Sadly not a tribute to “Kandypop”…
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[5.54]
Alex Macpherson: The final “fade to grey” stage of Kylie’s career is taking an awfully long time, is it not?
[2]
Mallory O’Donnell: For her “dancefloor roots” album’s second single, Kylie delivers a Supertramp-esque piano loop that segues into a post-Disney disco beat, over which she hovers like an autotuned specter, reduced by the chorus to singing through a desk fan. Apparently this wasn’t written for any specific artist. It shows.
[3]
Katherine St Asaph: She really isn’t going to give us another “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head,” is she? This graceful piano-dance whoosh is all well and good, but it’s sounding more and more like Kylie’s just pumping air into an empty husk.
[6]
Pete Baran: This is a perfectly put together pop dance number which is destined for about 11:15pm on the dancefloor; the connective tissue of a good night out.
[7]
Alfred Soto: She means it. And there’s at least six or seven of these relentless, airy dance arabesques on Aphrodite. Neither girl nor boy, much less a human being, she’s become a signifier of the kind of joy on which you can project anything from aspirational glee to gastronomical satisfaction. She wants your sex, your job, your key lime pie.
[7]
Chuck Eddy: Despite having something like two zillion different remixes available, I still can’t tell what’s supposed to make this song different from Kylie’s two zillion other alleged singles. Rap grunting in the background? Very faint Kate Bush echoes in the melody? But that probably just means I’m from the United States, where you can count all her pop hits on one hand. All else being equal, I’m fairly sure I’d take Kim Wilde.
[4]
Martin Skidmore: Another slow-burning medium-paced electro-dance number, kind of like her last one, if a little bouncier, but it doesn’t hit the ecstacy spot the way that one did, and Kylie herself sounds kind of functional on it. It’s not at all bad, but it sounds sort of dated, with its filter disco and Italian house piano moments, and feels an inch from being wonderful.
[7]
Michaelangelo Matos: Likeable and professional, that’s what she does, but also bland and too superclubby, which have always been her downsides. So down the middle of her particular road that there’s no scenery.
[5]
Asher Steinberg: Perhaps the trouble is that she’s so cool about things, so moved on, that she can’t bring herself to display any emotion towards the ex, even a convincing show of brusque dismissiveness. And then the song certainly isn’t about the exciting greener grass on the other side; notice the ridiculously clipped syncopated way she sings the words ‘stranger’ and ‘danger,’ like she’s just reading them off a cue card.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: “Wanna feel the danger”, she coos, but this song is so sterile, so professional, frictionless that even its myriad lyrical barbs glide right past. Needs a bit more venom or bite or something because as agreeable as the melody is, it doesn’t rise anything beyond above average dance-pop. Good tune but suffers the same problem as her last album’s “Wow” – it hits neither viscerally nor emotionally. Above average Kylie is good enough for me but with the personnel she had on Aphrodite she should have been shooting for more than this.
[7]
Josh Langhoff: Typically euphoric, if not quite my favorite song off Aphrodite. Kylie steamrolls not just over her zombified guy, but over normal syllabic stress placement. I love the piledriver effect when she starts changing notes every third syllable: “SEEmewith HIMandit’s TURNingyou ON”; and then the meta-kicker, “GETtingme BACKatthe ENDofthe SONG” — she dismisses the very idea! And of course we all know the real problem here: “You’re goin’ hard now to win my heart but / Too many times now you’ve been comin’ up short.” Gillette and Barbara Carr couldn’t have said it any better, and they definitely wouldn’t have said it as prettily.
[8]
Jer Fairall: Just as the positively euphoric “All The Lovers” keeps getting better with each spin, this one is already wearing out its welcome by the time it reaches its limp chorus. A particular shame given first 0:40 promise something on the level of its predecessor’s openhearted generosity: “You’re getting boring / you’re oh so boring / and I don’t recognize the zombie you’ve turned into” registers as sweetly empathetic in its call to a sad introvert to join Kylie on her all-are-welcome dance floor until the thing reveals itself to be another catty, treat-her-right finger wag. Getting boring, indeed.
[5]
Jonathan Bogart: Lovely, inessential.
[6]