Take A Seat! Let’s Grander & Chat With Queen Of Pop Kylie Minogue In A New Interview!
“When Kylie Minogue approached her 15th album with the goal of “going back to the dance lane,” it should have been an easy task for the Australian legend — after all, she has 14 No. 1s on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart to her name. But 2020 had other plans. “Lockdown happened, and I had to figure out how to do everything remotely,” says Minogue, who has turned her London flat into a DIY studio during the pandemic. “I thought, ‘If 11-year-olds can do this in their bedroom, I can figure this out.’ ” Thanks to many Zoom calls and a few audio-suite crash courses, she did; Disco will arrive Nov. 6. “Now that it’s kitchen disco for most of us,” she says, “you have to create your own world.”
Braumer VMX:
Minogue started preliminary work on Disco using a Shure SM7B microphone she had around the house while waiting patiently for the arrival of a pricier one in the mail. “Opening the case for the Brauner VMX was such a moment,” she recalls. “It was very exciting to get the equipment, fire up my logical-rational brain and find the right place in the house to put it. I was dragging [around] duvets and blankets and clothes racks to make [my lounge room] good for sound.”
Logic:
Switching from GarageBand to Logic, Minogue says the audio workstation intuitively made sense to her “Mac brain,” and she was able to self-record her vocals and send them to her producers. “I got really into it, and I’m annoyed with myself it took this long for me to get a handle on it,” she says. “It’s good to add new skills to your set.”
Purple Rain Vinyl:
While making her Nashville-flavored 2018 album, Golden, Minogue placed a Dolly Parton record atop her stack of personal LPs; for Disco, she swapped Parton for Prince’s Purple Rain. “It’s not quite disco, but it’s in that awesome, a bit over-the-top realm,” says Minogue. “I was 14 years old and went to see [1984 film] Purple Rain, I don’t know how many times, with my girlfriend at the cinema: We would scream, we would cry. I loved that he was ‘there.’ ”
YouTube Warmholes:
While on Zoom calls with writers and producers, Minogue would frequently pull up performance clips of Earth, Wind & Fire and other bands with “one foot in the disco arena” to keep her collaborators on track when they veered too far into “electro pop.” From there, it was a short hop to watching clips of “fantastically bad looks” from the 1970s and ’80s, such as 1979’s “D.I.S.C.O.” from French group Ottawan. “It’s all good inspiration,” she says.” – Billboard.com
