotional push is crowned by "The Kylie Show", a TV programme aired in England on ITV1, where Kylie performs the album's singles plus other songs from her catalogue across 10 brightly coloured vignettes, each one featuring a different look – truly delightful.

So Kylie is back to her usual self, and for one reason or another she has decided not to capitalise on her personal experiences, and therefore no one should blame her for not wanting to use X to recount what she really went through during the months she spent undergoing radiotherapy and awaiting a medical verdict (not least because, let's not forget, when she tried to show the world a few intimate glimpses of herself, back in the days of Impossible Princess, the public handed her a resounding beating).

All's well that ends well, then, but – just between us – wasn't it perhaps fair to expect something more this time around? We'll leave that answer to the listener, of course, but at least as far as this profile is concerned, we'll venture to say that, Kylie's wishes duly respected, it was certainly more than fair to expect something better from the following Aphrodite (2010).

After the release of the remix collection Boombox (2008) – which features, among many others, reworkings by Chemical Brothers, Fischerspooner, and the curious Kylie/New Order mash-up "Can't Get Blue Monday Out My Head" – the release of a Live In New York (2009), and the end of the "KylieX2008" tour (80 dates grossing over $100 million), the announcement that Kylie was working with a certain Stuart Price was suddenly on everyone's lips. Under his guidance, the prospect of an album that was solid from top to bottom might finally materialise for real! When Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love, beauty and pleasure, finally reveals herself on the cover, it's a riot of pale blue veils and regal poses, a goddess ready to delight her people – by this point entirely gay – conjuring up a mock neoclassical backdrop straight out of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The lead single "All The Lovers", moreover, is excellent on every front. It's a crystalline melody swept by synthetic gusts with a strong Goldfrapp air about it, accompanied by a video that recreates, in the heart of Los Angeles, a mountain of human bodies as tall as the surrounding skyscrapers (plus white horses, balloons, underwear and plenty of flesh on display).

Kylie seems to be kicking off the new decade in the best possible way, then, just as she had done exactly ten years earlier with "Spinning Around" and its famous golden-hotpants scene. And Stuart Price certainly confirms himself a highly skilled executive producer, managing to bring Kylie's work with as many as 16 different collaborators (Calvin Harris, Xenomania, Pascal Gabriel, Starsmith, etc.) together into a cohesive whole, structured with all the mastery of a seasoned studio hand. Not since Fever had Kylie put out an album with such a solid, contemporary sound, a perfect summa of disco-pop updated for the 2010s.

But sadly, even the lovely Aphrodite soon starts tripping on veils too long, trodden underfoot by her heels, which keep her from moving with the grace befitting a true goddess, and she ends up looking awkwardly wedged between two columns. Aphrodite, in short, makes it clear that, once again, despite the shine of the packaging, the heart of the art is still songwriting that doesn't live up to such divine pretensions. We might let the shameless gaiety of "Aphrodite" and the frantic mood of "Closer" slide – the latter could be a heavily simplified rework of some Mike Oldfield chord progression – but there are simply too many tracks essentially devoid of any appeal: "Everything Is Beautiful", "Illusion", "Too Much", "Cupid Boy", the disco revival of "Can't Beat The Feeling" – nothing leaves a mark.

Soon the other singles start losing ground too; the sprightly "Get Outta My Way" barely gets off the ground, but the thoroughly silly birthday-party conga-line of "Better Than Today" will prove something of a flop, to the point that Kylie tries to cut her losses and bail early, but not before Parlophone sends – against her wishes – the bubblegum of "Put Your Hands Up (If You Feel Love)" to the front lines too, utterly wrecking Aphrodite's standing with a single as insipid as anything heard since the 80s (it will remain, deliberately, without a video).

A real shame, in short. Aphrodite remains perhaps Kylie Minogue's greatest missed opportunity, an album with such promising premises that were, unfortunately, badly let down. Catching one of the 77 dates of the "Aphrodite: Les Folies Tour" certainly proves to be an entertaining and visually dazzling event, even if it stays firmly within the realm of pure entertainment, with Kylie as the seasoned showgirl, having fun shuffling her songs around and staging little set-pieces to show herself off in skimpy outfits while being carried along on a Roman chariot.

Far more intriguing, however, will be the now-legendary "Anti Tour", a mini-tour of just seven dates aimed at the most die-hard fans, during which Kylie performs in tiny venues such as pubs, bars and very intimate theatres, with a stripped-down acoustic set dedicated exclusively to lesser-known tracks, rarities and b-sides.

The Best Of Kylie Minogue (2012), on the other hand, leaves too many songs out while keeping just as many from the dreaded archives of the 80s, confirming itself as an unfocused compilation that isn't even particularly successful, commercially speaking.

Nostalgia-Kylie

The new millennium opens and closes media opportunities at a dizzying pace, like so many Windows popping open and shut, ageism reigns supreme everywhere and retirement is hardly even granted anymore. Certainly nothing can now dent the icon status Kylie Minogue has earned by surviving across three decades of ever-shifting pop, but at the same time, in a world populated by Rihanna and Lady Gaga, the quality swings of her output start to feel more frustrating than ever. The problem isn't so much the scant public attention she now gets with every move she makes – a factor that has, after all, often accompanied her, compounded by the realisation that her fanbase is getting on in years – but rather the simple act of looking back at her substantial legacy while knowing just how much more could still be achieved. Instead, the constant up-and-down that has defined her career carries on unabated to this day, like a pinwheel left spinning in the wind.

And so, seemingly out of nowhere, comes the splendid collection The Abbey Road Sessions (2012), marking Kylie's 25 years in the business by reworking 16 celebrated tracks from her catalogue with the help of a classical orchestra. Any reservations about the project's usefulness need to be set aside – for many artists this kind of move tends to come across as a rather too self-indulgent exercise (isn't that right, Tori Amos?); Kylie has almost never used orchestration in her work before, so rearranging dance-pop tracks with layers of strings, woodwind, timpani, acoustic guitars and elegant runs on a grand piano proves to be a genuinely novel move. What's more, for the most part these old hits are literally turned inside out and reinterpreted, their mood drastically shifted and cast in a different light. Kylie transforms the fizzy "I Should Be So Lucky" and "Never Too Late" into a pair of reflective, melancholy moments, where love seems lost forever. "Better The Devil You Know" is stripped of any dancefloor pretensions and turned into a smouldering torch song carried by piano and a barely-whispered choir, "I Believe In You" lightly flutters its butterfly wings over a soft bed of strings, "Come Into My World" turns from seductive to sadly pleading, "Slow" hams it up over a sultry jazzy groove, and "Locomotion" returns to its roots with a sprightly 60s surf-pop feel.

And this is nothing compared to the overhaul given to tracks like "On A Night Like This", which creaks beneath the syncopated march of an orchestra let loose without brakes, a "Hand On Your Heart" gently rocked by brushed drums and an almost country guitar light years away from the sonic horrors of the Eighties, the hugely famous "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" plucked by strings with an agitated air, or a "Love At First Sight" stripped down to a bare-bones voice/guitar demo, utterly free of the original's synthetic sheen.

But even when the melodies stay closer to their original form – "All The Lovers", "Confide In Me" with its pulsing guitar, and the cinematic, end-credits-style version of "Finer Feelings" with a bolero-paced drum/percussion section – Kylie's new interpretation reaches for a maturity dripping with emotion and melancholy. The flaw? Relegating that little gem "In My Arms" to the Japanese deluxe edition of the album is nothing short of a crime, given that it's unquestionably the most beautiful reworking of the whole batch.

The merit of The Abbey Road Sessions lies in bringing back into focus a side of Kylie that often gets lost when she tackles dance material, namely the interpreter capable of sitting in front of a microphone and drawing out her voice with grace and supreme agility. The album is on the whole well received by critics (though not overwhelmingly so), and won't exactly set the charts on fire among the public, even though the live transposition at Hyde Park in the summer of 2012, broadcast on TV, would become one of the standout moments of the BBC Proms. Some will call The Abbey Road Sessions a record made purely for the fans, but nothing could be further from the truth; an album like this is actually capable of winning over even listeners who would never normally think of putting on a record by the Australian star. Somewhere between easy listening and polished auteur pop, this collection shows off Kylie Minogue's songs at their very best, laying bare the skeleton of a songbook anyone would envy.

But Kylie carries on, now flirting fully with the trappings of celebrity culture, between film cameos and the launch of a perfume line, even turning into a much-loved TV personality as a judge on the popular show The Voice UK. But once the acoustic experiment is filed away, her up-and-down journey through the pop carousel resumes with all the usual highs and lows. Two new tracks, "Skirt", a solid dance-step experiment, and especially the explosive "Timebomb" (a song that, sung by a younger starlet, would have stormed radio stations the world over) seem to show a Kylie still firmly in the saddle, but "Higher", a duet with urban-R&B singer Taio Cruz, and especially the heavily plugged "Limpido" with Laura Pausini, sound like little more than contractual obligations.

Not-so-Kylie

The announcement of Kylie's move to Jay Z's Roc Nation management is a move that once again raises hopes - maybe this time there's something different brewing? And yet with Kiss Me Once (2014) we're right back to square one. The piano-driven arrangement, a sharp, snappy beat, and that dead-simple yet devastatingly effective chorus make the new single "Into The Blue" a fresh, catchy track, radio-friendly to just the right degree and capable of winning back her core audience. The following "Million Miles" too, with its driving rhythm and classic dance structure, still packs more punch than anything on the far more debauched Aphrodite, proving itself worthy of her reputation as a seasoned crowd-shaking diva.

But then come the pains. Totally unable to keep a grip on the flood of new collaborators (countless this time around, from Stargate to Will.I.Am, by way of Ariel Rechtshaid and others) Kiss Me Once is an album that fails to hold together from start to finish, where flashes of sporadic charm alternate with moments utterly devoid of depth or logic, not unlike those found in abundance on albums put out twenty years earlier by the celebrated Stock/Aitken/Waterman outfit, but without all the Lolita-esque imagery that came attached to them.

With a thematic backdrop that leaves little room for interpretation, the tracklist features some improbable winks at dubstep-pop, a scene that couldn't be more dead (a "Sexercize" surprisingly written by a hit-maker like Sia, complete with an over-sexualized video launching it as the next single), silly refrains ("Les Sex") and harmless filler with nothing going for it, all built on placid verse-chorus climaxes that are utterly predictable in their execution (the lukewarm electro-pop of "Feels So Good", the mawkish romanticism of the title track).

So what's left of this Kiss Me Once, then? In a bizarre reversal of roles, what remains is precisely what should have been discarded from the start. It was shaping up to be the most syrupy collaboration of all time, poised to become the "Nobody Wants To Be Lonely" of the 2010s, and yet "Beautiful", featuring Enrique Iglesias, not only fails to spike the sugar levels but actually manages to dose its emotional excess carefully, turning out to be a genuinely well-crafted song. With vocals filtered in the manner of Imogen Heap, and a progression worked out in painstaking detail, the song reveals itself to be a heartfelt, intense ballad, a pas de deux that wards off any cloying sentimentality and draws from Minogue a genuinely good performance. The return to the dancefloor of the closing "Fine" (a nice number riding an almost house-like groove) and the sweet little tune included as a bonus track, "Sleeping With The Enemy", wring out a few good feelings in the end. The rest, broadly speaking, slips by without making much noise.

What's been missing from Kylie and her entourage for far, far too long, in short, is the idea of crafting a full-length that can truly stand on its own as such, rather than just being an excuse to churn out those 3-4 singles aimed at the mainstream audience - which this time around struggle more than ever to land: Kiss Me Once enjoys a brief spell in the middle of the charts upon release before vanishing into thin air, with Roc Nation's influence nowhere to be found. For that matter, even the "Kiss Me Once Tour", while well put together and always a pleasure to watch, was undoubtedly produced on a smaller budget than previous tours. It would be Kylie herself, the following year, who'd admit in all honesty that Kiss Me Once could have been much better than it turned out (though she said the same thing about X too...).

Ups and downs, drive, inspiration and stumbles. Taking part in Giorgio Moroder's comeback with "Déjà Vu" brings with it the excellent "Right Here Right Now", without a doubt one of the most delightful moments for radio pop in 2015 - if there's anyone who knows how to write dance-pop tracks, it's Giorgio, but if there's anyone able to perform them with eternal freshness, then the crown goes to Kylie Minogue. But just a few months later, "Absolutely Anything And Anything At All" (a track recorded to accompany the film "Absolutely Anything", marking the return of the famous Monty Python cast) is embarrassingly awful, and one can only hope it remains an isolated case confined strictly to that particular soundtrack.

Two brief EPs made in collaboration with Fernando Garibay - Sleepwalker (2014) and Kylie + Garibay (2015) - vaguely revive her more electro side (the second one especially), though the attention they'll receive is minimal.

Camp as Christmas, as the English say, an expression loosely translatable as "gaio quanto il Natale" ("as gay as Christmas"). And who better than Kylie Minogue to sing the songs of the year's most frou-frou season? A cover featuring a sleigh, plenty of little gifts and a saucy red outfit (and then those legs...) seem to promise something deliberately kitsch but hopefully not devoid of irony. Unfortunately, though, the idea once again falls short before reaching its destination. Kylie Christmas is just a whole lot of banality repackaged with the usual chirpy atmosphere of little bells, snow-covered cottages and mulled-wine-drunk elves - all things we've heard a thousand times over the past 60 years.

Orchestra and horn section in fine form, recreating a benevolent Disney-movie atmosphere, and all the most classic titles of all time, a parade so predictable it hardly needs describing. There's no shortage of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town", in a "duet" with Frank Sinatra, and "Christmas Wrapping" with Iggy Pop (a mobster and a junkie, both forever fans of Christmas, right?). The communal Christmas Eve moment is recreated via a ballad-style rendition of the Pretenders' "2000 Miles", while the intruder "Only You" (Yazoo) arrives sung as a duet with a soppy James Corden (one of the many forgotten faces from some past edition of the UK's X Factor).

Even the original compositions leave you puzzled; "White December" and "Christmas Isn't Christmas 'Til You Get Here" (wonderfully original titles) could have been decent vintage-style melodies, but the festive arrangement of bells and violins sinks them along with everything else. Written by a Chris Martin in desperate need of red meat, and produced by Stargate, "Every Day's Like Christmas" is downright frightening instead, a concentrate of banality played on cheap midi keyboards, too embarrassing to be believed.

It's also hard to explain the decision to relegate “100 Degrees” to the deluxe edition, given that the duet with her sister Dannii was the only track likely to stir any real curiosity about the album – the result isn't exactly dazzling, truth be told, but the pairing of the two Minogue sisters with that background disco-funky guitar is undeniably camp in just the right way.

Ah, but it doesn't end there; “Every Day’s Like Christmas” even got the honor of a remix credited to her old mentors Stock/Aitken/Waterman – yes indeed, in the year of our Lord 2015 Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman are still alive and kicking, and they own a recording studio where they periodically gather to keep – unpunished! – inflicting incalculable damage on the world of music.

More often than not, the record industry tends to treat seasonal albums as a missed opportunity to simply keep quiet (Enya, Tori Amos), but it's also true that the Christmas album is a category unto itself, one that has little bearing on the rest of an artist's discography. Which, for Kylie, is a real stroke of luck, since at this rate there wouldn't even be an onion left to put in the stocking.

Country-Kylie

At first it seems like the usual catchy, carefree pop tune, a little dance number put together to entertain her most die-hard fans, but listening closely to the chorus of the lead single from her new album Golden (2018), you soon realize Kylie is subtly toying with the idea of passing away, casting a veil of uncertainty over what would otherwise be an iron-clad will to think positive:

When I go out

I wanna go out dancing

After all, the appeal of her music has always been a game of veils and mirrors: those big blue eyes and a famous mermaid-like figure have helped her nimbly weave her way through hundreds of new acts year after year, but at the same time, thanks to her associations with the upper echelons of auteur pop, Ms. Minogue has built up a thoroughly respectable songbook, including some particularly intense moments, which have secured her a permanent little place in Pop History. And even if the idea behind “Dancing” isn't exactly the most original, the track still manages to raise a smile.

What's impossible not to notice, though, is how over the last decade Kylie's new music has gradually become depersonalized from her own life story, turning into a sort of shroud that merely interprets a vague idea of her through whatever material she's handed. After all, after 30 years of a constantly evolving career, Kylie is hardly “one of us” – she's more like a gorgeous fifty-something, still free and fresh as a rose, emancipated from everyone and everything, but for that very reason also alone in facing the future – just a couple of years ago she was nearly engaged, and yet once again the relationship sank into a sea of silence and regret. And it's precisely this slice of life that could give Kylie a fresh perspective compared to so many of her peers: a life frighteningly unmoored from the prevailing duty to “put down roots,” but also potentially driven by an intoxicating sense of freedom that could now let her dare anything. But Kylie no longer feels like compromising; she'd rather roam the world surrounded by famous friends and private parties in luxury hotels, which is certainly no bad thing, but hanging heavy over the way her records are now conceived is the ghost of an old-school A&R office (artist & repertoire, i.e. the team within a record label that oversees an act's artistic development).

So, falling in line behind the most recent releases by Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus and Justin Timberlake, Kylie too travels from Australia to Nashville (?), in search of an honest country atmosphere in which to sing about lived experience with a more seasoned, truthful touch, but the result has a textbook, stereotyped quality that at times is downright depressing. This time around Kylie also writes every track herself, which explains the dance-pop drift of some of the more electro-leaning backing tracks, but that's not enough to make the album a successful experiment – a telling example is “A Lifetime To Repair”, split in two between an autopilot country verse and an airy, clearly Minogue-esque pop chorus. “Shelby ’68” then recreates the most stereotypical possible imagery of a romantic road trip, while the ever-too-reassuring Jack Savoretti turns “Music’s Too Sad Without You” into one of those strictly by-the-numbers duets. And then there's “Raining Glitter”, which echoes the disco-pop glories of the Fever era but would have benefited from a more synthetic, futuristic production. However you look at it, across the album's twelve tracks (plus the four on the deluxe edition), the author's own life story gets buried under a twee, saccharine brand of pop that smothers all its pathos.

Certainly, if the goal of Golden was to make the ear-grabbing chorus the focal point of the record, then that goal has been achieved – as on a Carly Rae Jepsen or Taylor Swift record, the formal construction of the perfect pop song is carried out as if it were gospel. The video version of the other single, “Stop Me From Falling”, which you can see on the right, has been “Latinized” with the addition of Gente De Zona, since by now, after the blatant success of “Despacito”, even the English-speaking world has been taken by storm by whatever the summer jam of the moment happens to be. Then there's a pleasantly swaying “Golden”, the bulletproof chorus of “One Last Kiss”, the acoustic delicacy of “Radio On”, and a “Love” put together with Dolly Parton in mind – all meticulously arranged tracks, simple and instantly digestible, which might work fine as breezy, spring-like listening, but which ultimately stay in the background.

Golden isn't exactly an exciting album; it certainly flows better than the previous Aphrodite and Kiss Me Once, but it still rounds out a trilogy of faded, predictable records, made more out of habit than any genuine need to say something. And that's the bitterest pill to swallow for anyone who's followed Kylie Minogue for decades now: the image of a woman left trapped in the iron cage of her own career. That our girl knows how to do the popstar job is by now a given – we'd already gathered that back in April 1990, when the legendary “Better The Devil You Know“ came out – but in the year 2018 the formula could really use an update. Kylie already has everything at her feet; all she's missing is the will to really put herself on the line and actually talk to us.

Disco-Kylie 2.0

Padam-Kylie (x2)

Sometimes it happens: the year is 2023 and Kylie Minogue unexpectedly finds herself back in the spotlight in a way she hasn't been for ages. From a purely journalistic standpoint, it's a genuinely fascinating case: here's a fifty-five-year-old pop star who, on her sixteenth studio album across a career spanning five decades, lands a viral moment capable of putting her in front of young audiences with enviable freshness. There's no escaping it: this summer, the sticky, irresistible eurodisco of "Padam Padam" swept across the internet, racking up memes, TikToks and tongue-clicks, introducing its author to an unexpectedly wide audience by her own standards – not to mention becoming the unofficial Pride anthem within about three seconds flat.

An appealing narrative, that of Kylie the survivor, especially today in the streaming era, where the feeling of fleeting brevity is more pressing than ever – and yet here she is, draped in neon and fiery red fabric, smiling and genuinely amazed by this warm rekindling of interest. The whole of Tension reflects this wave of goodwill, including plenty of new listeners who have probably never dug deep into her back catalogue.

But even wanting it with all our hearts, Tension is nowhere near among the best albums of her career.

Of course, from a subject like this, a few brilliant moments were bound to arrive. Even though it's overshadowed by the long tail of a lead single like "Padam Padam", which hijacked the album's entire promotional run for a full four months, the sidelined title track is, in truth, another bullseye, geometric and shimmering in its blend of the aseptic electronics of Body Language and the melodious, bouncing itch of X. And that's not all: there's the dense shower of silvery keyboards on "Hold On To Now", and above all the driving "Things We Do For Love", a warm tribute to Irene Cara and Olivia Newton John wrapped in that revivalist sheen typical of peak Weeknd – except that Kylie was actually there in the Eighties. Together with the two aforementioned singles, that gives us four tracks able to open the record in the best possible way.

Soon enough, though, the record takes on an unfortunately familiar shape; because Kylie, a true shroud of a pop star, knows how to reinvent herself without getting trapped, but the risk of coming off shallow is always lurking – it only takes a moment to churn out yet another anonymous batch of assembly-line pop songs built around the usual topics. From the thin melodic idea behind "One More Time" to the dreary, clumsy chase after Doja Cat's disco-funk on "Hands", via the overused, factory-made "Green Light" and "Vegas High", listening to Tension shows off the usual savoir faire, but precious little tension.

A shame too about the missed opportunity of "You Still Get Me High", which starts off slow and atmospheric under a starry sky but loses altitude right when the chorus should be making it soar – a beat alone isn't enough to carry a song if its singer gets distracted by a trite "oh-oh-oh" and the synth solo gets buried in the mix. And while "10 Out Of 10" tries, rather poorly, to recycle the fun dancefloor grooves of "Monday Blues" and "Fine Wine" from the previous DISCO, closer "Story" once again dials down the energy without leaving much of an impression. Mixed fortunes too for the deluxe tracks: "Just Imagine" sneaks in a pleading chorus at the last minute, strong enough to make up for some odd production choices, but "Love Train" sounds like an outtake from Madonna's "American Life", landing among the melodically weakest tracks in her entire catalogue.

What's missed, in short, is a connecting thread able to make Tension something more iconic and memorable than just a short-term entertainment product. But Kylie doesn't like to expose herself too much, and the impression is that she's already shrugging off this chapter to keep looking ahead. It's a concern that probably only nags at the most demanding, nitpicky fans, since the secret to Kylie's long-running success lies precisely in staying light and playful year after year. But after a summer spent asking strangers on the subway "padam?", the desire for a record able to hold its own from start to finish was strong indeed.

Instead, just a year later, along comes Tension II. The reasons behind this move are easy enough to spot: Kylie Minogue is gearing up for the hugely anticipated "Tension Tour", scheduled for 2025 across four continents, with the idea of reconnecting with all the fans who've stuck with her over forty years of her career – even though Italy isn't on the itinerary.

But the party must go on: Tension II serves up a fresh batch of velvety dance-pop confections, caressed by soft neon lights while disco and future-house pulse in the background. If it ain't broke, don't fix it: lead single "Lights Camera Action" arrives engineered specifically to turn its catchy refrain into a TikTok-ready dance move, on the very platform where, last year, the whole experience's standout moment, "Padam Padam", went viral. Once you've clocked the trick, though, the result isn't quite as fun the second time around.

There isn't much more to add about the content of Tension II: here's the usual dance collection built around sex and love found/lost, with "Someone For Me", "Good As Gone" and "Diamonds", plus a few blatant rehashes of the aforementioned "Padam Padam" – both "Kiss Bang Bang" and "Hello" are clones that don't match its results.

The disco iterations of "Taboo" and "Good As Gone" are more enjoyable, if anything, but the standout moment on the tracklist comes with "Dance To The Music", a track that's thoroughly traditional in its approach and intentions, but delivered with a freshness that smooths over every cliché. Alongside The Blessed Madonna, Kylie also leads the pulsing "Edge Of Saturday Night", built on a catchy beat that's sure to go off live. Things hold up well too when the tempo slows down on the dreamy synth-pop of "Shoulda Left Ya", which admittedly gathers a string of overused images in its lyrics, but ones Kylie still manages to inhabit with the right amount of feeling.

Truly skippable, though, is "My Oh My" with Tove Lo and Bebe Rexha, two singers already thoroughly generic in their own solo work, who here embody the classic "give us nothing" dualipiano. Rounding out the trio of out-of-place camp are "Midnight Ride", with Orville Peck and Diplo (?), and the dreadful "Dance Alone" with Sia, one of those tracks that should have stayed locked away in a drawer.