Fembots (Have Feelings Too) - Part 1
Kylie Minogue's AphroditeIn recent years, pop and dance music has been infiltrated by robots, from the playful European electronic duo Daft Punk (who even dress as robots for live performances) to the digitally manipulated sounds from hip-hop crossovers like T-Pain, Lil' Wayne, and even Kanye West, who not only sampled one of Daft Punk's robo-hooks on his hit "Stronger," the rapper went and recorded an entire album of himself singing, with more than a little help from a now much reviled technology known as Auto-Tune. Even back in 2006, the last time there was a bonafide male dance-pop star making waves, Justin Timberlake was dropping tunes from an album half of whose title referenced the future.
But this is 2010: JT is on a Sade-like hiatus, hip hop is dying out, and the girls have taken over pop music in a way not seen since the late '80s-very early '90s. A lot has changed in the past year, that's for sure, but at least one similarity remains: robots. In a genre increasingly defined by its gleeful exploration of the role and effects of technology on music, robots represent the extreme (or is it the ultimate) of such exploration: a working, functional being that operates entirely without pesky limitations placed on living things (and, presumably, one that can be controlled by a certain living thing). In musical realms they're also, theoretically and demonstrably, the nightmare of the flesh-and-blood artist, who almost certainly knows the pain of being out of work. And since music, as any art form, is as often inspired by fear and doubt as anything else, it makes sense that so many of the major artists working in 2010 have flirted to some extent with the robot idea, some embracing it more than others but few of them entirely unmoved.
Summer 2010. To briefly lay the scene, the reverb from Beyonce's cyborg-armed Sasha Fierce may finally have died down, though the Black Eyed Peas were still fighting CG robots amid robo-chipmunk Fergie's exhortations to "rock that body;" new bad girl on the block Ke$ha had brought electronic pop into the mainstream with smash single "TiK ToK" and the accompanying album hadn't left the top 20 since its January release; the barely human double-track vocal line known loosely as "Rihanna" was enjoying another rather perturbing wave of chart success; and four of the more celebrated female veterans in pop music were lined up and ready, after lengthy absences, to drop their latest concoctions on a music scene that had grown almost unrecognizably different since their last appearance.

But while when Madonna's collaboration with Price was meant to serve as a one-time musical statement, an exercise in a genre with which she was familiar but not committed to, Minogue has been, for most of her career, a dance artist. It is telling, although I'm unsure what it is that's being said, that Aphrodite seems to fit smoothly into the Kylie Minogue repertoire to an extent that it suggests that this is the kind of music she's been making all along, when in reality Minogue hasn't been as unerringly electro-dance-centric since the one-two punch of Light Years and Fever in 2000 and 2001. Gone are any remnants of the smoldering mid-tempo tracks like "Slow" or the naughty, beat-driven pop of "Nu-di-ty," and even the pure upbeat joy of "Wow" has been shelved for the moment - and any recollection of them, too. Flawed though it may be, Aphrodite is easily the most cohesive, convincing album Minogue has put out, and that is indeed a feat worth noting.
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Minogue atop her mountain of sluts in the music video for "All The Lovers" |
"Dance...it's all I wanna do," Minogue croaks in the opening seconds of "All The Lovers," and she's not kidding (I lost count of how many life/love/dancing analogies were thrown around over twelve tracks). And since the 41-year-old has been dancing, and making people dance, for so long now, it's undeniably thrilling to surrender oneself to the presumed wisdom of someone who's been there and done that, and for the most part Minogue delivers, acting her age with knowing wisdom and not rueful jadedness, with the exception of "Illusion," an age-old "love/a boy made me lose my balance" fable suited for young naifs like Miley Cyrus but frankly unconvincing coming from a seasoned vet like Minogue. Interestingly, the singer's voice gradually gets higher and higher as the album progresses, and by "Cupid Boy" and "Looking For an Angel" it's unclear whether Kylie has discovered the Fountain of Youth or is ascending on a cloud higher and higher above the mortals on the ground, channeling her namesake goddess of love.
Either way gives me hope that Minogue will not now be hanging up the towel: Aphrodite is solid, good Kylie Minogue; not the best Kylie Minogue, nor even is it great Kylie Minogue. What it is, however, is a good penultimate or ante-penultimate album in a lengthy, storied, artistically and financially successful career for which any pop singer not named Madonna would give her right arm. But there's a bit more in this diminutive Aussie left for the dance-pop future, and until that comes and caps things off the way Minogue can and should, Aphrodite will do just fine in the meantime, thank you.
Next in the "Fembots" series: Christina Aguilera's Bionic................