Kylie Minogue: X : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Kylie Minogue has never commanded the zeitgeist like Madonna or stalked a stage with the queenly cool of Beyoncé or hurtled across octaves like Mariah. But in a two-decade career, the pint-size Aussie has ruled the British and European charts by supplying nonstop fizzy fun — she's pop divadom's party planner in chief.

Minogue's tenth album arrives on the heels of her battle with breast cancer; thankfully, the experience hasn't made her music discernibly deeper. X compiles wall-to-wall club thumpers — the clomping electro-pop single "2 Hearts" has been a dance-floor smash for months — and songs about sex, dancing and sexed-up dancing. In "Nu-Di-Ty," one of two buzzing, percolating tracks by Swedish beat wizards Bloodshy and Avant (Britney Spears, Madonna), Minogue commands her man to perform a striptease: "Just pop that zipper for me/And work that thing out."

Minogue has a pipsqueak voice to match her diminutive frame, and she wisely cedes the musical spotlight to her producers, allowing her vocals to be processed and thoroughly T-Pained. But she permits herself the occasional moment of subtle diva hauteur. "Wow" opens with perky house-reminiscent keyboard chords that nod to her big hits of twenty years ago — like Madonna, she has stuck around long enough to revive her own Eighties sound.