#4: Kylie Minogue - Get Outta My Way

Essentially, this is the kind of pop I grew up listening to - fun and fresh, yet musically proficient in more ways than one. So essentially, this Kylie song in particular would have no problem climbing up my list this year.


If anything, this was the song that ultimately pulled me through several big, and difficult, events this year, and that would've been enough to put the song high on the list, but the fact that it's so damn brilliant puts it comfortably at 4th place - it's more than worthy in my opinion. (LOL but I made the list, so everything's worthy in my eyes)

THIS is how things are, and should be, done in pop - even with all this brilliance happening throughout the song, it's very light to the ears. The production is very clear, but also very dynamic and somehow, the instruments all together, no matter how loud they may be, end up sounding very floaty. For some strange reason when I talk about how the song's light, the first thing that comes to my mind is jell-o - it sounds like jell-o, it's very tasty but it's rather light for food. OK that came out strange, I hope you got my point.

Everything about Get Outta My Way is brilliant. But I think I've already said that a gazillion times. The synth and piano lines are gorgeous, the percussion, although obviously computerized, matches the song very well, and the way everything was arranged - from the explosions to the settling to the fade at the and - makes the entire package sound so effortlessly fun. To the point where this could be the music for one of those commercials where there's this boring office and boring corporate stuff then this comes on and someone starts dancing like a madwoman and everyone around her glares at her before they join in and then somehow, magically, they get transported to some random island where they have this huge party.

Do you get me? I hope you do. I'm sorry, I must be really desperate to get something written down right now for me to talk about jell-o and commercials. Just watch the video and prepare to be blown away.

Kylie - Aphrodite

Yes people, I'm back! I won't babble about what happened to me while I was gone 'coz I don't feel like it and you wouldn't wanna hear it, so I'll just write.

Kylie, Kylie, Kylie. I wasn't blogging about English songs that much when Aphrodite (the single) was literally unleashed, but I clearly remember professing my love for it upon my return. So why not write my first album review in quite a while? Hmmm.

One thing I miss about a lot of Western singles and albums is that I don't have to tell the artists off about such basic things - no more questioning where the melody is and giving lessons in cohesion or even lack of vocal ability, no more kicking and screaming 'coz the production sucks. For seasoned "professionals" like Kylie, these things are natural - my only business is whether the songs themselves are good and if I like them.


I remember just starting my sojourn into the wonderful world of pop music when X came out, and I remember not listening to it for months but when I did, my jaw dropped. I've heard all the standard Kylie singles (who hasn't?) and I liked some of what I heard, but I know for a fact that I personally never become a huge fan of an artist until I myself experience an album release. And here it is.

Megamixes and samplers usually don't do justice to new albums (see: GA's Out of Control), but holy crap I was in love with the megamix and I'm practically worshipping the album - it's like you get the Koreans' ability of making bad songs sound good for teasers and use it on good songs. YESSSSSSSSS.

All The Lovers is, in one word, calming. It's epic, yes, and Kylie's vocals are nice and light, but put all those together and you get something very calming. It most certainly doesn't hit you over the head because this is Kylie, she doesn't do hitting-over-the-head anymore, she does blowing you away. All the Lovers is solid proof that you don't have to assume your listeners have ADD to be able to make a good pop song. The running synth lines and the possibly cheesy but not cheesy background vocals finish everything off - spectacular.

The people who didn't like Get Outta My Way when they heard it on the megamix are now eating their words - I TOLD YOU IT WAS BRILLIANT. While everyone was raving about other songs, I was rejoicing Get Outta My Way and the fact that it's the second single. It's a contrast to Aphrodite in the sense that it's nice and fun and cheery while Aphodite is epic and Kylie's saying "I'm the goddess - worship me," but they're both still very light - even if Get Outta My Way is cheery, the instrumentals are very light, there isn't a lot of it. The song as a whole, in Filipino is "Bihasa" - Kylie knows what the hell she's doing on this, and it takes a certain skill to pull it off. I love the piano loop, everything about the instrumental, and the melody just blows me away - how there's a mini-explosion on the transition from the verse to the chorus.

I'm not feeling the verses of Put Your Hands Up (If You Feel Love), but I like the chorus - it's very Kylie. Reminds me a bit of Stars on X. That and I LOVE the middle 8. Which reminds me, I better keep track of how many brilliant middle 8s there are on this album - that's one, and two. The only part of Closer that I really love is the percussion part. The verses and the melody's OK, really freaky and sci-fi-ish, but it's a matter of taste for me. I like the percussion part because it's crisp and it has conviction, I like convincing percussion parts.

Everything Is Beautiful is another really Kylie song (I think?) - it sounds like something I think my dad will like. It sounds very British, ala-Robbie Williams (actually, a lot like Robbie), then you have Kylie's signature elements like the running synth line and the crisp percussion parts throughout the entire album - I like it, A LOT. OK it's a Robbie melody slapped on a Kylie instrumental, that's it.

I hope no one kills me for saying this but parts of Aphrodite remind me of After School's Bang!. The drum rolls and actually even the melody of the verses really sound like the AS song to my ears. The chorus of course is all Kylie, even if it goes through me a bit. It's much more dynamic than Bang!, and I think that makes the song for me - I like dynamics, and the drum rolls hit a soft spot.

I love the synths on Illusion, they're so Euro. Other than that I have mixed feelings - it's OK, but nothing special. The melody sounds a bit resonant to my ears, but I do like the string section on the middle 8 and how the synths play a big part on the chorus. Better Than Today has very interesting synths at the beginning, but the song sounds a lot like something for the sound track of this American chick-flick that they play at the end of the movie just before the credits roll and they show this slideshow of outtakes or whatever. I'm serious!

Too Much was one of the songs I was initially bracing myself for when I heard the megamix, and I still wasn't ready. I love how it just kinda explodes and here we go again with the very crisp percussion line - can I die now? It's sooooooo Kylie. The guitar line at the beginning of Cupid Boy reminds me of Since You've Been Gone. I believe this was the song a lot of people were freaking out over when the megamix came out, but I don't know, I'm not feeling it. I mean yeah it's like a more intense Aphrodite with a guitar line and all sorts of stuff running around, but I'm not sold.

I LOVE the string section on Looking For An Angel, and I LOVE how the thing builds up but doesn't. And I love how it builds up then builds back down. I missed music like this, I really did. Reminds me of Aphrodite with a more prominent percussion part. Aphrodite wraps up with Can't Beat the Feeling, and I'm blown away - it's a lot like Get Outta My Way, only different. (duh? duh.) It's fun, and I love the synths.

You can't just read a few reviews and get the sound from there, trust me when I say you have to hear Aphrodite to really feel it. You do!

Best Track: Get Outta My Way or Everything Is Beautiful
Better Tracks: Aphrodite, All The Lovers, Put Your Hands Up (If You Feel Love), Too Much
Worst Track: None of them.
4.9/5

I. AM. BACK. Part 2!

Yes - there's a part 2! I wasn't originally gonna write more for a while, but after I published that post last night I realized what I had missed. And of course, since I won't really have the time to write full-length reviews until the weekend, this will have to suffice until the weekend. School starts tomorrow - give me some time to adjust to a new class and new subjects!

Sometimes I think my readers (if I even have any regular ones) have forgotten that I'm first and foremost an English music blogger - I built the foundations of PRN on British and American music, not kpop. Asian music was just an afterthought - when I started blogging about kpop PRN was already established. Ugh but enough of that.

This is like ages old, but I never wrote about it on a blog of my own (they've always been comments on Ken's and Jio's blogs) so I thought why not. I've never liked the idea of Charice - a girl who makes her voice sound like a 40 year-old on purpose. She's talented, I won't deby her that, but it's a personal taste that I don't like voices like hers. In comes an argument I find stupid - why should I support her if I don't even like her? People always say "support Charice, she's Pinay!" but I refuse to, because I don't like her music or her voice. Why will I put my support behind someone I don't think is any good? Because we come from the same country? Because she has a sob story to tell? I look at music, at taste and aesthetics, not personality and background - if I judged an artist based on how he acted or whatever, then that person shouldn't be called an artist. What makes it worse is that in comes stupid David Foster - what does that guy know about music? I mean yeah sure he wrote a few pop hits here and there but he hasn't really done anything ground-breaking. *sigh* Whatever.

Exactly how long was Usher #1 in the US? I don't even wanna know, but just seeing blogger friends annoyed about how he's still number one week in and week out annoys me. I heard OMG back in April, and by the end of the song I was like So where's the song? - it goes nowhere. The melody's boring and Usher's trying to do this "lay low" R&B whatever but he clearly can't. Give me something as good and epic as Yeah!, Confessions or Burn, then we'll talk.

I tried listening to the new Miley song without the video (since the first time I heard it I was watching the video), and it's not as bad as it originally sounded. I still don't like it, but as a song it sounds like Miley a few years after Hannah Montana, and she is Miley a few years after Hannah Montana started. What's happening to Miley right now kinda reminds me of what happens to a lot of popular kpop girl groups - their talent company pushes a "radical change" or whatever and it really looks like they changed because the videos are racy, the performances are scandalous and everything looks different, but you hear the music and it doesn't fit the look. Can't Be Tamed kinda matches her new look though, but I can still hear traces of the "old" Miley.

You guys thought I forgot Kylie, didn't you? I wasn't that engrossed in kpop world not to notice. Shame on you! LOL.

When Kylie's All the Lovers came out, I remember all my blogger friends going crazy. I listened, and though I didn't say it, I loved it. I really did. I got my hands on the Aphrodite megamix today and here we go again - I'm in love. The first song is probably the most brilliant 'coz it's so cheery and whatnot, but everything else is just WHOA. I like. Nine and a half minutes of brilliance? Nine and a half minutes of brilliance. Well, it looks like I'll be waiting for the album then - I'll expound (LOL) on all the songs when it's out then. Yayyyy.

New Music!

Haven't done this in quite a while, let's get this rolling!

• I posted about this already, but let me repeat it. Beyonce's Rock would probably be my favorite song had I discovered it earlier and had it been included on the final album. Seriously, how can a brilliant song like this just be thrown at the wayside? It's much better than Halo, in my opinion.
• Thanks to Anthony over at Luckystar for posting Six's This Is It! Seriously, I'd been looking for that album for ages and no one had it! I'll whip up a review sometime this week as a thank you to Anthony.
• I was beginning to wonder where Lady Sovereign had gone but just as I was about to find out for myself, I found her new song, I Got You Dancing and I'm not a big fan of it. I remember when she had just broken the US markets and was all over TRL, I was a big fan of the show so I always saw her video. At first I loathed it but it eventually it grew on me, there's something about her that makes me curious, so I guess that's a good thing. Who knows, this might grow on me.
• I'm loving Elin Lanto's Speak and Spell even more now. I mean, I loved it before but it's slowly becoming a brilliant song with and even better melody. Swedish really make the best pop music. I mean, where else can you get singers like Agnes Carlsson and Elin Lanto who make the most amazing pop? haha..
• Mya's new album, Sugar and Spice is absolutely amazing. There are some songs that are a bit shaky, but some songs that just blow me away. Highlights for me are Paradise, One For You, Cry No More and All In Your Mind. 
• Kylie and Coldplay did a duet for AIDS day sometime back. I lover Kylie and I love Coldplay but somehow the song just doesn't work for me.
• There are two new Chris Brown songs circulating the music blogs, Save Me and Celebrity. They're good! Although I kind of like Celebrity better, it's got a better melody.
• Speaking of Chris Brown, he's on the new Got Milk? ad, which is cool!

• And lastly, I've correctly predicted yet ANOTHER post-album single! Alesha Dixon's second single from The Alesha Show is Breathe Slow! Remember me expressing my adoration for the song? Yeah. Gorgeous song, although I'm not a big fan of the video. Watch it though, it's worth at least trying.