Poor Review of Poor Reviews
A Kylie-lover's reaction to an article entitled "Poor Reviews For Latest Kylie Incarnation". The original article: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/20000609/A47144-2000Jun8.html (Clicking link will open a new window. Below, quotes from this article are in italics and bounded by lines)
In June of 2000, www.theage.com.au (a website bearing the name of a popular Australian newspaper) featured a story (credited to AAP) about Kylie Minogue that, upon stumbling across, i just had to write about. Firstly, though, a note on the title. The article is supposedly about "Poor reviews" for the song Spinning Around and the album Light Years, and yet NOWHERE does it critisize the characteristics of the song itself. NOWHERE does it make reference to any such criticism. NOWHERE do we find any actual REVIEW. (Thank you, this has been a public service announcement authorised by David A. Elliott.)
But the pose for the cover of GC magazine - modelled on the Athena poster in which a white-clad tennis player lifts her dress to scratch her behind - and other more revealing poses have drawn a weary reaction from the British press, as has her new single.
"Is there anything Kylie won't do to get publicity?" ran a headline in the Daily Mail.
"Struggling to recapture the early heights of her career, perhaps a little risque modelling is her only chance of grabbing the spotlight these days," the paper said."
-Why would that be her only method of "grabbing the spotlight" - couldn't she just release one of her most successful albums of all time? Oh wait, that IS what she was doing at the time of the quoted article...
The Express, chronicling Minogue's dwindling chart success through several incarnations in the '90s, said she had "packed more comebacks under her size six belt than Frank Sinatra"."
-"Comebacks"? You mean, "releasing a new album"? That's an interesting way to characterise it. "Hey, has anybody bought the latest comeback by Britney Spears yet?"
I suppose, in order to refer to her "comebacks", The Express must have noticed the strange pattern Kylie has shown: she releases an album, it is successful, and then, oddly, for two or three years there's nothing! Then she releases another album, gets another spike in notoriety, and then another one of those bizarre periods where she isn't mentioned... and then BAM! Another inexplicable spike in popularity, once again mysteriously preceded by the release of another album! Hey wait a second...
-"Ressurect the musical career"? What, did she quit music to work at Safeway in between "Impossible Princess" and "Light Years"?
-An obvious attempt at characterising her life as a sequence of quitting on various careers. I know i used to go to primary school, but i quit that for high school. Then i characteristically shelved THAT plan for an education at University. I may even quit once again to get a job, once that's over with! Gosh, i'm such a quitter.
I'd like to note the sentence "before quitting pop to seek film stardom" - that's really odd, because i thought they'd just pointed out her inability to stick to acting? I also like the way they describe her "shelving that plan to become a rock chick, before bidding to become a dance floor diva" - isn't this all during her musical career? Aren't they essentially the same job? God forbid she should introduce variety into her work - no, thats not what artists do at all.
I suppose it's less dramatic and derogatory to describe her as "Been successful in the entertainment industry ever since Neighbours", or, more accurately, "Moved from a mildly successful television career (albeit on a cruddy soapie) to a phenomenonly successful musical career, while still working in acting".
Also interesting that they describe her seperate careers of "rock chick" and "dance floor diva" (Is that what it says on her passport??) - references to the different styles of Impossible Princess and Light Years - as if they were major changes. Interesting because i just assumed it was a rather normal thing for an artist to release albums that don't sound exactly the same. I mean, so that the audience can tell them apart, you know. Sheesh, i'm glad the author of THIS piece isn't in the music industry, or we might end up with the same album being released over and over and over and over again.... wait a minute... IT'S JOHNNY WRIGHT!**
-ROTFLMHO!! There was only one new album in-between "Confide In Me" and this article - and while it was probably her least successful collection of songs, it was still pretty damn successful. *Cough* *cough*, number 10 in the UK charts, *cough* *cough*. (Not to mention it's reputation of being her best album to date.)
-Read in context with the surrounding sections (see above and below), this is another attempt to characterise her as a loser, as somehow a part of the list of her "failures". I'm sure the author of the article was rubbing it's hands with glee at that little tidbit of information, "Oh, what a powerful indicator of her woeful performance! Anyone whose CD gets renamed is obviously desperate!" Good one. And, no, it wasn't renamed everywhere. And, no, it didn't HAVE to be withdrawn or renamed either, it was merely an act of respect by the distributers (albeit a rather lame and missplaced act of respect, but an act of respect nonetheless. Urk).
-Yes, those are essential moves, without which she would have failed miserably and been thrown out on the streets. I'm sure The Age (yes, this one is a part of the AAP article presented on The Age's website (a newspaper whose pretensions toward good journalism are well known), not a quote from the notoriously low quality "Daily Mail" or "The Express") and friends have ample evidence from Kylie that her connection to Robbie Williams was a desperate and pathetic attempt at being popular. They just forgot to quote it. Yeah, that's it. That must be it.
-Well, The Express clearly knows it's stuff. (Note: since the original article was published, "Spinning Around" reached number ONE on both the UK and Australian charts).
-Oh so Britney Spears distributes the wealth, interesting. I could have SWORN there was more than ONE pop singer out there, and i really can't remember Britney ever dropping by to tell me what music to like. Guess i was wrong. Well, who am i to argue with that bastion of good journalism, The Express.
-Trying to escape? Oh, THATS why all the Kylie albums of the nineties are so unapolagetically poppy (yes, even Impossible Princess to an extent), it's like, "reverse psychology", or something, she was trying to make it look like she loved producing pop music, in order to fool us all! But The Express can't be fooled! No Sir! Nothing gets by these mental giants!
David Elliott, 18th January 2002