WORSHIP AT THE ALTAR OF THE POP GODDESS: Kylie Minogue in ‘Aphrodite: Les Folies [Live in London]’, a DVD of her amazing show. Photo: Parlophone

APHRODITE: LES FOLIES [LIVE IN LONDON]
Performed by Kylie Minogue
Directed by William Baker & Marcus Viner
Choreography by Anthony Testa
Released in the USA by Astralwerks/Parlophone/EMI
On DVD, Blu-Ray, & 3D versions
NTSC North American version available from Amazon.com

By Scott Harrah

Australian superstar Kylie Minogue showcases and celebrates nearly 25 years of pop in the DVD of her Aphrodite: Les Folies concert.  (This DVD was filmed at London’s 02 Arena, but she has toured it all over Europe, Australia, and Asia.)

Some say Kylie relies too heavily on visuals in this spectacular show, as one misinformed newspaper critic noted when the scaled-down-for-the-colonies North American version (staged for smaller U.S. venues), Aphrodite 2011, came to New York City for three nights this past May. These are the same people who have never understood Kylie as a recording artist, particularly here in the USA.

Shows of this nature are staples in Europe and the United Kingdom, where Kylie has reached a level of fame comparable only to Madonna’s. She has been awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II for “Services to Music,” an Order des Arts et des Lettres in France (where she is as respected as French pop icon Mylène Farmer), and this autumn was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from a UK university for her tireless campaign to promote breast cancer awareness after a long battle with the disease. In addition, last month she was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in her native Australia.

The acrobats, scantily clad male and female dancers, water fountains, laser projections, and high-tech, onstage antics compliment the music without overshadowing the 43-year-old Kylie performing her arsenal of hits from the Aphrodite album, plus many golden oldies stretching way back to the Stock Aitken Waterman British pop for which she first made a name for herself decades earlier. The pint-sized Diva from Down Under sports an endless array of Dolce & Gabbana fashions and ultra-high heels. The Italian couture design duo christened her la piccola principessa (“the little princess” in Italian), and she looks gorgeous throughout the show, but it is her bubbly energy, spunky audience repartee, and perfect-pitch live singing that all win over her many generations of fans.

From the show’s opener, when she enters the stage on a giant, golden clam shell while sporting her Greek goddess costume and sings “Aphrodite,” to “The One” and “Wow,” Kylie is intent on pleasing newer fans with material from her discography in the 21st century. Her countless costume changes are usually preceded by techno-pop preludes to her hits, such as “Illusion” (from the Aphrodite album). Women dance around in gossamer gowns and scarves to Middle Eastern-tinged music while we watch video projections of Kylie in an Arabic half-veil, with her piercing eyes poking out (looking like a modern-day, blonde Barbara Eden in “I Dream of Jeannie”), and soon Kylie ascends the stage atop the golden, winged horse Pegasus (straight out of Greek mythology) to sing the song.

The cheers and screaming from the crowd in London, just like the fans at her New York show, never subside as she changes into a crinkled Dolce & Gabbana metallic gown and performs hits such as “Spinning Around,” “Get Outta My Way,” and her massive U.S. hit “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” complete with heavy-metal-style guitars that give the track a sound that will certainly silence all the critics who claim Kylie cannot perform rock-and-roll. Yes, Kylie, Princess of Pop, can sing guitar-oriented music as good as any hard-boiled female rocker in the States. However, she quickly reverts to her dance-pop roots with the Stock Aitken Waterman classic “What Do I Have to Do?”

One of the highlights in the first half of the concert is an electronica version of her 1994 hit “Confide in Me,” featuring an intro of video projections of Kylie in a black bang wig, with crimson lips, Cleopatra eye liner and white pancake makeup. Male chorus boys dance around in skimpy, body-baring outfits as the hypnotic beats go wild, and soon Kylie enters the stage to sing the vintage track, and she has never sounded better.

The second half of Les Folies is even more spectacular. Opening with “Looking for an Angel,” Kylie soon jumps on back of a winged man modeled after the Greek myth of Icarus and ascends the stage, flying over the audience (in a high-tech harness) while singing “Closer” before coming back down to earth to one of this reviewer’s favorite parts of the concert: An ethereal cover of Annie Lennox’s “There Must Be An Angel.” As an angelic chorus trills harmoniously, Kylie, clad in an ultra-mini Greek princess dress, delivers a beautiful rendition of the song. Any foolish critic who has ever claimed La Minogue cannot sing need look no further than this portion of the concert.  As Kylie seamlessly performs the cherished Lennox hit, a chorus of gospel-inspired singers joins her in harmonious, Motown-inspired unison. It literally brings down the proverbial house in London (as it did at the New York show). Who would have ever thought this cute little Aussie had as much “soul” as some of the USA’s R&B music legends?

What follows are oldies from both the 2000s and the 1990s, such as “Love at First Sight” and a tribal, percussion-heavy, African dance-club style version of “Better the Devil You Know” to a breathy cover of Prefab Sprout’s “If You Don’t Love Me” to “Put Your Hands Up” from the Aphrodite album (the Pete Hammond remix of the latter song was a huge club hit in the USA last summer).

The finale is also an ode to Americana, Kylie-style, as the instrumental “Million Dollar Mermaid” flashes Esther Williams-style swimmers on video screens, like something straight out of Williams’ old Hollywood films. Kylie eventually takes the stage in a gold Esther Williams get-up, complete with a Dolce & Gabbana swim cap.  Kylie sings one of her best hits of all time, “On a Night Like This,” dancing around the stage and strutting down the O2 Arena’s runways like a Paris supermodel as “Splash Zone” fountains squirt water in expertly timed precision. In no time, the song segues into one of the biggest American hits from Aphrodite, the universal love anthem “All the Lovers.” Kylie, on a circular platform with a pool, sings as acrobats twirl in the air and the fountains squirt water and the dancers writhe around.

It is a beautiful closing to Kylie’s most lavish and expertly designed concert ever, cementing her status as one of the world’s greatest entertainers. All hail the Princess of Pop. We hope she will keep “Spinning Around” for years to come, and return to this side of the Atlantic soon.

Our review of Kylie Minogue’s Aphrodite 2011 concert in New York City in May remains the most-read, non-theater article in StageZine.com’s nearly two-year history, according to Google.

Published December 7, 2011

SCENE FROM THE CONCERT

YouTube video clips from Kylie’s Aphrodite: Les Folies

The post Kylie Minogue showcases nearly 25 years of pop in ‘Aphrodite: Les Folies [Live in London]’ appeared first on StageZine.

THE ALBUMS: 2000-2010

THE ALBUMS: 2000-2010
Kylie Minogue
EMI Import

By Scott Harrah

With the exception of her smash-hit European 2000 pop magnum opus Light Years, four of the five CDs in this boxed set collection of superstar Kylie Minogue’s studio albums from 2000 to 2010 were actually released domestically in the United States.  However, in the last decade, most of us stopped buying CDs and opted instead for the more 21st century option of digital downloads through I-Tunes and other online music retailers.  So, for dedicated fans, The Albums 2000-2010 is certainly a collectors’ item because, after all, Kylie is a pop artist who has maintained a career that spans from the days of vinyl to the present digital age.  It would only be fair to analyze each album individually, because all are so different in both sound and concept.

LIGHT YEARS: One of Kylie’s best ever

LIGHT YEARS

It is truly a shame that Light Years was never released Stateside, because, musically, from the songs to the glossy production values by an exhausting list of UK studio wizards, it is a far superior album than 2002’s breakthrough for Kylie, Fever. The aforementioned album contained the song that put her back on top of the USA pop charts and radio airwaves, “Can’t Get You Out of My Head.”  However, Light Years was Kylie’s glorified return to pop, and it remains a complex yet marvelously giddy gem even a decade later.

In the United Kingdom, where Kylie was still trying to live down the tepid record sales of her ill-fated attempt at indie rock in 1997, the critically acclaimed  but poor-selling Impossible Princess (released, unfortunately, around the time of Princess Diana’s death), Kylie was at a crossroads in her career.  By 2000, already in her 30s, Kylie had already endured some of the worst moments in her career: vicious jabs from the British tabloids who christened her “The Singing Budgie,” and a rocky relationship with INXS rocker Michael Hutchence, who committed suicide in the late 1990s.  She was no longer the cutesy pop puppet of Stock Aitken Waterman, and many of her longtime fans had all but abandoned her.

Light Years changed all that.  In the video for “Spinning Around,” in which Kylie sported the now-infamous gold hot pants, it was the lyrics that really proclaimed a new decade and century for her.  “Threw away my old clothes, got myself a better wardrobe; I got something to say,” she sang, with just a tad of tongue-in-cheek irony. The song’s slow, hook-laden beat and her irresistible vocals helped “Spinning Around” shoot to the top of the pop charts across the world.

“On a Night Like This,” an adorable Europop dance ballad, with another gorgeous video, featured Kylie cavorting  in Monaco, dripping in jewels and couture gowns, cementing her status as a fashion icon. “You kiss me, I’m falling, it’s your name I’m calling,” she cooed in breathy, sexy vocals.  This was 2000, the year of the Sydney Olympics and Paralympics, and by the time Kylie performed this and other songs on international TV for the sports world, America could no longer ignore Kylie as a global force.

There are far too many near-perfect songs on Light Years to count, from the haunting “Disco Down” to the campy anthems “Your Disco Needs You” and “Loveboat” to the Latin-tinged “Please Stay” and her incredible cover of Barry White’s “Under the Influence Of Love.”

Her duet with Robbie Williams (the UK pop star already making a name for himself in America by 2000), “Kids,” was rock-sounding enough to appeal to even the non-pop crowd. And the futuristic title track “Light Years,” in which Kylie sang “take us to the pop stars on the moon,” signaled that, in the New Millennium, Kylie would very soon conquer America as she had the rest of the world.

FEVER: Put Kylie back on top in America with ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’.

FEVER

This was the album that finally put Kylie back on top in the USA. The first single, “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” soared to the Top 5 of the Billboard USA pop charts with its infectious chorus of “la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.” Truly, this was a song we really could not get out of our heads. It was followed by the singles “Come into My World,” “In Your Eyes,” and “Love at First Sight,” all of which were irresistible dance-pop that made America fall in love with Kylie all over again.

Although Fever was not as intricately crafted as Light Years, to Americans, the lighthearted melodies of “More, More, More,” the title track “Fever,” and other songs were all enough to win her a new generation of fans on this side of the Atlantic. This was the official “comeback” for Kylie in the States because, after more than a decade, she finally had a U.S. domestic release and paying import prices was a thing of the past for her American fans, which Kylie recently described to The Washington Post  as “a secret society.”  Fever was pure, unmitigated Eurodisco that established Kylie as a musical force worldwide and the ever-elusive North American market, and she has never looked back since.

BODY LANGUAGE: Kylie channels Bardot on cover

BODY LANGUAGE

The follow-up to Fever was a more sophisticated sound for Kylie.  Only the electro-pop single “Slow” managed to make the U.S. pop charts (thanks, in part, to a super-sexy music video), but it never reached the popularity of “Can’t Get You Out of My Head.”

However, the jazzy, streamlined songs “Red Blooded Woman” and “Chocolate” represented some of the best, outside-the-box work Kylie had done since “Confide in Me” in 1994 and “Some Kind of Bliss” from Impossible Princess in 1997.

X: Sexy electronica album contained such dance faves as ‘In My Arms.’

X

This was the first album Kylie recorded after her much-publicized battle with breast cancer. Relying heavily on computerized “electronica,” X was a departure from the cotton-candy pop lite of Light Years and Fever. The rock anthem “2 Hearts,” with its staccato percussion and Kylie’s stylized vocals, almost sounded like vintage David Bowie. “Two hearts are beating together…I’m in love, ooohh,” she crooned. Even the cover for the single, featuring Kylie in glam-rock-style makeup, looked like something straight out of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust era.

The techno songs “In My Arms” and “Like a Drug” were club hits, but the song “Wow” was the most mainstream, even being featured on TV commercials for ABC’s hit primetime soap, “Desperate Housewives.” X was not for everyone, but listen to it now and it is indeed noteworthy as it sounds like nothing else she has recorded in the New Millennium.

APHRODITE: Containing the hit title track, ‘All the Lovers’ & more

APHRODITE

Kylie’s 11th studio album was perhaps her biggest U.S. hit since Fever, and for good reason.  It is hard to resist the layered synth-pop of the first single, “All the Lovers,” and its message of universal love. The video, shot in downtown Los Angeles, showed Kylie writhing amongst a mass of people and being lifted by them, as many kissed and made out. (The publicity alone from the video managed to land Kylie interviews on many of the national morning American TV talk shows, including NBC’s “Today Show,” on which Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda chatted with the pop diva like she was a long-lost friend.)

The second single, “Get Outta My Way,” was another major hit, with its funky orchestration and lyrics that were an assertive declaration of independence for anyone moving on from a bad relationship, giving it mass appeal.  (Kylie promoted the song heavily, with appearances on numerous top-rated U.S. primetime TV shows such as “Dancing with the Stars” and “America’s Got Talent,” and the ultimate all-American holiday extravaganza, “The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.”)

“Better Than Today” actually made the American pop charts, but it was “Put Your Hands Up (If You Feel Love)” that really created a sensation when it landed in the U.S. Top 10 this summer with an incredible remix by Pete Hammond of Stock Aitken Waterman fame, featuring lush backtracks of percussion and textured layers of ethereal synth like something right out of the late 1980s. The song actually was the subject of a major featured in summer 2011 in New York’s weekly newspaper, The Village Voice.

There are many well-crafted songs that should be released as singles in the U.S., from the upbeat title track “Aphrodite” and the bouncy “Cupid Boy” to the aptly titled “Looking for an Angel,” a heavenly song with a delectable violin intro.  On Aphrodite, Kylie’s voice has never sounded better (distinct, polished, and one-of-a-kind), and every song is as painstakingly produced as Light Years, making it a glorious end to the first decade of the 21st century and the Australian superstar’s triumphant return to the American music scene. At age 43, she shows no signs of slowing down, with nonstop press coverage in all the American celebrity weeklies, and regular snarky comments about her fashion choices by Joan Rivers on E’s “Fashion Police.”  When Joan Rivers is dishing a celeb’s outfits, it is a sure sign that one has truly made it in the States. Long may Kylie reign on our shores.

Published August 18, 2011

KYLIE MINOGUE LIVE IN DUBLIN: Rare early recording for fans.

KYLIE MINOGUE:
LIVE IN DUBLIN: LET’S GET TO IT TOUR, 1991
Recorded live at The Point
in Dublin, Ireland, November 8th, 1991
IMC Music Limited (Made in the EU)

By Scott Harrah

For diehard Kylie Minogue fans, particularly Americans who know little about her illustrious 1990s European career, this rare concert recording is more than merely pop nostalgia. Now nearly 20 years old, Kylie Minogue: Live in Dublin is primarily important because it marked a turning point in the singer’s career as she moved from her squeaky-clean image of Charlene from the Australian TV soap “Neighbours” and bubble gum teen pop sensation to show-biz legend.

To understand the scale of this album, one must first put Minogue into context as an artist.  By 1991, Minogue had enjoyed Top 40 success throughout the United States with her eponymous 1988 debut, Kylie, featuring the hits “The Loco-Motion” and “I Should Be So Lucky,” but her sophomore effort, Enjoy Yourself in 1989, the last American release for Minogue until Fever in 2002, went nowhere Stateside.  In addition, perhaps because her all-time biggest hit ever was never released in America: “Especially For You,”  a formulaic duet with fellow Aussie costar Jason Donovan from “Neighbours,” a mega-smash in the United Kingdom, where the two were seen on TV several times a day in the hit show and were sort of the Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber of that era).  However, in the U.S., “Neighbours” was rarely shown on the airwaves. Across the Atlantic and virtually everywhere else, however, Minogue was already a superstar, and her 1990 Stock Aitken Waterman-produced album Rhythm of Love was huge everywhere except North America.

This live album was recorded long before Britney Spears and the days of “autotune” and onstage lip-sync shenanigans, so what we hear is pure, raw Kylie, singing live with a band and backup singers.  Her pipes were still girlish and paper-thin two decades ago, but she already had her signature breathy vocals and that famous bubbly persona that has always overshadowed her flaws.  Even bona fide Kylie fans won’t argue that she has never had a spectacular voice; then again, neither did Madonna or many of the pop icons of yesteryear, but she was already a first-rate entertainer at the ripe old age of 23.

The majority of this concert recording contains Minogue’s early Stock Aitken Waterman hits, from “Step Back in Time” to “Got to Be Certain,” “Word is Out,” “What Do I Have to Do?” and “Let’s Get to It” to her duet with Keith Washington, “If You Were With Me Now.” Other than her smash U.S. hit “Loco-Motion,”a cover of Carole King’s 1960s classic that was a huge song for Little Eva and, in the 1970s, Grand Funk Railroad, she performs only one other cover, the O’Jays’ golden oldie “Love Train.”

She closes the concert with her signature song of the time period, “Better the Devil You Know,” the dance track that finally separated her from her goody-goody image and cemented her status as a sexy video vixen (and resulted in inevitable comparisons to Madonna by the tabloids in Britain).

As a classic concert recording, Kylie Minogue: Live in Dublin hardly represents Minogue’s best work, but it is required “Step Back in Time” listening for true Minogue aficionados.  Anyone who saw her recent “Aphrodite Live” tour in North America (which far surpassed the level of energy and seamless vocal ability than anything pop stars half her age are doing live right now) or “Les Folies” in Europe, Asia and Australia will appreciate just how far she has come as an artist over the years.

Published August 18, 2011

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BORN THIS WAY
By Lady Gaga
Interscope Records
Available now
www.apple.com/itunes/
www.interscope.com/ladygaga
www.amazon.com
Available on Itunes and Amazon.com

By Scott Harrah

StageZine.com does not always review music, but we will make an exception here because everything is theatrical about the phenomenon known as Lady Gaga, from her over-the-top music videos and outlandish outfits to her recent “Monster’s Ball” concert, televised on HBO from Madison Square Garden.  Gaga now ranks up there in pantheon of female pop superstars that are both mainstream household names and icons for nonconformists everywhere.  It is not surprising that so many have compared her to Madonna, the undisputed Queen of Pop, for Gaga (real name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) is an Italian-American iconoclast that loves to shock and surprise the masses by making everyone wonder what she will do next.  Like the Material Girl did 30 years ago, Mama Monster pushes the proverbial envelope of sexuality and outrageous behavior, but the comparisons end there.

Since she is only 25, she is not quite seasoned enough yet for pop royalty status, but Mama Monster is already a legend. Besides, Gaga is not entirely a pop music artist.  Her heavily orchestrated songs have shades of classic rock, heavy metal, and just about every other musical genre popular over the past 40 years. She writes and composes much of her own material, and her soaring vocals are as forceful as that of Christina Aguilera and rockers of yesteryear such as Pat Benatar and Chrissie Hynde, as well Queen, David Bowie, and Elton John.

Gaga has evolved incredibly since her 2008 debut The Fame, with the techno-pop disco songs “Just Dance” and “Poker Face” and the 2009 followup EP, The Fame Monster.  On Born This Way, she opens with the rock-tinged “Marry the Night,” but the album’s first single and title track “Born This Way” is the true standout here.  Many have compared the song’s sound to Madonna’s “Express Yourself,” but this is an unfair analysis.  Although the song’s beat and message are distantly similar, “Born This Way” is distinctly Gaga. It has become the unofficial dance anthem of misfits everywhere, for both women seeking love and gay men, with the same universal message of acceptance and tolerance as Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful.”

Like Madonna, Gaga is a frustrated Italian-American Catholic schoolgirl at heart, and this is most evident on the hit “Judas,” which outraged officials at the Catholic Church (and, of course got her plenty of headlines in the press). “Jesus is my virtue, and Judas is the demon I cling to,” Gaga sings, like a sinner torn between righteousness and temptation.  If you were brought up a Catholic or Protestant, isn’t that the crux of Christianity? All mortals are sinners, if one believes in true Christianity. There is absolutely nothing sacrilegious about the song at all. As Gaga said in her recent Madison Square Garden concert, the Bible teaches that Christ loves everyone; not just the pious.  No one wants a pop star to preach about Jesus, but Gaga obviously had the fire-and-brimstone damnation of dogmatic Christianity drummed into her head as a child, so her message of all-inclusiveness is sincere, which is why she is an outspoken advocate for gay and lesbian rights. This is also evident on the song “Bloody Mary,” complete with myriad references to the Virgin Mary and Christianity. There are also enough religious allusions in the song “Electric Chapel” to make any fundamentalist Jesus freak blush, and perhaps that is the point.

Gaga is a global artist, which might explain the Spanish-tinged track “Americano,” and the techno-disco “Sheiße” in which she sings a few lyrics in German. She also is not afraid to take on American myths of power and womanizing, such as slain President F. Kennedy in the song “Government Hooker,” in which she sings, “Put your hands on me/John F. Kennedy.”

The power-pop ballad “You and I” could be by any classic rocker from back in the day, in which Gaga professes drunken love to a “Nebraska guy” with, of course, more lyrical nods to the ever-elusive Jesus.

However, Gaga proves that she is not just a provocateur out for shock value in the seamless dance track “The Edge of Glory,” complete with the layers of synthesizers (and creepy ambient sounds like something from any 1980s British New Wave group) and the computerized drum machine beats that are her trademark.  This is yet another anthem destined to be an instant classic, in which Gaga sings, with soaring, semi-operatic vocals, about the gleeful feeling one gets from a new love. “The Edge of Glory” is, by far, the most original song of Gaga’s career yet, with none of the gimmickry she has been criticized for in the past, complete with a Clarence Clemons (of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band fame) saxophone solo.

It is time to stop comparing Lady Gaga to musical artists of the past and accept her for the superstar she truly is: An icon for the early 21st Century, the voice of a new generation, with an arsenal of talent underneath all those wacky outfits she sports.  Mama Monster proves with Born This Way that she is going to reign over the music world for some time, as long as her “Monster” minions are willing to worship and adore her.

Published May 27, 2011

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