Digby Warde-Aldam

Disposable dance-pop at its best and a Lennon-lite yawnfest. Kylie and George Michael’s new albums reviewed

George Michael and Kylie Minogue have albums out this week. And while they might both be distinctly second-division these days, they’re both still rather remarkable. George Michael got famous for not being Andrew Ridgeley, and has since redefined the status of adult-oriented pop. He has also written the only Christmas song in history worth playing all year round and made the Hampstead branch of Snappy Snaps a tourist destination. I like him a lot.

Minogue, meanwhile, is cheesy, knowing and resolutely budget in the international diva stakes. As Aldi is to Waitrose, so Kylie is to Beyoncé. But she’s made some terrific records – have you given up pretending you don’t like Can’t Get You Out of My Head yet? – and while she may not be a proper, meat-dress superstar, she’s extremely likeable as a popstar. She has a certain quality that’s hard to finger… what’s it called again? Oh yes: identity. Her records may be cheap and cheerful, but they’re definitely Kylie.

So it comes as a disappointment to hear her new single, Into the Blue. It could be by anybody – or at least by anybody in possession of a pair of sort-of-ironic hotpants and the services of an American Hip-Hop producer. The rest of Kiss Me Once is absolutely champion, mind. I Was Gonna Cancel is the obvious knockout: a fashionably chopped up dance beat and the church bells from Blondie’s Rapture bounce away under Kylie’s best nudge-wink vocal delivery in years.

The dull r’n’b of the single excepted, everything else here could have been made almost any time between 1979 and now. It’s disposable dance-pop at its best, which is a very good thing indeed. No delusions of seriousness, artistry or opinion pass through it. It’s pure escapism and it’s lovely.

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