Kylie gives you her take on her disco heroes, from Donna Summer to Daft Punk
Kylie Minogue released Disco, her 15th album, in 2020 and it couldn't come soon enough.
"It felt like this day would never arrive," Minogue told Double J's Zan Rowe recently.
"[The] year has just been so peculiar. I think everyone's concept of time is so skewed. Maybe it's felt longer because we have mostly been home."
She's sold 70 million albums. She's one of the most iconic pop stars of the modern day. She's won just about every music award you can win.
But putting new music into the world still comes with a pang of fear and excitement.
"It's exciting," Kylie said. "It's a little nerve racking. I'm kind of waiting for the relief of just letting go and letting the songs do their own thing."
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It was on Minogue's last world tour, which hit Australia in 2019, that she conceived the idea of making a disco album.
"The seed was planted in 2018 on the Golden tour, which seems kind of weird, because that was the tour for an album that had the country influence," she said.
"But there was a section in the Golden tour which was our fantasy version of Studio 54. And I absolutely loved being there.
"It was the last section of the show, so you've got your adrenaline going, and you think 'this is it, this is the final push, we're gonna make it to the end'.
It’s times like this that we need people like Kylie Minogue"I'd come through the Studio 54 doors on stage. The gold dress and my singers and my dancers, they all had this attitude and the look and the way they would move…
"We were just pretending that we're at Studio 54, of course, none of us were and we can never be. But I think Studio 54 – it's imagery, its songs, its history – has that kind of pull, and that power. It's in your imagination, but you can dream that you were there.
"So, at that point in time, I knew I wanted to spend more time in that place. That's why I came to disco on this album.
"But it has been a lifelong love affair and I'm sure it will continue. I'm also sure that if I have the opportunity and the good fortune comes my way, I always like to try new things. I don't know what will be next."
Disco may have felt like the right next step for Kylie, but it also coincided with a resurgence in the genre's popularity. Kylie suspects current world events might have something to do with this renewed interest.
"A lot of my conversations these past couple of weeks are saying 'Well, there's a big appreciation for disco right now'," Kylie said.
"Jessie Ware, Dua Lipa, Miley Cyrus: lots of people are having success with disco.
"I know it can sound trite to kind of dance your troubles away. But there's some truth to that, to losing yourself and giving into the abandon.
"It's made me think more about disco being dressed in sequins and glitter and glamour. So much of that was escapism. Through hardship, trying to feel like you're lighter than air and you're transcending the world that you're trying to escape.
"When the light goes on that disco ball, it doesn't just light you, it lights the room. It lights everybody and the light carries on."
When joining Zan for the Take 5, Kylie Minogue chose the disco songs that speak to her. Check them out below.
Donna Summer – 'Love To Love You Baby'
There are a sum total of zero reasons not to choose this song. It is so epic, so steamy.
My parents record stack had different sorts of music. We had The Beatles and The Stones, Bonnie Tyler, The Kinks. Stevie Wonder was the parents' dinner party favourite double album.
Amongst those was Donna Summer's Bad Girls, which must have been after Love To Love You Baby. It was Bad Girls that I played on repeat, at way too young an age probably.
But, 'Love To Love You Baby' is just… I try to imagine what it was like to have made that, and to have heard that as a punter, as a listener, for the first time. It must have been mind-blowing.
I ended up working with Giorgio Moroder, he came on tour with me in Australia. So, I got to meet the great man himself and just trip over myself with gratitude and respect about his credits, his list of work, and the seismic shift in the music industry. It was just unreal.
My first demo that I ever recorded, I was 17 and I recorded three songs. Not so much to become a singer, it was more that I could maybe have more chance of getting an acting job if I had a cassette to show that I could sing.
One of those songs was 'Dim All The Lights' by Donna Summer. I've got a bit of a Donna Summer crush.
'Love To Love You Baby' is just an all-time, epic classic.
Earth, Wind & Fire – 'September'
It's no surprise this is their biggest hit.
I didn't listen to too much disco through making this record. It was more referencing songs that were just in my system, because they've been in my life for a long time.
Even songs that are kind of past their peak, but are still played at parties, weddings, celebrations. You're going to have 'We Are Family', you're going to have Chic, or Sly & the Family Stone, and the list goes on and on.
There's a song that didn't make it on my album. We loved it as a song, but it was written pre-committing to the disco concept. So, we tried to rejig it.
One of the things I did was look up 'September' on YouTube and listen to that. I was trying to explain how we could maybe rework this song to fit the agenda.
I listened to 'September', I listened to some backing versions of September, and was able to – just as a guide, not to not to rip it off – but just to see if any of these lyrics or content would work in this world.
It didn't. But it did remind me how awesome that song was.
During the writing sessions [for Disco], if it would veer off to be a bit too electronic or a bit too dance – as opposed to disco dance – I would quickly get my phone, YouTube any Earth Wind and Fire song, and just thrust the frame of my phone to the camera on Zoom.
'Look at this! Just look at the colours, look at the vibe, look how they're feeling. Just that kind of the looseness and the abandon'.
I really didn't want to go anywhere near a pastiche version [of disco], with flares or whatever else.
I don't know if [Earth, Wind & Fire] thought they were amazing, but it looks like they thought they were amazing.
Gloria Gaynor – 'I Will Survive'
She is singing for her life. She is finding a way out of that situation. There's so many examples like that. It became an anthem for anyone who needed it.
You can hear these songs and appreciate them. Dance along and do your dance moves and enjoy and celebrate.
But, I am quite sure that somewhere underneath there, you recognise that you're either feeling good because you're not in that moment. Or, if you need to find solace in a song and feel less alone, a song like this can do that.
It's just another song on this list that will always, always, always be played.
Bee Gees – 'Night Fever'
A friend of mine sent me the ABBA movie – a film that I had never seen until this year – which is incredible. It's like a drama documentary, some of it's real, and some of it is scripted.
There's a point where a journalist or a critic is saying, 'If you dismantle an ABBA song, take all the pieces apart, you will put it back together the same way'. Meaning it's absolute perfection.
I almost had an ABBA song in this Take 5 list, but I feel the same way about Bee Gees' 'Night Fever'. You cannot imagine it any other way.
I have covered this song. I covered it for a French album that was all about Night Fever. Interestingly, I recorded it with Stuart Price who's an awesome producer. When we did it straight up, we both kind of went well. 'Yeah, that's that. But so what?'
I think that's because my falsetto, that's quite an easy place for me to be. But, when it's a man singing that falsetto, it gives it that otherworldly, just 'wow' quality. I think we raised it up just to try to aim to be anything near as captivating as the original was.
But yeah, it's just a classic.
Daft Punk – 'Around The World'
If I was trying to think of any point in time where someone reinvented disco, it has to be Daft Punk. I think I nearly wore my CD out. Honestly. Between Daft Punk and Air. I just played them all the time.
Daft Punk, remaining mysterious, taking over the world. Almost as if Kraftwerk met disco or something. It was totally delicious and energising.
Disco is out now.
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