X-tremely awful

Kylie Minogue, “Australian pop princess,” has come full circle. An inevitable evolution from her music of the past, she has officially become a full-blown, dancing, singing, lingerie-modeling fembot. For the 54-minute duration of X, she has been programmed to sing variations on the theme of falling in lust on the dance floor.
The producers throw all kinds of stuff at the wall to make this work. Numerous “super-producers” of the obscure, Christopher Walken-esque kind were trucked in, along with super-expensive synthesizers, ostensibly to conjure musical gold from their magical, wiggling, hit-making fingertips. Minogue needs all the help she can get: Her vocal range is notoriously limited, so the studio witch doctors throw futuristic echoes and delays in the background to distract from what’s actually going on.
The super-producers are half of the problem. Her best songs in the past were a stripped-down few whose basic ingredients were strong enough to stand on their own. A handful had a palpable, irresistible exuberance, and imaginative, Michel Gondry-directed music videos to boot. But, despite retro-futuristic affectations, Minogue’s albums are of ye olde world, “one or two hits and a bunch of filler” tradition. X has three so-so songs (“All I See,” “Stars,” “Cosmic”), and the rest retread and retread to a maddening, exhausting extent – best exemplified by track 14, “Rippin’ Up the Disco.”
The stupidity of titling a song “Nu-Di-Ty” is unforgivable and a perfect example of Minogue’s artlessness. It’s through relativism that Minogue manages to garner rave reviews: Instead of resorting to the lowest-common-denominator strip-club sexuality of America’s female R&B singers, she gives off a more naive, disco-era scent that seems, by comparison, more refined. But, this isn’t an advancement; it’s an anachronism.
Although X is certainly better than most of the caveman-like crap currently played on the radio, it’s still insipid. One could play this album on repeat for eternity in the private hell of any Jacobs School of Music professor. Otherwise, this music is not of much use. Like a fembot dressed up in bells and whistles, X’s insides are hollow.