Ultimately, There Was Kylie (Ultimate Kylie - Kylie Minogue)

Member Name: plipplop

Product:	Ultimate Kylie - Kylie Minogue
Date:	22/08/07 (132 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Disc 2 is great

Disadvantages: Disc 1 sounds dated

I have a strange fondness for Kylie Minogue. It stems from the fact that I have grown up with Kylie. When I was at school, developing my individuality and music taste (or lack of it), Kylie was there. As I ventured into gay bars and clubs for the first time, the soundtrack was Kylie. As I left home and started to enjoy my independence, Kylie seemed to grow up with me. She's still going strong, proving critics wrong and somehow she has reinvented herself as a credible and much-loved icon. You only have to look at the outpouring of care in the popular press when, earlier this year, she announced that she was battling breast cancer. It would seem that everybody loves Kylie.

Ultimate Kylie is truly an ultimate greatest hits collection. Kylie's musical career is now heading for its twentieth year and she has come a long way in that time. Her first single, Locomotion, was an enormous hit in her native Australia, but it was supposed to be nothing more than a novelty song, riding on the back of her success in the soap opera Neighbours. Few people - Kylie included - could have anticipated that she would go on to become one of the most enduring pop singers of the nineties and beyond. Ultimate spans Kylie's complete career and, notably, includes offerings from every era and record label, across two discs.

Disc one could easily be referred to as the Stock Aitken and Waterman era. From 1988 to 1993, Kylie enjoyed enormous success on the PWL label. She had numerous number one singles (I Should Be So Lucky, Hand on Your Heart, Tears on My Pillow and Especially For You), all of which are included here and nearly every other single she released made the top ten.

Her first two albums (Kylie and Enjoy Yourself) stuck to a very simple, bubblegum pop formula and proved to be very lucrative for the singer, whom nobody really believed could actually sing. Indeed, it was strongly rumoured that Kylie Minogue was in fact Rick Astley, greatly speeded up. Or was it round the other way? Listening to the likes of Got To Be Certain, I Should Be So Lucky and Never Too Late now, the songs seem to have dated terribly. It's hard to listen to many of the tunes on the first disc without decreasing the volume, lest anyone hears exactly what you're listening too. This is eighties drivel at it's most drivelous and yet I still have a soft spot for them all. Never Too Late is probably my favourite, commercially probably the least successful but as Stock Aitken Waterman tunes go, a classic.

Album three (Rhythm of Love) spawned the birth of a new Kylie and even though she was still on the PWL label, she exerted some independence and creative input into her music. It was at this point that "Gay Disco Kylie" was invented with Better The Devil You Know and What Do I Have To Do capable of reducing excited queens into a quivering dance floor wrecks. The songs are timeless - play them in a gay club now, and the floor will fill up pretty quickly. These were anthems - and that's something that never really changes. Album four (Let's Get To It) couldn't sustain this material and Kylie decided to go all moody on us. The album still spawned a selection of top twenty hits, but nothing as memorable as previous albums and this is indicative by the absence of Finer Feelings and If You Were With Me Now, neither of which is included here. By the time the album had done the rounds, Kylie had had enough. She released her first Greatest Hits collection, complete with two new singles (Celebration, included here and What Kind of Fool, not included) and closed the door on this musical era in her life.

Looking back now, it's hard to imagine that she lasted as long as she did and disc one is a weak listening experience, Many of the tunes are tinny and - frankly - rather naff and it comes as no surprise that Kylie decided to move on. The SAW years should certainly be appreciated for the likes of Better The Devil You Know but this disc is hard work on the ears in 2005 and is unlikely to be played past one or two tracks.

Disc Two is by far the more superior of the collection, documenting all the things that Kylie has done since she left the clutches of Stock Aitken and Waterman.

Albums five and six (one again called Kylie Minogue and one called Impossible Princess) were Kylie's attempt to be trendy. Firstly, she hooked up with Brothers In Rhythm (they were trendy at the time), signed to DeConstruction (it was trendy at the time) and hit the clubs. Next she hooked up with the Manic Street Preachers and then quickly disappeared into the ether. I always felt that she was completely wasted on the label, who lacked the resources to really promote the singer and keep her in the limelight where she needed to be. This is actually a great shame, because she released some good material here. Only four singles have made it onto the second Ultimate disc though. Confide In Me, Put Yourself in My Place, Breathe and Did It Again (which should quickly be forgotten). Alongside other tracks on this disc, Ultimate Kylie serves only to remind us not nonly how wasted Kylie was but how underestimated the material is. Breathe is a fantastically moody, mature ambient dance song (with fantastic remixes not included here). Put Yourself in My Place was a sumptuous, gorgeous funky love song with a great Barbarella video. Neither of them made the top ten, when both should have been number one. They do, nonetheless, take their places here, along with the slightly odd Where The Wild Roses Grow, Kylie's duet with Nick Cave, where he sets about murdering her.

It was after a protracted absence that saw Kylie's true return to the top. Signed to another new label (Parlophone, the label on which Ultimate was released) Kylie wisely decided to stick to what she knew best and went back on the pop scene. The result was another number one (Spinning Around) and a successful album (Light Years) packed full of disco anthems. Ask any gay man what his favourite Kylie song is, and Your Disco Needs You is likely to be there, even though it was criminally never released as a single so doesn't make it here. The coup de grace came in 2002 when Kylie's best selling single, Can't Get You Out of My Head was released and gripped pretty much everyone, I think. Continued success followed and every single from the two Parlophone albums is included here, along with two new songs, I Believe In You and Can't Stop, both now released as singles.

Disc Two is a rich, interesting album full of different styles from pure pop (Can't Get You Out of My Head) to R & B (Red Blooded Woman). As an album in its own right it is pure gold, with every song being a classic and working strangely well as a collection. This is due in part to the decision not to place the songs in chronological order, but to mix them up a bit instead. The two new tracks are both classic songs in their own right - no fillers here - and the whole disc serves only to remind us of how versatile and funky Kylie has grown in her old age.

Overall, Ultimate Kylie is therefore very much a mixed bag. Disc one is there for the purists but for every else likely to be quickly skipped save a couple of songs. Disc two is by far the more accomplished of the two and in opposition to disc one, with this one you're likely to increase the volume in an announcement that you're listening to Kylie. Given that the album retails for the price of a single album, you can pretty much forgive the first disc and work on the basis that disc two alone is enough to justify the price. Ultimate Kylie won't win many new fans, but for a trip down Kylie memory lane it is the ultimate collection.

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Summary: Kylie's most recent Greatest Hits