Kylie Minogue - Ultimate Kylie (2004)

Disc One: 1) Better the Devil You Know; 2) The Loco-Motion; 3) I Should Be So Lucky; 4) Step Back in Time; 5) Shocked; 6) What Do I Have to Do; 7) Wouldn’t Change a Thing; 8) Hand in Your Heart; 9) Especially for You (with Jason Donovan); 10) Got to Be Certain; 11) Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi; 12) Give Me Just a Little More Time; 13) Never Too Late; 14) Tears on My Pillow; 15) Celebration
Disc Two: 1) I Believe in You; 2) Can’t Get You Out of My Head; 3) Love at First Sight; 4) Slow; 5) On a Night Like This; 6) Spinning Around; 7) Kids (with Robbie Williams); 8) Confide in Me; 9) In Your Eyes; 10) Please Stay; 11) Red Blooded Woman; 12) Giving You Up; 13) Chocolate; 14) Come Into My World; 15) Put Yourself in My Place; 16) Did It Again; 17) Breathe; 18) Where the Wild Roses Grow (with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds)

Yes, there's a lot of cheese. But also a whole load of solid gold pop, and a lot more unexpected gems than you'd expect from a surface glance to Kylie's overlooked career.

Key tracks: "Better the Devil You Know", "I Believe in You", "Confide in Me"

Kylie Minogue often finds herself placed into the guilty pleasure bin even by people who openly admit to liking other popular mainstream pop. She started her musical career as the poster girl for Stock, Aitken & Waterman and became synonymous with the particular type of cheese that 80s synth pop was made out of, before transitioning to a campier glamour associated with the corniest of gay discos – neither areas which can claim to have particularly high musical esteem. The brief transitional phase between the two where she tried to prove she was a artist to be taken seriously flopped: only a few ever bought into it and even fewer remember it. She hasn’t had the critical re-evaluation that other big pop stars have had in the recent years and while she has the power to still make the occasional commercial splash, it’s mainly just her fan base that pays attention to her. While, say, Madonna has had so many iconic eras and hits over the years that people recognise decades worth of work from her, Kylie has largely been relegated to be the girl who sang “I Should Be So Lucky”. Maybe “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” if you’re lucky.

Ultimate Kylie isn’t the cash-grab seasonal stocking filler it might appear as at a glance but rather, it’s Kylie’s vindication: the proof that her discography is just as hit-filled (quality-wise even if not necessarily commercially at all times) as any other of her more seriously taken peers. The two discs stretch through her entire career up until 2004 and what becomes apparent pretty quickly is that the large scale is absolutely necessary. Not just because you’re presented with one instantly memorable and legitimately good song after another throughout the tracklist, but because the two disc format gives it a really good split. The first disc is devoted entirely to her 80s SAW era while the second disc is devoted to the 90s and beyond. The separation of the instantly dated 80s sound from the rest of the material acts in favour of both the SAW era as well as the rest of the music: you don’t get productional whiplashes and placing the 80s material on its own allows for it to be judged within its own terms.

The first disc is incredibly dated - far beyond the occasional trend giveaways of the second set - but if you can get past that (or maybe even love the sound, like myself) it’s a joy to listen: each song is so mercilessly hook-driven and shamelessly hit-seeking that you can’t help but admire. It also makes it feel a little criminal that it’s “I Should Be So Lucky” that gained such immortality when you’ve got such a towering classic as “Better the Devil You Know” awaiting: it opens the compilation and it’s such a great belter of a track with a tour de force of a chorus. Sometimes the factory-line nature of the operation surfaces a bit more obviously than other times, with a definite audible gap between the legitimately great and entertainingly cheesy songs. Particularly by the end of the disc the compilation starts to falter with the diabolically ill-advised 50s throwback “Tears on My Pillow” and a serviceable but a thoroughly pointless cover of Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration” ending the party on a dual bum note. Still, if you’ve ever had an affinity for the decade’s dated plastic cheese shine, the first disc is surprisingly good fun.

The second disc is the real heart of the collection, moving from corny fun to genuinely excellent. It swings more wildly between sounds and styles from knowingly camp to futuristic cool, but it keeps the quality coming. It even incorporates a few collaborations where Kylie is more support than the star: Nick Cave’s “Where the Wild Roses Grow” is a bewildering end to the general dancefloor joy of the entire album but is incredibly pleasing as a curveball that leaves you guessing just as you thought you got her figured out (and it is a marvellous song). The compilation also helps shed some light to her early 90s albums where she tried to escape her pop image and brings forth songs like “Breathe” and the breath-taking “Confide in Me”: the latter, in particular really deserves more kudos than it has, sounding completely unlike anything else here and bringing forth drama and tension Kylie has rarely displayed. The futuro-glitz trifecta of “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”, “Slow” and “Come Into My World” have aged marvellously and see Kylie finally finding a real voice for herself. Only the throwaway R&B bandwagon hop “Red Blooded Woman” really hits the brakes along the way, though it’s also a surprise how badly the comeback hit “Spinning Around” has dated: it revitalised her career when it dropped but several years later and surrounded by the singles that came since, it comes off as awfully pedestrian and paper thin.

It’s not just the music that’s a greatly positive surprise on Ultimate Kylie, even the compilation in itself has been pulled together so well that it’s a genuinely pleasing. You can always tell when a compilation is a quick cash-in and when it’s been crafted with actual attention, and Ultimate Kylie falls squarely in the latter department. The era split is a genius decision in itself for reasons described before and that there’s equal weight given to all eras rather than trying to pretend any of the less well received eras never happened is always a great thing (only the non-inclusion of the Manic Street Preachers aided “Some Kind of Bliss” is a little mysterious and disappointing). The liner notes in the booklet and the photography detailing the eras make it feel like you’re holding a celebration of a legacy. The attitude of giving a damn goes as far as the token new song “I Believe in You”: what could have been just a quick leftover track included solely for promotional purposes has somehow ended up becoming the best damn song in the entire two discs. It’s cool, groovy, stylish, futuristic and absolutely impeccable both in production and performance. You don’t really have to wonder why when you look at the credits and realise the song was written by Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears and Babydaddy, who were having their own do-no-wrong golden year in 2004. The other new song, “Giving You Up”, is a little less successful but I readily admit to generally being left a little cold by most things touched by Xenomania, who produced the song.

Kudos to my sister then, who was clearly desperate for present ideas during the 2004 Christmas season and decided to gift this to me after a 30-second exchange between us about Kylie having a bunch of good songs following an advert for Ultimate Kylie on TV. I don’t think this would have found its way in my collection otherwise but I’m glad it did – there’s a lot of quality pop scattered across the two discs here.

Rating: 8/10