Album Review: Golden by Kylie Minogue

After a long career full of many course corrections and detours, it seemed like Kylie Minogue was locked into being a shiny, glittery dance pop icon for life. A label change and some personal turmoil in the form of a soul-shattering breakup sent Minogue looking for something new musically. When planning her first album for BMG, a label rep asked if she had ever thought of recording country music in Nashville and she jumped at the chance.

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Kylie Minogue has been beating the disco drum in one form or another for the better part of three decades now, so it's no surprise that the pop singer would feel inclined to try something new. Born and raised in Australia's second-most populous city, Minogue doesn't exactly have deeps roots in the Outback, but her transition from dancing queen to bush balladeer on the Nashville-influenced Golden isn't without precedent: Fellow Aussie Olivia Newton-John famously made a similar, albeit reverse, move in the 1980s, and Minogue's 2012 album The Abbey Road Sessions proved she's capable of holding her own in a stripped-down, acoustic setting. Still, it's surprising just how comfortably Minogue slips into country music here, the cadence in her voice at times vaguely reminiscent of Dolly Parton's, particularly on songs that fully commit to the aesthetic tenets of the genre, like the anthemic “A Lifetime to Repair.

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Within the past year, Nashville seems to have put out a bat-signal for popstars of the '00s. Country-pop has come a-calling for them all: it made Justin Timberlake embrace the Donald-Trump-Jr-outdoors aesthetic for 'Man of the Woods'; it made Gwen Stefani tap up her boyfriend Blake Shelton for her festive shindig 'You Make It Feel Like Christmas'; and, following her fascinating Flaming Lips psych-pop trip '…& Her Dead Petz', it even made Miley Cyrus scurry back to her family's roots with 2017's 'Younger Now'. Before you know it, Britney and Xtina will be donning rhinestone boots and duetting about the joys of southern grits - but first, enter international treasure Kylie Minogue with her 14th album, 'Golden'.

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The tie that binds the many phases of Kylie Minogue's career is a dedication to dance-pop. Rarely has the Australian superstar strayed far from tunes that split the difference between chart-conscious accessibility and dance-floor grooves. What constitutes such a track is a moving target, and it's allowed her to mutate with the music across her 25-year plus career.   Golden, Minogue's 14th full-length, opens a new front on that balance: country. Opener and lead single "Dancing" is a great addition to the Kylie singles arsenal of earworms ….

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