FEATURE:
Second Spin
Kylie Minogue – Body Language
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EVEN though…
I have written about Kylie Minogue a lot in the past couple of months because her new album, Tension, was released and is a chart smash, I like to cover great albums coming up for a big anniversary. I am a Kylie Minogue fan, so I am looking at all of her album anniversaries. Second Spin is about me advising people to seek out an album that is underrated and warrants a new look. As her ninth studio album, Body Language, was released on 10th November (in Japan; 17th October in the U.K.), it is also a twentieth anniversary salute. Whilst not poorly reviewed, I don’t think it has received all the acclaim it warrants. I cannot find a new vinyl copy, though you can get the album on C.D. I cannot see any announcement there is going to be a twentieth anniversary edition of Body Language. It is a great work by Minogue I am putting back under the spotlight. I will end with a couple of the positive takes on her 2003 success. Number six in the U.K., it spawned terrific singles like Slow, Chocolate and Red Bloodied Woman. One of the issues might be that Minogue released two career-best albums not long before Body Language. A great renaissance and ‘comeback’, 2000’s Light Years and 2001’s Fever is one of the great one-twos in music history! In 2002, unsurprisingly, a new greatest hits album came out. There was a sense of expectation by 2003 to equal the success of Light Years and Fever. Maybe take things to a new high. Although that didn’t necessarily happen, I think too many were comparing Body Language to those huge albums – rather than judging them it on its own merit.
Prior to getting to a couple of reviews, I want to bring in a feature from 2018. Celebrating fifteen years of Body Language’s release, Albumism, they celebrated the highs of the album. How it has endured and still sounds great now. For Body Language, Kylie Minogue wanted to create a Dance-Pop album inspired by Electronic music from the 1980s. She enlisted the support of collaborators such as Cathy Dennis, Dan Carey, Emiliana Torrini, Johnny Douglas and Mantronix:
“On November 15, 2003, two days prior to its UK release, Kylie Minogue gave a “one-night only” live showcase for her ninth studio affair, Body Language. Housed for the evening within the prestigious halls of the Hammersmith Apollo in London, the audience for the “Money Can’t Buy” concert was made up of journalists, colleagues, family and die-hard fans. Never had Minogue put on such a grand exhibition for the disclosure of a record, then again, Body Language was a unique collection of compositions as exciting now as it was then. But, Body Language had not happened by accident or by design. Rather, it was actualized by several different career events.
Later to be rightfully canonized as pioneering, Minogue’s deConstruction Records epoch was seen, by and large, as a commercial misstep when it concluded. So, when she inked a deal with Parlophone Records in 1999, her mission was to make long players with a thoughtful, but mainstream appeal. Light Years (2000) and Fever (2001) followed making good on this intention and they triumphed.
Outwardly, Minogue was content with her newfound power. However, one could assume that the itch to create in a less constricted way hadn’t completely left her. Closer listens to Light Years and Fever gave credence to this theory as there was a markedly subversive current running beneath both albums. In 2003, as Minogue began to plot and plan her ninth recording, she tapped back into the artistic abandon of her deConstruction expanse, but tempered it tactfully with a chart consciousness gained from her recent experiences.
The past and the present became sources that Minogue aurally drew from for Body Language—initially titled City Games—as it took shape. The former aspect looked to a specific stretch in popular music (1985 to 1987) when freestyle, synth-funk and electro-hop reigned. The latter aspect had its eye “on the moment” as it related to tonally variegated electro-pop and dance music. Minogue sent out the call for collaboration to help her whisk these disparate elements into one groovy gestalt.
Cathy Dennis, Johnny Douglas, Green Gartside (of Scritti Politti), Kurtis Mantronik, Karen Poole, Richard Stannard and Ash Thomas were only some of the songwriting/production/cooperative luminaries to answer Minogue’s hails. The appearance of Gartside and Mantronik is significant, each were prominent figures from the halcyon ’85 to ’87 period Minogue was referencing. Having them present on Body Language brought legitimacy to the sessions; Gartside gifted his vocals to “Someday,” while Mantronik gifted Minogue with “Promises” and “Obsession”—all three cuts were highlights. Of all the Body Language entries across its assorted international pressings—and the B-sides earmarked for the record’s three singles—Minogue features as a co-writer on nine of them.
As the song cycle developed, it became a curiously compelling study in supposed musical contrasts that, with Minogue’s supervision, found itself convincingly blended into an esoterically charged set. Body Language’s introductory number, the simmering, midtempo synth jam “Slow” unabashedly displays Minogue’s affection for (and command of) modish electro-pop. The track’s snake-like bassline, however, yielded an irrepressible rhythm and blues vibe that felt more pronounced than ever before. R&B wasn’t completely new for Minogue; it had contributed handsomely to certain sides of Minogue’s last two antecedent albums and been a major factor in the innovative air of Kylie Minogue (1994). Yet, the urban-pop immersion of Body Language rendered those past interactions with the genre demure in comparison.
And so, in this way, the record strikingly carries on in mixing digitized soul with crisp live instrumentation—as heard best on “Still Standing”—or taming the sample savvy hip-hop beats of “Secret (Take You Home).” The two cuts blow reverent kisses to the likes of “Skin Trade” era Duran Duran and early Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam with Full Force. Still, Body Language doesn’t restrict itself to retro-modernist fusion strategies. Layered noir ballads (“Chocolate”) and ambient song pieces in a wealth of organic (“After Dark”) and inorganic (“You Make Me Feel”) textures are spread out throughout the LP making it uniform in tone, but diverse in function.
Vocally, Minogue uses the upper range of her voice to aesthetically color the engrossing lyrical pictures on the record of romance either for her craft (“Sweet Music”) or for an individual (“Loving Days”). While this may not be to everyone’s tastes, it does evince one of the many risks Minogue willingly embraced on Body Language and grants it the distinction of being her most sensual project to date.
Preceded on November 3, 2003 by its first smash single “Slow,” Body Language manifested in nearly all global markets two weeks later. America received the record a few months later in February of 2004. Even though Body Language had enough of a general commercial surface to make it chart accessible, the LP did not bow to the unspoken demand that Minogue recreate what had come before. As such, sales and notices for it were respectable, but lacked the enthusiasm that greeted Fever. Two further singles emerged during the lifespan of Body Language in “Red Blooded Woman” and Chocolate,” both yielding healthy returns in numerous singles charts around the world.
Accordingly, with the passage of time, Body Language has outstripped all of the hurdles that initially impeded it. Besides its singles becoming perennial performance pieces in Minogue’s concerts years afterward, the album’s experimental heart now finds favor and complementary comparisons to the peaks of her deConstruction phase. Written, recorded and released at a time when Minogue could have done a textbook redux of her most successful album, the ever-enterprising pop vocalist instead drafted one of the subtlest and most creatively defiant vehicles within her canon”.
One of Kylie Minogue’s talents is working with a range of collaborators who can take her music to the next level. Always remaining fresh and compelling, it would have been tempting to give the world another Fever. Instead, she moved her work forward by bringing in other influences and ideas. This is what AllMusic said in their review of the brilliant Body Language:
“If Light Years was the comeback, and Fever the confirmation, then Body Language can best be described as Kylie's "big step forward." Sure it's still simple dance-pop, but this time she (and a team of producers and writers -- including Kurtis Mantronik -- it must be said) has put together an album that works as a piece. It's stylish without being smarmy, retro without being ironic, and its energy never gets annoying. In other words: a near perfect pop record. Instead of opting for more of the light dance- and disco-pop of the last two releases, Kylie has sought to expand her horizons. Adding elements of electroclash, '80s synth pop, bouncy club beats -- even a dash of Eminem-style raps! -- she's found the formula that not only makes her vocal shortcomings irrelevant but gives her the edge on the rest of the divas on their newfound quest: maturity. While Madonna, Xtina, and Britney have attempted to achieve maturity through trashiness and not really all that shocking behavior (i.e., that MTV Awards kiss), Kylie maintained a low profile, retained a sense of class, and put together what may well be the best album of her career. Simply, Body Language is what happens when a dance-pop diva takes the high road and focuses on what's important instead of trying to shock herself into continued relevance”.
I will finish with a review from Entertainment Weekly. Although some have it more mixed assessment, there were those that saw the depths and relevance of Body Language. Not instantly assuming that Minogue should have repackaged her past work. As Tension shows, one can never predict or write off someone as innovative and forward-thinking as her:
“You ready for the change?” Kylie Minogue inquires a few numbers into her ninth album, and you think, At last — the first dance tune about menopause! It’s not to be, sadly; the legendarily cellulite-free Aussie songbird is a mere lass of 35. But that’s plenty old enough to harbor firsthand affections for a certain celebrated decade. So when she calls one new song ”I Feel for You”; enlists Scritti Politti’s erstwhile singer on ”Someday”; incorporates bits of the Lisa Lisa oldie ”I Wonder If I Take You Home” in the Ms. Dynamite-copenned ”Secret”; and liberally quotes from Janet Jackson, Chic, INXS, and Dead or Alive, one might reasonably wonder if Minogue is, as they say, livin’ in the ’80s.
Yes and — mostly — no. Body Language‘s opening single, ”Slow,” remains firmly within the realm of contemporary low-throb electro-pop, and the rest of the album is subtle and thoroughly synthetic enough that it’s easy to initially assume she’s just making her Madonna-meets-Mirwais move. That is, until you notice all those retro vocal riffs creeping in amid the electronica. On the cover, she’s striking a Nancy Sinatra-esque, ”These StairMasters are made for walkin”’ pose, but it turns out she’s less kitten with a whip than just whip-smart about creating a none-too-obvious alchemy between ’80s pop-funk and ’00s chill-out. The results are ludicrously enjoyable, and somewhere Nile Rodgers is smiling. You should be too”.
As it is twenty on 10th November, I wanted to mark that in its own right. An important album from Kylie Minogue, Body Language is also quite underrated. One that truly deserves some new praise. You hear Slow on some radio stations. Not many other tracks giving an airing. Great deep cuts such as Promises and After Dark. If you are a Minogue fan or not, take a bit of time to dive inside 2003’s…
SUPERB Body Language.