“Name me Kylie-lie-lie, don’t imitate-tate-tate…”
It’s been a reasonably surprising yr for The One, True Kylie™, following her sexy, heart-racing return to fashionable electro-pop again in Could, “Padam Padam.” (Have you ever heard it? Do you know?)
The Rigidity lead observe triggered what may solely be described as a collapse of world proportions – sheer Padamonium throughout the Web – which really nobody noticed coming.
Kylie is many issues: a legend, an icon, the second. However a viral meme queen? That was undoubtedly new for all of the Lovers.
Our Mighty Aphrodite humbly, fortunately welcomed the entire “Padam Padam” appreciation from new followers and outdated – driving the wave of consideration Cowboy Fashion with a peaceable smile – all by means of the summer time months.
She’d maintain the momentum going with a handful of reside performances, prolonged variations, remixes, interviews, Siri spoken phrase renditions, and bodily format releases. And ultimately, Kylie ended up with what many would proclaim to be the Music Of Summer time 2023™. (Positive, we will debate who took that crown, however in sure Pop Nerd and/or Chronically On-line Homosexual circles, there’s no denying the tune’s a powerful contender for the highest spot.)
Along with her sixteenth studio album (!) now set to reach in only a few brief weeks, there’s no higher time for our trustworthy Pink Blooded Girl to unleash the follow-up: the album’s namesake, “Rigidity,” an excellent tougher, odder, club-edged digital reduce that deserves to be blasted from the audio system.
Having already heard the album in full (sorry), dancing to it for the primary time instantly in entrance of Kylie Minogue herself inside a tiny membership (so, so sorry), I can confidently attest that “Rigidity” is finest served exhausting and loud.
Co-written with the ever-trustworthy Richard “Biff” Stannard (of “Love at First Sight” fame, say no extra), Duck Blackwell, Jon Inexperienced, Anya Jones and Kamille, the verses are fairly sill-lay, lay, lay, filled with sing-song syllables aplenty-ay-ay as Kylie saunters throughout effervescent electronica and Home piano melodies.
“Cool like sorbet, bay, bay,” she proclaims, “Scorching like chilli, lay, lay.” ChatGPT may by no means produce this sort of prose. “Name me Kylie-lie-lie, don’t imitate-tate-tate.” Photographs fired at a secondary tv persona? Possibly so!
The observe slowly however certainly builds (“All evening, contact me proper there)” …and builds… (“doo, doo, doo-doo“)…and builds, supplying loads of – look ahead to it – rigidity. After which, in the end: the breakdown.
“Oh my God, contact me proper there…nearly there, contact me proper there…”
That vocoded bass-heavy blast of unleashed, “Speakerphone” adjoining robotic lust is genuinely jaw-dropping upon first pay attention (mouth agape, actually), and immediately seals the deal as one of many report’s standouts.
As Biff accurately noted, it’s Women Aloud-esque in its madcap, multi-song development, as properly merely being an absolute blast of a tune, and additional proof of Rigidity‘s brilliance.
After which, there’s the music video.
The accompanying visible was directed by fixed collaborator Sophie Muller, who’s labored with Kylie for years, and it’s delightfully odd – her most weird, self-referential video in a very long time, certainly.
Assume “Did It Once more” alter egos, a splash of the “Come Into My World” MCU (Minogue Cinematic Universe), a little bit of “GBI” experimentalism and Fever-era futurism, blended with Dr. Who, a splash of The Fifth Ingredient – and the Moulin Rouge inexperienced fairy, for good measure.
And now, a full video evaluation.
“Padam Padam” Pink Kylie, having grown uninterested in “Padam?” tee-wearing F-words coming as much as her in tears begging for a selfie, has opted to flee society by making a midnight escape to the neon-lit Svalbard World Seed Doomsday Vault, now working as a portal to the Rigidity Dimension.
An X-era model Robo-Kylie is diddling with some dials and monitoring the scenario.
In the meantime, Disco-era Kylie-turned-Cher-slash-“Contact Me (All Night time Lengthy)” Cathy Dennis beams in from the glittery “Say One thing” galaxy, overlooking the shattered disco dance flooring whereas delivering some TikTok-ready choreography.
“Padam Padam” Kylie, having settled into her very “Padam Padam” room, is immediately delighted by the Disco show, and shortly learns the strikes in her room.
Having caught wind of “Padam Padam” Kylie’s arrival (and subsequent dance social gathering for one), Robo Kylie tracks down the ability’s new customer, and there’s some form of a desk interrogation and/or tackle Marina Abramović‘s The Artist Is Current.
A teeny-tiny Showgirl-era Kylie out of the blue seems in a Moulin Rouge-style absinthe and/or Kylie Wine hallucination in entrance of them, yellow feathers and all, prepared for her Voltaire residency in Las Vegas.
The assembly of the Minogue minds ends in full and utter Kylie overload, as all of them come collectively in a kaleidoscopic (Kylie-doscopic) “Your Disco Wants You”-esque camp explosion of sight and sound. Ohmygodtouchmerightthere.
Having simply had the dance social gathering of a millennium contained in the Doomsday Vault, Kylie realizes she will be able to’t simply depart the F-words alone for lengthy. She in the end decides to return from whence she got here, with a renewed ardour for the dance flooring, able to convey the teachings of the Rigidity Dimension to the locals.
And there you’ve it: a fairly easy idea, actually!
One factor’s for sure: the Rigidity period is quite a bit weirder than beforehand imagined. There’s an actual sense of playful abandon with this marketing campaign, and we’re all higher off for it.
Rigidity is out on September 22.
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Photograph Credit score: Erik Melvin
