listening to aphrodite for the first time, I will say Aphrodite>>>>>>>>>> hard candy
Let's review:
All the Lovers (10/10) vs. Candy Shop (8/10) Get Outta My Way (10/10) vs. 4 Minutes (8/10) Put Your Hands Up (8/10) vs. Give It 2 Me (7/10)
Closer (5/10) vs. Heartbeat (7/10)
Everything Is Beautiful (8/10) vs. Miles Away (9/10)
Aphrodite (7/10) vs. She's Not Me (7.5/10) Illusion (6/10) vs. Incredible (6/10)
Better Than Today (4/10) vs. Beat Goes On (7/10) Too Much (5/10) vs. Dance 2Night (5/10) Cupid Boy (8/10) vs. Spanish Lesson (4/10)
Looking for an Angel - (4/10) vs. Devil Wouldn't Recognize You (8/10)
Can't Beat the Feeling (6/10) vs. Voices (8/10)
Total scores:
Aphrodite - 81 (6.75 average)
Hard Candy - 84.5 (~7 average)
It's not like the album was even dragged by critics. It's just butthurt gays who disown it. (Myself among them.)
Right.
The Hard Candy's problem is that Madonna is trying too hard on it IMO.
EDIT: I can't explain... It's like she desperately want her singles to chart high no matter how. It's annoying.
All the Lovers (10/10) vs. Candy Shop (8/10) Get Outta My Way (10/10) vs. 4 Minutes (8/10) Put Your Hands Up (8/10) vs. Give It 2 Me (7/10)
Closer (5/10) vs. Heartbeat (7/10)
Everything Is Beautiful (8/10) vs. Miles Away (9/10)
Aphrodite (7/10) vs. She's Not Me (7.5/10) Illusion (6/10) vs. Incredible (6/10)
Better Than Today (4/10) vs. Beat Goes On (7/10) Too Much (5/10) vs. Dance 2Night (5/10) Cupid Boy (8/10) vs. Spanish Lesson (4/10)
Looking for an Angel - (4/10) vs. Devil Wouldn't Recognize You (8/10)
Can't Beat the Feeling (6/10) vs. Voices (8/10)
Total scores:
Aphrodite - 81 (6.75 average)
Hard Candy - 84.5 (~7 average)
See. Quite comparable.
Oh, let me do this.
All The Lovers (10/10) vs. Candy Shop (7.5/10) Get Outta My Way (10/10) vs. 4 Minutes (8.5/10)
Put Your Hands Up (6/10) vs. Give It 2 Me (9/10)
Closer (6.5/10) vs. Heartbeat (7/10)
Everything Is Beautiful (7.5/10) vs. Miles Away (8/10)
Aphrodite (7/10) vs. She's Not Me (7.5/10) Illusion (7/10) vs. Incredible (4.5/10) Better Than Today (8/10) vs. Beat Goes On (7/10)
Too Much (4.5/10) vs. Dance 2night (7/10) Cupid Boy (7.5/10) vs. Spanish Lesson (5.5/10)
Looking for an Angel (7/10) vs. Devil Wouldn't Recognize You (10/10) Can't Beat The Feeling (7.5/10) vs. Voices (7/10)
I shall join in as well All The Lovers (9/10) vs. Candy Shop (8.5/10)
Get Outta My Way (7/10) vs. 4 Minutes (8/10)
Put Your Hands Up (7.5/10) vs. Give It 2 Me (8/10) Closer (5.5/10) vs. Heartbeat (5/10)
Everything Is Beautiful (6/10) vs. Miles Away (7/10) Aphrodite (9/10) vs. She's Not Me (7.5/10) Illusion (5/10) vs. Incredible (3/10)
Better Than Today (7/10) vs. Beat Goes On (9/10) Too Much (9.5/10) vs. Dance 2night (9.5/10)
Cupid Boy (1/10) vs. Spanish Lesson (9/10)
Looking for an Angel (5/10) vs. Devil Wouldn't Recognize You (9/10) Can't Beat The Feeling (10/10) vs. Voices (10/10)
Right.
The Hard Candy's problem is that Madonna is trying too hard on it IMO.
EDIT: I can't explain... It's like she desperately want her singles to chart high no matter how. It's annoying.
I know what you mean, but it's funny because she was "trying hard" to make simple and efficient pop radio fodder. It doesn't really work when you sound like Madonna. God bless her but her voice just hasn't gone anywhere good in this century.
All the Lovers (10/10) vs. Candy Shop (8/10) Get Outta My Way (10/10) vs. 4 Minutes (8/10) Put Your Hands Up (8/10) vs. Give It 2 Me (7/10)
Closer (5/10) vs. Heartbeat (7/10)
Everything Is Beautiful (8/10) vs. Miles Away (9/10)
Aphrodite (7/10) vs. She's Not Me (7.5/10) Illusion (6/10) vs. Incredible (6/10)
Better Than Today (4/10) vs. Beat Goes On (7/10) Too Much (5/10) vs. Dance 2Night (5/10) Cupid Boy (8/10) vs. Spanish Lesson (4/10)
Looking for an Angel - (4/10) vs. Devil Wouldn't Recognize You (8/10)
Can't Beat the Feeling (6/10) vs. Voices (8/10)
Total scores:
Aphrodite - 81 (6.75 average)
Hard Candy - 84.5 (~7 average)
See. Quite comparable.
All The Lovers (10/10) vs. Candy Shop (5/10) Get Outta My Way (10/10) vs. 4 Minutes (4/10) Put Your Hands Up (If You Feel Love) [7.5/10] vs. Give It 2 Me (6.5/10)
Closer (6.5/10) vs. Heartbeat (7/10)
Everything Is Beautiful (7.5) vs. Miles Away (8.5/10) Aphrodite (9/10) vs. She's Not Me (6/10) Illusion (8/10) vs. Incredible (4/10)
Better Than Today (6/10) vs. Beat Goes On (6.5/10) [7 on a good day] Too Much (9/10) vs. Dance 2nite (5/10) Cupid Boy (7.5) vs. Spanish Lesson (3/10)
Looking For An Angel (3.5/10) vs. Devil Wouldn't Recognize You (9/10) Can't Beat The Feeling (10/10) vs. Voices (6/10) Mighty Rivers (10/10) vs. Ring My Bell (7/10)
Heartstrings (7/10)
Go Hard or Go Home (8.5/10)
SayHey discusses this ad nauseum...I'd like to preface all of this by saying that Kylie is my favorite female pop star but I don't stan for her (or anyone, for that matter) so none of this is intended to be shade on her.
Many, many factors I'll miss here, and some have already been said, but I'll cover the biggies.
1) With a few exceptions to this rule (Adele, obviously, among others), the entire Top 40 radio consulting firm structure (determining what goes on playlists) is notoriously insular and ageist. I mean having an artist from overseas have say, 3 or more genuine HITS (though what constitutes a hit is subjective) on the Hot 100 is a huge, rare deal. Being a woman over 40 still doing dance/electro-pop, the assumed stereotypical bread-and-butter genre of YOUNG artists, makes it two strikes against her.
2) Post Body Language, IMO (much of SayHey, her forum agrees), Kylie's image has been based in camp (many blame Will Baker, her official stylist for this, saying he should have left K Co. in '04...he was brilliant prior to that) as opposed to cool. At its worst, it's been downright gaudy. People here are equating "camp" and "gay" (the stereotype), which is where the confusion is coming in. She's boxed herself into a corner of camp overkill that's virtually impossible to erase. Her only angle with the perfect edge was her "Cool" incarnation circa Fever 2002, i.e. the glorious remix period of Can't Get Blue Monday Out of My Head, Come Into My World (Fischerspooner Mix), etc. including imagery used.
3) All chances to capitalize on success were completely blown - the blame being 85% label A&R and 15% Kylie. Post Locomotion, she didn't go on an emergency label hunt after Geffen dropped her. Deconstruction didn't even try once, and Capitol's cross-over didn't start until Fever. Her biggest mistake was not capitalizing upon LAFS + CGYOOMH beyond the brief Jingle Ball tour. The entire Body Language era was ruined with the whole Slow withdrawn for Red Blooded Woman fiasco, in addition to suddenly going "urban-influenced" with the intent to capitalize upon American success as opposed to capitalizing upon what they recognized her for...ELECTRO. That backfired when Top 40 radio was confused so they didn't latch on and any chance to produce a follow up with her still being fresh in people's minds was ruined. Not to mention RBW was infamously "boycotted" by the moderator of SayHey Neil R.
Capitol made the EXACT SAME MISTAKE for "X" by going urban with the U.S. single for All I See as opposed to Speakerphone, which was getting great buzz from Madonna's iTunes playlist and So You Think You Can Dance. As a result, even with promotion including Craig Ferguson, Ellen, DWTS, and the Today Show, INCLUDING the breast cancer storyline, not even any brief front loaded album purchases from the dance-community occurred and the album didn't chart, let alone any of the singles. Complete f*cking idiots. When it finally came around to Kylie doing a proper ELECTRO-POP U.S. lead single again, she'd become completely encased in camp-dom and was too old for Top 40, with no back icon plotline like she'd had since her teens for people to know of in the UK/Australia. So yeah, the proper promotion with the proper direction of electro-pop (Get Outta My Way) got her the front-loaded purchases on the Billboard 200 for Aphrodite from the fan-base she does have in the U.S., but it's now too late for her fanbase to grow beyond her hard-cores because Top 40 won't play her, and thus, she won't get onto the Hot 100.
4) Many U.S. critics for her FYFM tour in '09 noted that she's very sanitized in comparison to the feisty U.S. females. Variety's Andrew Barker: "Her music is relentlessly superficial yet never middlebrow, stylistically heterogeneous but not exactly diverse, sexy but rarely sexual". Basically, in comparison, she's well....safe and pristine, and the Americans were never here for that, IMO. They're here for flashy, dangerous, bombastic... NO, the Spice Girls CANNOT be used to refute that argument because the stars were perfectly aligned/timed for their arrival in the mid '90s with there being a gaping need for their fun brand of clean girl power to balance out the boy band wave, the alt-rock/post-grunge, and R&B divas. The irony behind their dying out for the Lolita wave post '98 is the new girls were younger but implying MUCH more carnal danger (no, Holler doesn't count either).
(amongst Kylie's time...just giving one example per person to prove point - no shade implied for anyone so don't overreact) Note: I will be forgetting people and the era date's are IMO...the concentrated points in time these things happened.
***Obviously all stars mentioned continued beyond the times mentioned but my larger point is in the danger, etc. they all displayed with they're greatest initial impact on the culture in comparison to Kylie.***
***The focus here being on SOLO artists for comparison (even though I mentioned Spice Girls earlier....so Destiny's Child was all about female empowerment - there***
Pop diva wave #1 (The Post-disco era approx 1982-1990): Madonna burned crosses, early Janet had spunk, both in 90s pushed sexual boundaries
Pop diva wave #2 (The Vocal era approx 1990-1998): Whitney being the crossover between waves 1 and 2 (IWDWS representing #1, IWALY representing #2), includes Celine and Mariah flying across octaves.
Pop diva wave #3 (The Alt-rock/Post-grunge era approx 1991-1997): I realize some may be profoundly offended with the implication of them being 'pop', but I mean this in the context of their later work being considered more pop crossover and K drawing from this wave with a pop angle for Impossible Princess. Shirley's "Only Happy When It Rains", Alanis' royally pissed off, etc.
Pop diva wave #4 (The Teen-Pop era approx 1998-2003): Britney got everyone's tongues wagging balancing the image of "ingenue" and "lolita" at her start, Xtina flew across octaves like the vocal trinity, dropped the coy puerile act for a blatantly Dirrty one that left nothing to the imagination.
Pop diva wave #5 (The Pop-Rock era approx 2000-2007): P!nk and Avril punk-sneering, Kelly belting.
Pop diva wave #4 (The Urban era approx 2003-2007): If they weren't Dangerously in Love, they were a Good Girl Gone Bad. They were Promiscuous, they were er...Fergalicious, and they'd Hollaback.
Pop diva wave #5 (The Electro-pop era): Katy's got cream ****, Gaga's got gun ****, and Ke$ha's seeing how far she can lower the bar.
For the last 30 years of North-American pop divadom, if it wasn't melisma explosions, it was midriff baring. It was wasn't post feminist angsting, it was street-raised fronting. If it wasn't "rebellious" sloganeering, it was sensory overloading. Kylie's discovering sex and being offered a drug cocktail in the 90s to showing bum cheek and side boob in the early 00s was well......it. But, that leads to me to my point...
Many may argue Kylie has nothing to offer by not pushing the envelope, which - to ultimately answer your question, may be why it hasn't happened for her, but for me, Kylie IS pop art, because at her strongest (in the early 00s), much like Aaliyah as sort of her R&B translation, she raised subtlety to state-of-the-art, representing an ethereal mystery, bliss and class none of the above touch.
All the Lovers (10/10) vs. Candy Shop (8/10) Get Outta My Way (10/10) vs. 4 Minutes (8/10) Put Your Hands Up (8/10) vs. Give It 2 Me (7/10)
Closer (5/10) vs. Heartbeat (7/10)
Everything Is Beautiful (8/10) vs. Miles Away (9/10)
Aphrodite (7/10) vs. She's Not Me (7.5/10) Illusion (6/10) vs. Incredible (6/10)
Better Than Today (4/10) vs. Beat Goes On (7/10) Too Much (5/10) vs. Dance 2Night (5/10) Cupid Boy (8/10) vs. Spanish Lesson (4/10)
Looking for an Angel - (4/10) vs. Devil Wouldn't Recognize You (8/10)
Can't Beat the Feeling (6/10) vs. Voices (8/10)
Total scores:
Aphrodite - 81 (6.75 average)
Hard Candy - 84.5 (~7 average)
