FEATURE:
I’m So High
Kylie Minogue's Light Years at Twenty-Five
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EVEN if…
IN THS PHOTO: Kylie Minogue in 2000/PHOTO CREDIT: Ray Burmiston
its album cover is not as eye-catching and striking as its follow-up, Fever (2001), there is no denying how important Kylie Minogue’s Light Years is. Spinning Around is probably the best-known single from the album. Minogue’s seventh studio album, it came three years after Impossible Princess. That 1997 album remains one of her most underrated. Released on 22nd September, 2000 in Australia and three days later in the U.K., it was a big success. Following the commercial dip of Impossible Princess and some mixed critical reviews, this was a definite statement. A very different-sounding album that embraced Dance and Disco, it is one of her greatest albums. Pure joy from start to finish. 2001’s Fever might be even better, though some would say Minogue’s most recent work is her best. She is one of those artists who is consistently brilliant. Light Years was Kylie Minogue going back to her Pop roots but working with different producers. Fresher, edgier and more compelling than her albums of the 1980s and 1990s, this was Minogue entering a new century with a new purpose. Embracing music from the 1970s and the Disco/Dance from that time, one cannot deny how phenomenal the songs are! Even if some critics were not sold on the lyrical content - there are songs of female empowerment, desire and sex -, others did note how this was a revitalised and powerful album from Kylie Minogue. Light Years has not aged. Inspiring so many of today’s Pop artists, Minogue is touring and playing songs from Light Years to this day. She will no doubt salute twenty-five years of a breakthrough album, at a time when many had written her off. I will get to some reviews of Light Years and some insight into the album and why it is so remarkable and important. Light Years won the ARIA Award for Best Female Artist and Best Pop Release in 2001. Reaching number two in the U.K. and one in her native Australia, Minogue hit a new career high and was undertaking this new phase and chapter.
I want to move to a feature from Albumism that was published in September 2020. They marked twenty years of Light Years. I could not include the whole thing here, but I have selected different parts that give us some background to the album and information about the tracks and songwriters. A bit about the critical reaction to Light Years:
“For two decades, the twin narratives around Light Years—Kylie Minogue’s seventh studio album—have been predicated on restoration and course correction.
Concerning the former aspect, Light Years brought Minogue back to commercial prominence with its many platinum returns and a hot streak of singles—of the eventual six it yielded, “Spinning Around” and “On a Night Like This” stood the tallest among the sextet.
Regarding the latter element, Light Years was a supposed referendum on the experimentation that anchored Kylie Minogue (1994) and Impossible Princess (1997), Minogue’s fifth and sixth sets, respectively. Taking her leave of Stock-Aitken-Waterman—the British production trio who guided the first act of her singing career—in 1992, Minogue’s post-Stock-Aitken-Waterman ambitions were boldly actioned on those two aforesaid albums which marked her transition from pre-fabricated pop vocalist to fully realized recording artist. Yet, the specter of her cherubic Smash Hits past lingered.
Consider the piece that ran in Outrage Magazine—an Australian LGBTQ publication—in their November 2000 issue at the height of the promotional blitz for Light Years. The feature was titled “Kylie’s Disco Needs You! The Comeback Queen Camps It Up in the Interview You’ve All Been Waiting For!” Although Minogue was warm throughout her exchange with the interviewer, one cannot help but notice her polite discontent at being tagged as a proxy for all things froth and fluff.
Even with all the accolades won by Minogue up through to Light Years, upon its unveiling, many critics erroneously pegged the project as some sort of retreat into non-substantive fare—they couldn’t have been more wrong. Neither a retreat nor a course correction, Light Years was a soft reset that allowed Minogue to apply everything she had learned toward the practice of generating a chart friendly collection that was also creatively centered. But additional context is required to understand the story of Light Years, which begins with its predecessor, Impossible Princess.
Embraced in Minogue’s native Australia upon its release there, Impossible Princess met with very mixed fortunes in the United Kingdom. Today, the alternative esoterica of this outing has been retrospectively—and rightfully—lionized in many of the same British publications that once derided it. Sadly, in the aftermath of its fraught reception at that moment, Minogue and deConstruction Records—the imprint she onboarded with in Britain in 1993—amicably parted ways at the top of 1999. This left Minogue without a record deal in one of her largest markets for the first time; her contract with Mushroom Records in Australia remained untouched as it had been since 1987.
Tentative blueprinting for Light Years had already commenced before an opportunity to join the ranks of Parlophone Records presented itself. As one of the most venerated majors in the U.K., it was quite a boon for Minogue to receive an invitation to sign on with them given all of the negative trade chatter that her career was on a so-called “downward spiral” in that country. The business relationship between Minogue and Parlophone was soon to be mutually beneficial for both entities; her stay there (up through to 2016) was to become her longest label residency rivaled only by her Mushroom tenure.
All parties involved decided that a lighter touch—thematically and sonically—was the order of the day for Light Years. Having had the space needed to give voice to her darker passions and ruminations on Impossible Princess, Minogue was eager to focus on a bit of flirtation, fun and romance without undercutting her previous growth as an artist. Tasking closely with Parlophone’s A&R team, Minogue petitioned them to forage for material that she would consider recording if it met her standards. This was how “Spinning Around” and “On a Night Like This”—the two eventual smash singles that propelled Light Years into the stratosphere—came about.
The first composition had been drafted by Osborne Bingham, Kara DioGuardi, Ira Shickman and Paula Abdul for Abdul’s sequel to her criminally overlooked third effort, Head Over Heels (1995). When Abdul’s comeback was aborted sometime in 1998 or 1999, “Spinning Around” languished until it was routed to Minogue by Parlophone.
The second selection had come from the collective imagination of Brian Rawling, Graham Stack, Mark Taylor and the late Steve Torch—trackmasters of international dance-pop repute from the late 1990s and early 2000s. “On a Night Like This” had renditions serviced by two singers of Swedish and Greek persuasion, Pandora and Anna Vissi, in 1999 and 2000; the songwriting/production quartet were unmoved by those iterations. They opted to solicit Parlophone to help find “On a Night Like This” a home and with Minogue it found one—her version became the definitive take.
Despite Minogue mining some pre-penned song stock, she did not abdicate her role as a writer. Her pen touched ten of the fourteen tracks to comprise Light Years in a principal or co-writer capacity. Sessions with the likes of Johnny Douglas, John Themis, Richard Stannard, Julian Gallagher, Mike Spencer, Mark Picchiotti, Guy Chambers and Robbie Williams pointed to a generous cross-section of decorated songsmiths, producers, and artists to answer Minogue’s collaborative hails. However, there was also the return of one notable figure more than ready to aid the Princess of Pop on the LP: Steve Anderson.
Numerous critics raved about the escapist airs of Light Years while lazily consigning the tag of “camp” to the record too. “The key words for Light Years were “poolside,” “disco,” “cocktails,” “beach” and loveboat...,” this description of the long player came from the woman behind the tunes as documented in 2002’s La, La, La—Minogue’s second career retrospective coffee table book co-conceived with (now former) creative director William Baker. But this elucidation from Minogue laid bare a sharply drawn line between knowing kitsch and shallow novelty—that line was ignored by the press along with the actual musicality contained on Light Years due to its playful surface.
Minogue put on her best face to counter the microaggressions of the music columnists—after all, she had a lot to celebrate: Light Years elevated her sales numbers to levels not seen since her Stock-Aitken-Waterman salad days. “Kids,” “Please Stay,” “Your Disco Needs You” and “Butterfly”—the last song restricted to promotional distribution—carried Light Years up through to the incipient half of 2001 with the accompanying “On a Night Like This” Tour kicking off in March of that year; and just on the horizon, an even more unimaginable triumph awaited Minogue with her follow-up to Light Years: Fever (2001).
An integral part of Kylie Minogue’s continued stylistic strength is that there is always something more to discover than what a surface level interaction can reveal. Underneath the carefree exterior of Light Years exists an unrecognized compositional breadth and vitality that affirms Minogue’s ongoing commitment to music excellence—this key tenet to her ever-enduring appeal deserves to be formally championed.
Quentin Harrison recently published Record Redux: Kylie Minogue, the fifth book in his Record Redux series. The ambitious project traces the rise of the Australian pop vocalist from soap actress star to international pop powerhouse by examining every single and studio album in her repertoire. Record Redux: Kylie Minogue follows previous entries from the Atlanta, Georgia based author centered on Carly Simon, Donna Summer and Madonna. Order Record Redux: Kylie Minogue here (digital) and here (physical). An overhauled version of his first book Record Redux: Spice Girls will be available in early January 2021”.
I remember when Light Years came out. I was seventeen and in sixth-form college. I was already a Kylie Minogue fan, though I was not expecting Light Years and how brilliant it was! Fever came out in 2001, when I was in my first year of university. I want to bring in a feature from Dig! that was published in 2022. They highlight how Light Years reset and recharged Kylie Minogue’s career. An ultimate comeback album. Not that her career was in danger! I don’t think she could have released another album like Impossible Princess – as brilliant as it is! In 2000, different Pop sounds were in vogue. She perfectly adapted and reacted:
“Roaring out of the blocks in June 2000, the first taste of Kylie’s new album fulfilled exactly that promise, and immediately became one of her classic singles. Spinning Around may have had a complicated genesis – American Idol judge and former pop draw Paula Abdul had co-written the track for herself – but the demo was passed to Kylie, who was then searching for fresh material. Producer Mike Spencer coated the pop track in a smooth 70s-influenced nu-disco sheen and it topped the charts in both the UK and Kylie’s homeland – a feat she hadn’t managed in Great Britain since 1990’s Tears On My Pillow, and in Australia since 1994’s Confide In Me. Spinning Around’s iconic promo video, directed by Dawn Shadforth, featured Kylie in a pair of second-hand gold lamé hot pants, and it arguably did more to reset her appeal than even the song did. The girl next door had finally grown up, and those hot pants became so famous they later appeared at London’s Victoria And Albert Museum as a critical pop-cultural reference-point.
A credible club act on a hot new winning streak
Later issued as a single alongside the parent album, September’s On A Night Like This was a contemporary electro-pop cut written by the team behind Cher’s mega-hit Believe. It was another Australian chart-topper and made it to No.2 in the UK, consolidating Kylie’s winning streak. On A Night Like This hadn’t been written for Kylie, either, but that didn’t devalue its effectiveness in repositioning her as a credible club act.
There were three further singles issued from the Light Years album, though the knowing masterpiece Your Disco Needs You was considered a step too far by her UK label. Despite only seeing widespread release in Germany (it was also given a limited release in Australia), this camp, Village People-inspired classic has enjoyed an outstanding afterlife, and it is now firmly established among the best Kylie Minogue songs.
Issuing the album’s Robbie Williams duet, Kids, was a more predictable choice for a single, given the former Take That singer’s huge success at the time. The song’s earthy, light rock production made it something of an outlier of the 14 tracks on Light Years, but it performed strongly, and the pair made several live appearances to promote it. Light Years’ final single, Please Stay, leans on hooky flamenco flourishes to lift a charming Richard “Biff” Stannard composition, but the album could have spun out yet more singles, such was the strength of its material.
Defying the critics and outpacing expectation
Of the singles that could have been, Butterfly is a frenetic and convincing club anthem, while the frothy Loveboat (which, like Kids, was penned by Robbie Williams and his then songwriting partner, Guy Chambers) is another highlight. Elsewhere, So Now Goodbye amps up the album’s Studio 54 styling, and the slinky Koocachoo is a kooky delight that might have ended up on an Austin Powers soundtrack. Disco Down is a hypnotic club-pop banger of the highest grade, while the new-wave-styled I’m So High offers a brief break from the glitterball glare. The accomplished cover of Barry White’s Under The Influence Of Love was a genuine revelation at the time, hinting at Kylie’s growing confidence at making a wider range of material her own”.
I am going to end with two different reviews. The Guardian had their say upon Light Years’ release. Even though a lot of the language does date things a bit – and it is a bit condescending in places -, they awarded Light Years four stars. One of the biggest albums of 2000. It still sounds so listenable and phenomenal twenty-five years later:
“One thing you can't accuse Kylie Minogue of is not trying. We've had the permed pop Kylie, followed by the good-girl-turned-bad phase, initiated by a sexual awakening at the hands of Michael Hutchence. Next up was a brief fraternisation with the darker world of indie-pop, which spawned the sublime Some Kind of Bliss, penned by James Dean Bradfield of Manics fame, but very little else. And finally the credible dance diva moment, which led to a less than earth-shattering album (originally called Impossible Princess, but changed to Kylie Minogue) for Deconstruction followed by the sound of silence. The pop world held its breath to see what the second queen of reinvention would come up with. When Madonna, Kylie's blueprint, gave us the techno scribblings and scary warblings of Ray of Light, it could only be a matter of time before Ms Minogue hit back. On the similarly named Light Years, she's finally done just that.
Armed with skimpy hotpants and ironic phrasing, Minogue has recreated disco for the new century and made an album that celebrates being a girl. Not since the Spice Girls has the capacity to fill a dress been so celebrated. Which is why it's strange that Light Years has been packaged with male hormones in mind. Every wannabe pop princess that opens up the cover to relish the wry lyrics inside will be greeted with a soft-focus, head-to-knees pic of Minogue wearing nothing but a towel. Chances are, though, her feet are wearing the sparkliest, sexiest pair of kitten heels in the world, because ladies, behind the FHM mentality, all she really wants to do is dance.
Spinning Around sets the tone, with a giddy dancefloor hedonism that doesn't sound out of place next to Minogue's 1989 hit, Hand on Your Heart. And that's the point. For while she's singing "I'm not the same" one second, the next she's admitting to discovering her rightful place in the world. Because, for all her other musical dabblings, Minogue is pure, unadulterated pop, and where once she saw this truth as her weakness, now she's realised it's her strength. "And did I forget to mention/That I found a new direction," she sings, "And it leads back to me."
On a Night Like This and So Now Goodbye keep up the tempo and disco antics - you can feel the heat from the swirling multi-coloured lights as you listen to them - adding empowering notions of grabbing the best looking man in the club, then ditching him when you feel like it. But Minogue knows better than to think she can do it all alone. It was the less than subtle tweakings of Stock-Aitken- Waterman that gave her success and now she has turned to some more male musical heavyweights to get her back on track. Spice Girls collaborator Richard Stannard adds some polish to the flamenco flavoured Please Stay, while the songs co-written by Robbie Williams and Guy Chambers give Minogue the best lines.
There's the fantastic Kids, a duet with Williams also featured on his new album, and Loveboat, a homage to the 1970s TV show of the same name. The latter is a female response to Williams's Millennium - it sounds very similar but has a less cynical approach to love. The familiar references to martinis, bikinis and 007 are all there - Williams really should try joining a new video club - but so too are the verbal come-ons that'll either make you squirm or laugh out loud. "Rub on some lotion," Minogue pleads breathily, "the places I can't reach." More amusing still is Your Disco Needs You, a call to arms that the Village People would be proud of. Minogue has her tongue firmly in her cheek for this camp slice of epic disco that will doubtless become the obligatory soundtrack to every Christmas office party.
It's only when Minogue deviates from the fun that the album falters. Bittersweet Goodbye is an overblown ode to love that seems like an excuse for a video featuring satin sheets, while the title track is suitably spacey, though it still left me singing Brotherhood of Man's Angelo at the end. Ultimately, Minogue shines brightest in the blinding lights of a club and Light Years is an album that should be played as you force your boob-tube into place and drain the remnants of that can of hairspray before you go out. This time round Kylie's got it right”.
I am going to end with Attitude and their feature/review from this year. They revisited Light Years. Future nostalgia from the year 2000, they asked why wasn’t Your Disco Needs You released as a single. It is a good question! It was never released in the U.K. as a single as it was seen as too gay and campy. The sort of homophobia and stupidity that was present at that time. It was a really unpleasant time in terms of attitudes towards women and the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community. Your Disco Needs You It is a highlight from an album that I feel has no weak spots:
“In every pop diva’s career comes an album that changes everything thereafter. For Madonna, it was Ray of Light; Cher, Believe. At the turn of the millennium, Kylie Ann Minogue was at her own crossroads. After ditching the brand of bubblegum pop that had made her a star in the 1980s, Minogue radically reinvented herself for the 90s and began to explore a more alternative sound. It was a bold but brave move. The press dubbed it her ‘indie’ phase, but it would fail to eclipse the success of her earlier hits with super-producers Stock Aitken Waterman (‘I Should Be So Lucky’, ‘Better the Devil You Know’). Following the lukewarm success of 1997’s Impossible Princess, the singer took a hiatus. She had a choice: reinvent once again or leave the music business indefinitely.
Closing a chapter by shedding ties with her previous label was vitally needed in order to start over musically. Freshly signed to Parlophone in the UK, a territory that quickly adopted Minogue as one of its own, the singer returned to the studio with a renewed sense of self. Her vision for ‘the new Kylie’ was clear and instinctive. She was ready to embrace her pop past again. Speaking on the album’s inception, Minogue gave writers and producers clear instructions as to what the album should feel like: poolside, disco and cocktails. Fabulous!
The lead single alone, ‘Spinning Around’, achieved her mission statement. “And did I forget to mention that I found a new direction / And it leads back to me”, she declares over sparkly disco production. The track was co-written by singer and American Idol judge Paula Abdul for her own album, taking inspiration from a recent divorce. When Abdul’s project failed to materialise, the song found a new home with Minogue. The synchronicity of the track’s theme of reinvention and Kylie’s own rebrand was a lucky coincidence. The single, paired with an equally legendary video featuring an infamous pair of gold hot pants, rocketed to number one in the UK and Australia. Minogue’s instincts to return to her musical roots had been on the money, with the general public and critics alike embracing her new era.
Second single ‘On a Night Like This’ saw continued success, leaning more into the futuristic and ethereal Europop of the early 00s. The track proved the singer didn’t need to rely on nostalgia to make her mark as a credible pop star of the new millennium. Third single ‘Kids’ further cemented this. The pop-rock number saw Minogue collaborate with former Take That member Robbie Williams, who was in the middle of his own imperial phase. The decision to put the two former teenyboppers together would prove ingenious.
But it was a song that was never released as a single in the UK that would help to reinstate Minogue with one of the highest honours: gay icon status. ‘Your Disco Needs You’ is an over-the-top, giddy dance romp that expresses the power of the dance floor to fix a broken heart. Minogue herself described the track as one of the “campest songs of all time”. It’s laden with queer references — so much so that the record label pulled it from being released in the UK for fears of it being “too gay”. But that didn’t stop the pop princess from filming a music video and making it a staple in her setlist thereafter. Now, that’s allyship.
Light Years was a full circle moment in Minogue’s career. The multi-platinum album reached the top spot in Australia and just missed out on a number one in the UK. It saw the singer return to her roots with a newfound sense of maturity and self-assurance. It was the Kylie the world knew and loved, reimagined for the year 2000. The tunes were confident, sexy and undeniably catchy. Furthermore, it laid the foundations for an even bigger moment waiting around the corner: 2001’s Fever.
Minogue continues to inspire today’s generation of pop girlies, including Dua Lipa and Kim Petras. She also remains as one of music’s most enduring gay icons.
In an interview with Olly Alexander (Years & Years) in 2021, Minogue said of her affinity with the LGBTQ+ community: “I didn’t set out to do that [be inclusive]; it is just naturally how I feel. There is so much talk about inclusivity, and I felt I always had that from the beginning. I used to say, I loved to be able to look out at my shows, and there are just all walks of life. There has never been any judgement”.
On 22nd September (the date it was released in Australia), we spotlight Light Years. This was the start of a wonderful new phase for Kylie Minogue. Following up with Fever a year later, it was a successful and productive time where some of her best music was made. Now, one could say she has taken the sounds of Light Years and Fever and updated them for the modern age. Listen to 2023’s TENSION. Though she always has one foot in the past and golden days. I hope that Light Years gets a load of new features published on its twenty-fifth anniversary. An album that has influenced Pop artists that followed, Kylie Minogue’s 2000 album showed that she was light years…
AHEAD of her peers.