Okay, I know what you\u2019re probably thinking. How can any <\/i>Kylie Minogue album possibly be included in a list of the 100 best pop albums of all time. Well, nobody was as surprised as I when I gave this one a spin for the first time, but not only is it Kylie’s best album, it is a very strong disc. <\/p>\n
The trippy album cover artwork alone (compliments of St\u00e9phane Sednaoui) makes this worth investigating, but listening to the music reveals a pop artist pushing herself into the techno realm. 1997 was the year when pop superstars like Madonna began pursuing this direction, as evidenced in her release Ray Of Light, <\/i>but where that <\/i>was a Grammy-winning smash Impossible Princess <\/i>became Kylie\u2019s worst-selling album ever, even though both sounded similar. <\/p>\n
Which begs the question: Was it just coincidence that both albums were released at virtually the same time? Or did one artist copy the other hoping that the rest of the world wouldn\u2019t find out? Judging by Madonna\u2019s admission that she is often \u201ca sponge who has an innate sense of what the next trend should be,\u201d it makes me feel as if she stole Kylie\u2019s idea and ran with it. Conspiracy theories aside, you still have to wonder what compelled Madonna to wear none other than a Kylie Minogue T-shirt onstage (in Britain, no less) a couple of years later. Talk about rubbing it in poor Kylie\u2019s face. <\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong, I loved Ray Of Light<\/i>, but Impossible Princess <\/i>is just as good and certainly deserved a better fate. Aided by a dizzying array of producers, Kylie took a grassroots approach to the overall creation of the album. Pen and paper in hand, she literally turned a three-week trek across the United States into a twelve-song creative masterpiece. Charting singles \u201cDid It Again\u201d and \u201cBreathe\u201d are most notable for the videos that went along with them and are fair representations of the album at large (which should be the purpose of singles), though there are many more undiscovered gems here. <\/p>\n
\u201cCowboy Style\u201d is everything a country-tinged song like Madonna\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Tell Me\u201d should have been. It\u2019s the one track that left me wanting more of the same – extended remixes, at the very least. \u201cSay Hey\u201d and \u201cDrunk\u201d are both intoxicating \u201catmosphere\u201d pieces that are at the very heart of the album and \u201cDreams\u201d is a wonderful, meaty ballad to close things out. In addition, \u201cSome Kind Of Bliss\u201d is a surprisingly strong and straightforward rock song that was much maligned by the British press when it was first released, which called it irritating. <\/p>\n
What I <\/i>found irritating is the fact that Kylie sings in pretty much the same key on every song. This type of music is so complex that it almost demands a singer with the widest possible range to perform it. So on that front, Kylie misses the mark by being so limited as a vocalist. Had she experimented with her voice as much as she did with the music itself, the album may have been more successful than it was. <\/p>\n
But Kylie\u2019s willingness to take such a huge risk with this material proves that she is ahead of her other pop contemporaries. Her adventurous spirit really shines through on Impossible Princess<\/i> and is what is so remarkable about the album. A side note: the album was temporarily re-titled and postponed after Princess Diana\u2019s untimely death, but eventually released as is. <\/p>\n
Though it had many strikes against it from the very start, Impossible Princess<\/i> was a giant step forward for Kylie. She may have overshot her mark when it came to her core audience, and since this one she has returned to the predictable, safe dance music that she is known for. For those who only know \u201cCan\u2019t Get You Out Of My Head,\u201d pick this up and see what happens when an artist makes art instead of just commercial pop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":28549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7842],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-40015","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-kylie-minogue","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40015"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}