Daring and Effortlessly Cool: Christianoshi Picks His Ten Favorite Kylie Songs
Christianoshi is a London-based singer, songwriter, producer and DJ whose music stands strong in the same glimmering electronic pop tradition that shines its lustrous glow on Pet Shop Boys, Erasure and Marc Almond. His knowledge of the genre is encyclopedic, his taste immaculate, his songs exciting and timeless. Examples of his impressive talents can be found on his Four to the Floor EP, which he released earlier this year. He is also, as we are, a massive Kylie Minogue fan, so we asked him to do the impossible – select his ten favorite songs by the world’s greatest pop star. His list surpasses the highest expectations. He did a brilliant job, so read on…
10. “Enjoy Yourself”
It was ”Got To Be Certain” and ”Turn It Into Love” that almost represented 80sKylie, but this album title track wins out thanks to it closing my favourite Kylie gig of all time – 2012’s Anti-Tour, an unusually intimate show where she performed only B-sides and rare tracks. It was a genius idea and I experienced one of my most liberating moments, embracing my stan self.
9. “In The Mood For Love”
Recording upwards of 50 tracks per album session means fans are occasionally treated to unreleased leaks, and two came courtesy of Mylo himself when he was quite-rightly pissed off not to have his productions make the final cut for 2007’s X. Kylie brings her trademark breathiness and la-la-las to this squelchy electro-pop summer jam which contains a middle-8 that is a thing of beauty.
8. “Your Disco Needs You”
I successfully used this live a capella video from 2010’s Aphrodite: Les Folies tour to quell my vocal coach’s recent accusations that Kylie is “a great performer but no singer”, making him watch it right through to the operatic end since he is an opera singer himself. I also removed one of his gay stripes for being unaware of Kylie’s most homo anthem – I mean, the middle-8 is in spoken German and precedes a key change!
7. “Sleepwalker”
Kylie’s recent collaboration with Fernando “Born This Way” Garibay was a free EP released as a fresh antidote to the disappointing Kiss Me Once album, which found little by way of musical evolution. It has to be said my fandom has waned since the past decade has been spent trying to emulate a supposed “Kylie sound” instead of realising it’s the era reinventions that make her songs so “Kylie”. But this melding of Robyn-style emotopop and CaribbeanKylie restores my faith in La Minogue as a pop chameleon. The video was quite evidently directed by her stylist but it contains great segueing of the EP’s contents – it’s only “Chasing Ghosts” that is excluded.
6. “Skirt”
This pre-album buzz track was released as a Beatport exclusive in 2013, shortly after Kylie joined Roc Nation and had worked with every hit producer in the US, suggesting EDMKylie was nigh. Sadly nothing of its ilk materialised on the delayed album a year later and this could be her only venture into dubstep in which “the drop” is inevitably treated as the climax to a build-up of sexual groaning. Easily the best song title in her vast repertoire, “Skirt’s” delightfully-noisy verses make way for a gorgeous chorus melody, occurring only twice thus demanding repeat plays.
5. “Where The Wild Roses Grow”
Despite spending her entire pop career contributing to interesting side projects, collaborations like this mid-90s unlikely turn as a singing corpse still take people by surprise. More recent examples include her acapella feature on the Flight Facilities album, and French-speaking role and Neil Hannon-composed showtune singing in art house film Holy Motors, directed by Léos Carax, whose only knowledge of Kylie up to that point was the video clip to this beautifully morbid duet with fellow Melbournian Nick Cave.
4. “Too Far”
Considering the majority of her hits are written by others, many would be surprised to learn she is the sole writer of this schizophrenic D’n’B album track from Impossible Princess, her most masterful and personal work from 1997. I hope she starts taking more risks again now she’s rumoured to have ditched both the label and management who frustratingly didn’t appear to get her as an artist.
3. “Better The Devil You Know” / “Step Back In Time” / “What Do I Have To Do” / “Shocked”
I found a cheat with this live performance medley from a decade later because who could seriously choose between the Rhythm Of Love singles run from 1990-91? Michael Hutchence had truly sexed her up and this titillating (I love that word) image can be seen naturally to develop across all four videos watched chronologically.
2. “Come Into My World” (Fischersponer Mix)”
This 2002 remix saw Kylie bring NYC performance art to the TOTP studios. I was very much into electroclash at the time, so this collaboration blew my mind. I read in Mixmag that Casey Spooner described her as a “non-stop super slut power robot” and I became attached, naming a piece of work on my music degree course after it. The video to the original is one of Kylie’s best and was directed by French visionary Michel Gondry.
1. “Confide In Me”
As “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” became something of a global self-fulfilling prophecy and a little too overplayed to bother my list (though the updated tour version is too hot to not mention), “Confide In Me” from 1994 is more of an underrated Kylie milestone. Like “…Head”, this, too, was daring and effortlessly cool yet surprising to both a general public used to her trademark bubblegum sound and fans who had assumed a label switch to Deconstruction would mean less pop, more house. Instead we were treated to this beautiful, commanding, strings-swathed, Middle Eastern-infused, trip hop-imbued, The Doors-sampling, sultry pop opus.
Christianoshi’s Four to the Floor EP is out right now on the artist’s own Bad Boyfriend label, and you can hear so much more of his music via his Soundcloud page.