Darenote
Pop, 2024
Kylie Minogue, the eternal queen of catchy vapidity, the cotton-candy pop princess who’s baffled and delighted us eldergays for decades. I confess, I’ve spent many an introspective evening attempting to decipher my fondness for her. As far as gay divas go, she’s quite the anomaly: no tragic backstory, no operatic drama, no phoenix-like rise from ashes (or rehab). Her greatest trials seem to involve whether to wear sequins or lamé. And let’s be real: the music isn’t exactly avant-garde, unless you count that one brave and doomed flirtation with experimental sounds in Impossible Princess. The moment glimmered briefly, then flickered out, never to return. Alas.
Still, I can’t help but keep a corner of my heart reserved for her most charmingly vapid moments. I’m talking about I Should Be So Lucky, the kind of delightfully saccharine nonsense you’d whistle while waiting in line at the grocery store. Or the X era, where her attempts at edginess felt more like watching your friend’s mom try pole dancing for the first time—endearing, but you wish she wouldn’t. There’s something to be said for a woman who can deliver unapologetically guilt-free, calorie-free pop without an ounce of pretension.
But then there’s Tension II, which leaves behind that effortless fluff for something far more calculated. It’s pop engineered for TikTok, soundtracked by songs that seem precision-timed to fit into a 30-second clip. In fact, let’s call this album what it is: “You made Padam Padam a hit, so here are some more of those. Go on, make them viral, chop chop!” Cynical? Perhaps. But she and her team wear their commercial ambitions as visibly as a Swarovski crystal encrusted dress.
The kick-off single Lights, Camera, Action practically begs to be the next lipsync anthem for RuPaul’s Drag Race, with lyrics made for fierce posing and finger-waving. Nothing inherently wrong with that, of course—but must we be so obvious, Kylie? There’s charm in subtlety, even for drag queens.
Still, there are some serviceable tunes here, albeit plagued by “Where have I heard this before?” syndrome. Dance to the Music and Kiss Bang Bang rehash that disco shtick she loves so dearly, but subdued to the point of being background music in a club that’s winding down for the night. The best of the solo tracks is Good as Gone, where a touch more energy and a hint of melancholy elevate it beyond “Please add me to your TikTok dance playlist.”
The real gems, surprisingly, are her collaborations. There’s something to be said for Ms Minogue’s willingness to work with artists from every nook of the dance world. The Sia collaboration, Dance Alone, sounds exactly like every other song Sia has released in the last five centuries, but Kylie Minogue’s touch somehow transforms it into a buoyant anthem of ‘70s revivalism—because who needs a boyfriend when you can disco away your sorrows? Then there’s Midnight Ride with Orville Peck, an eerie and moody number that recalls her duet with Nick Cave, yet also manages to be strangely fabulous. It’s like slow-dancing with a leather-clad serial killer, and yes, it’s somehow delightful.
The crown jewel, though, is Edge of Saturday Night with The Blessed Madonna, a track that outshines the rest of this album like a rogue disco ball on a deserted dancefloor. Shamelessly catchy, fiercely upbeat, and utterly unsubtle, it demands to be played at full volume, preferably while you risk breaking a hip. Of course, no album is perfect—My Oh My, featuring Tove Lo and Bebe Rexha, is the sonic equivalent of a headache: shallow lyrics, vocal fry galore, and an undercurrent of desperation that’s more unsettling than endearing.
In the end, Tension II is a passably entertaining, if conspicuously needy, album—just like the TikTok generation it pines for. It’s as if social media strategists and marketing mavens stitched it together, each track optimized for virality rather than musicality. Thank heavens for The Blessed Madonna and Orville Peck for keeping Kylie Minogue from completely morphing into a digital avatar. She may be flirting with artificiality, but at least she hasn’t totally lost her groove—yet.
