Kylie Minogue

heartmightmelt

heartmightmelt

Juango said:
I was a young gay but I don’t remember Slow being popular. I think it’s a classic now, and think it was really ahead of it’s time.
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Alcazarized said:
It did feel like a bit of a setback at the time. I Believe in You and Ultimate Kylie seemed at the time like a definite attempt to reset things (on a 'pop' course), almost like What Kind of Fool at Greatest Hits 87-92 just over a decade before.
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Ultimate Kylie and the Showgirl tour absolutely was a course correct, and it worked. She sold almost a million CDs and DVDs off the back of it.

"Slow" was given the cold shoulder by pop culture for a year or so - I read a lot of nasty comments about "Slow" from journalists and commentators over 2004, but I genuinely think that by putting it near the start of Ultimate Kylie and not buried near the back meant that people really rediscovered it, found that they really loved it and it became the Kylie classic it is now. Every tour it comes out and gets a on-the-money rework, and it just seems to grow in stature. I guess it helps that it sounded like nothing else in 2003 which means it has aged marvellously.
 
heartmightmelt

heartmightmelt

Here's a paraphrased example of a comment about "Slow" than one of the Q journalists wrote in mid-2004:

"Kylie blew it on trying to hard to do edgy instead of forgetting to make the kind of songs the public wants her to make... again. Perhaps she should leave herself a post-it in the studio"
 
Applause

Applause

I don't know how it translated to chart positions or sales here, but I remember "Slow" being quite big in Spain based on the fact that she shot the video on a Barcelona rooftop dd. We also stanned Mariah's "My All" because it had a remotely-Spanish guitar.
 
nikkysan

nikkysan

he/him
Slow literally hasn't aged a day, her finest single (and she would agree!). I really hate that pop artists are regularly penalized when they decide to take any sort of risk after a hugely successful album or era because god forbid they try something fresh and new instead of releasing the same thing over and over again...
 
torontodj

torontodj

Slow is a masterpiece. Would most likely be my 11/10 in a Kylie Singles Rate.

Today I learned that the Slow video was choreographed by Mickey Rooney's son. I love those little tidbits.

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Rooneyboy

Rooneyboy

As a pop purist I was disappointed with Slow when it first came out, but some of my friends who preferred more edgy
dance music loved it. It was more cool than pop. But I loved Red Blooded Woman (still do) and they were pretty indifferent to it. Body Language is a solid album, maybe a bit too edgy for Kylie at the time perhaps?
 
MusicLover1994

MusicLover1994

I've always loved Slow, when I first heard Body Language I was actually on a cruise ship going to France and I remember the music video playing constantly on the TV's around the ship. I saw the album in a shop on the boat and I nagged my parents relentlessly for it (I was only 9).

They eventually bought it for me from the (according to my dad, ridiculously overpriced) shop and I spent most of the trip listening to the entire album on repeat.

I think that's a big part of why I've always loved Body Language, I associate it with loads of fond memories.
 
heartmightmelt

heartmightmelt

I think the short marketing period and the basic press write-ups for Body Language didn't help - the idea that the album was Kylie's concession to the contemporary American marketplace, filled with Neptunes cuts and tracks Blu Cantrell rejected and we'd all just have to suffer it, when in fact the album is closer to 1980's funk and pop than really anything else that the UK charts were then importing. Maybe she was aware of this perception that was building and perhaps that's why the visuals for the album leant heavy into mid-Century European imagery and aesthetics.
 
WhatKindOfKylie?

WhatKindOfKylie?

It would have been so easy for Kylie to do a direct sequel to Fever. I adore that album, but glad she didn't. One of the many reasons I love Kylie, is when she comes out and surprises us with something so unexpected. Padam Padam being the latest of so many excellent examples of this.
 
johnoclock

johnoclock

It's so weird to read that the album was branded as Kylie's "US" album when nothing on it other than Red Blooded Woman feels particularly geared to the US market and even that has a decidedly Kylie spin that I don't think would fly on US radio. Slow is like the most US radio repellent song I've ever heard and it was the first single! (I still adore it, it just wasn't going to get played along Ja Rule and 50 Cent). I think people just resent it for not being high BPM club pop like In Your Eyes and Love At First Sight, fans can get so weirdly territorial and possessive.
 
heartmightmelt

heartmightmelt

johnoclock said:
It's so weird to read that the album was branded as Kylie's "US" album when nothing on it other than Red Blooded Woman feels particularly geared to the US market and even that has a decidedly Kylie spin that I don't think would even fly on US radio. Slow is like the most US radio repellent song I've ever heard and it was the first single (I still adore it, it just wasnt going to get played along Ja Rule and 50 Cent). I think people just resent it for not being high BPM club pop like In Your Eyes and Love At First Sight, fans can get so weirdly territorial and possessive.
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I think the perception/reality disconnect was a particularly UK-thing.

The UK music industry gatekeepers and music press only cares if you are massive in the UK and if you can translate that to USA. More often than not, UK-grown music didn't translate well to America, for various reasons, so if someone started working with US producers and writers, the presumption was that they were changing the sound for the US market and The Sun's Bizarre column and all the rest of them would write it up as so.
 
johnoclock

johnoclock

heartmightmelt said:
I think the perception/reality disconnect was a particularly UK-thing.

The UK music industry gatekeepers and music press only cares if you are massive in the UK and if you can translate that to USA. More often than not, UK-grown music didn't translate well to America, for various reasons, so if someone started working with US producers and writers, the presumption was that they were changing the sound for the US market and The Sun's Bizarre column and all the rest of them would write it up as so.
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Interesting, so it was more a press thing than a fan thing? Because I think fans also harbor some unreasonable (in my personal opinion) animosity towards the album so I always assumed it was some sort of "oh she's doing this for them and not us" resentment.
 
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