FEATURE:
Cowboy Style
An Amazing Reinvention and Legacy: Kylie Minogue’s Impossible Princess at Twenty-Five
__________
I recently…
wrote a feature about Mariah Carey’s 1997 album, Butterfly. That was a real revelation and evolution for her. An album where she took more control of her career and, in the process, released a classic that has inspired artists decades later. Another icon of the ‘90s, Kylie Minogue, released her most experimental and boldest album to date with Impossible Princess. Released on 22nd October, 1997, this was a Pop treasure taking her music to places it has never been before. Whilst her fifth studio album, her eponymous release of 1994, was a step away from the more manufactured and commercial Pop sound, Impossible Princess was this big leap! Almost shedding that skin entirely, there was this clash and mix of sounds that included Dance and Experimental. Impossible Princess is a departure from Minogue's previous work. There is this intriguing blend of Trip-Hop, Electronica, and Rock. I want to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary next month for two reasons. For one, it is a great Kylie Minogue album where we get an anniversary vinyl (more on that soon). Also, Impossible Princess divided critics and fans. A real departure for Minogue, perhaps people wanted something more in keeping with her earliest work. Many were not too sure of the more intimate and confessional lyrics and the new sound palette. Commercially, the album reached the top ten in Australia, Scotland and the United Kingdom. Minogue’s audience and fans, whilst not exclusively, did not connect wholeheartedly with ‘IndieKylie’.
Maybe feeling the new sounds and sonic directions were trend-chasing and trying to fit in with the sounds of 1996/1997 – which was more Electronic and darker than Britpop sounds of the year or two before -, I think Impossible Princess is a gem. Paving the way for two of Minogue’s most successful albums, 2000’s Light Years and 2001’s Fever, Impossible Princess has some terrific tracks and hardly any filler. Madonna was similarly experimental and bold during 1998’s Ray of Light. That album was widely praised, so I wonder there was not that love for Kylie Minogue’s 1997 album. In years since, there has been reinspection and a fonder sense of appreciation. A lack of promotional activity, the three-year gap since her last album, the constant delays and title changes, and the change of musical direction resulted in an album that hardly made a dent in Europe. It reached ten in the U.K., though there were hopes of a more successful and acclaimed album. That idea that Minogue was Indie. She was not going Indie-Rock and picking up guitars. Rather, she was breaking from the Pop past and trying other sounds and evolving. Maybe it was something that was more common to female artists, but if they try and move on and grow and experiment, there is this backlash.
Fortunately, it seems like Kylie Minogue is fond of the album. There has been more warmth in years since. Seen now as a necessary detour and hugely underrated album, Impossible Princess still unfolds and unfurls all sorts of colours, revelations and treasures twenty-five years later! As mentioned, there is a vinyl release coming. Rough Trade explains more:
“Originally released in 1997, Impossible Princess is Kylie’s sixth studio album and her second for Deconstruction / Mushroom after 1994’s Kylie Minogue. The album marks a further departure for Kylie from her PWL pop beginnings and reflects a more experimental, darker style influenced by late 1990s trip hop, Brit-pop, rock and electronica. As well as co-producing the record (with Brothers In Rhythm, Dave Ball and the Manic Street Preachers’ James Dean Bradfield), Kylie wrote the majority of the lyrics, conveying an intimacy and a freedom of expression inspired by her relationships and travels around the world.
This limited anniversary edition celebrates 25 years of Impossible Princess, and is the first time the album has been officially available on LP, making it much anticipated by Kylie fans”.
There were some harsh reviews for Impossible Princess in 1997. I want to focus on a couple that were more positive and actually appreciated the album on its own terms, without comparing it to what they think Kylie Minogue should sound like in 1997. That refusal to see her as an artist with her own mind and path. Minogue was twenty-nine when Impossible Princess came out, so you could hardly expect her to repeat what she did in the 1980s and early part of the ‘90s! When Light Years came out in 2000, she sort of nodded back to the catchier Pop days, but did so in a much more mature, raunchy, exciting and nuanced way. These alluring, instantly catchy, distinct and accomplished songs were definitely Kylie Minogue, but they were a step ahead of her first few albums. Albumism revisited Impossible Princess for its twentieth anniversary in 2017:
“August 1994. Australian actress turned pop vocalist Kylie Minogue releases “Confide in Me,” the launch single from her self-titled fifth album. The metamorphosis from Stock-Aitken-Waterman figurehead to credible singer was complete. Kylie Minogue (1994) was an album tempered by musical intelligence and artistic awareness. Its intention to be a cosmopolitan resurfacing of the face of Minogue’s music? Successful.
Appropriately, the only other place to go from the outside was inside one’s self to further ascend to next level status, creatively. Along the way, other signifiers, like Minogue’s 1995 murder ballad pairing with alt-ghoul Nick Cave (“Where the Wild Roses Grow”) and a transformative romance with French music video auteur Stéphane Sednaoui, helped this change actuate as Impossible Princess, Minogue’s sixth LP. The record’s title was indebted to Billy Childish’s 1994 book “Poems to Break the Hearts of Impossible Princesses,” gifted to Minogue by Mr. Cave himself.
For the first time, Minogue was writing for an entire project, even leading in co-writing alliances. The production principals behind Kylie Minogue―Steve Anderson and Dave Seaman, a.k.a. Brothers in Rhythm―returned to Minogue’s side, impressed by her wherewithal. Most of the record’s production was furnished by them, but there was new blood too. Manic Street Preachers onboarded to compose and (sonically) thrash with Minogue on Impossible Princess. Dave Ball (of Soft Cell and The Grid fame), Ingo Vauk, Dave Eringa and Rob Dougan rounded out the remaining co-writing and knob twisting on the LP.
Two years passed as the confessional long player was erected. Minogue, aged 29 by its conclusion, articulated her story of self-discovery accordingly.
Lyrically torrid, “Too Far,” “Did It Again” and “Dreams” see Minogue examining and (sometimes) attacking her own identity. The songs show a woman acknowledging her frailties and failings, but leaving the door open for personal renewal. Musically, these stories are channeled through a polychromatic prism of electronic and guitar based sounds. These sounds could be called “techno” or “Britpop,” but those terms are too small for the explosive unification of the Phil Spector symphonica and rock vigor of “Some Kind of Bliss” and “I Don’t Need Anyone.” “Techno” and “Britpop” cannot outline the bristling, electro-panic of “Drunk” or the Gaelic tribalism of “Cowboy Style.” “Cowboy Style,” like the synth-pop of “Breathe,” temporarily free Minogue from her contemplative spell long enough to muse on her affectionate liaison with Sednaoui.
Vocally visceral, Minogue’s instrument imbues “Tears” and “Love Takes Me Over,” album leftovers cast as B-sides to the eventuating singles for the record, with the dichotomous emotions of jubilation and aggravation. This singing approach is implemented throughout the record. As 1996 ended, Impossible Princess was teeming with energy across its 12 tracks, spring-loaded and ready to take on the world. But, the path to its unveiling was fraught with turmoil.
Two labels determined the album’s fate―Mushroom Records in Australia and BMG/deConstruction Records in Europe. Market uncertainty delayed Impossible Princess through much of 1997. But the most damning blow? The tragic death of England’s Diana of Wales on August 31, 1997. The United Kingdom was gripped by grief and it was decided that Mingoue’s record title could be misconstrued as disrespectful. Subsequently, it was rechristened as Kylie Minogue in the British and European territories, causing confusion. Its real moniker was restored in those areas by way of its deluxe reissue in 2003. Staggered release dates followed: October 22, 1997 (Japan), January 12, 1998 (Australia), March 28, 1998 (Britain).
Starting on September 8, 1997 and ending on October 5, 1998, four singles were formally released to sustain interest in the LP: “Some Kind of Bliss” (UK #22, AU #27), “Did It Again” (UK #14, AU #15), “Breathe” (UK #14, AU #23), and “Cowboy Style” (AU #39). Critically and commercially, Impossible Princess was championed on Australian shores. The British press and public on the other hand were unnecessarily vicious in their assessment.
Twenty years on, Impossible Princess received its flowers through numerous positive retrospective evaluations, especially in the United Kingdom where the record was never given a fair shake. Irrefutable was the record’s enduring influence―and that of the deConstruction epoch altogether―in how it closed the book on Minogue’s pre-fab past to allow her to re-write her future. But was Minogue ever as intimate and experimental again? Yes and no. That hunger to challenge herself wasn’t wholly absent from her output in the following decade, but commercial concerns occasionally subdued Minogue”.
On 22nd October, I know Kylie Minogue will post on Twitter her reflections and thoughts about her sixth studio album. 1997 was one of the most interesting and broad years in music history. After Britpop, many Pop artists – both in the U.K. and other countries – maybe felt they needed to get more serious of embrace the new waves of Experimental, Electronic and Dance music that was coming through. I really admire the direction Minogue took with the underrated and exceptional Impossible Princess! This is what AllMusic noted about an album that very much was fitting in with the altering and shifting music scene of 1997:
“By 1997, much of the pop music landscape had changed. The music papers were declaring the "Techno Revolution" was on, Oasis and Manic Street Preachers were ruling the charts, and simple dance-pop seemed to be the domain of teenage girls. So what does the dance-pop diva of the '90s do? She recruits Manic Street Preachers' James Dean Bradfield, Sean Moore, and Nicky Wire, starts writing unaided, and completely changes musical direction. Enter Kylie Minogue's Impossible Princess (the title was changed to Kylie Minogue after the death of Princess Diana). From the trippy cover art to the abundance of guitars and experimental vocal tracks, this was her "great leap forward." The move got her in the papers, but, unfortunately, critical acclaim was lacking (and so were sales). Critics called it a mistake, and the public was less than impressed. Which is sad, because this is a pretty damn good record. Unlike her early work, this album sounds stronger and has a more natural feel. Her songwriting abilities have come a long way, and Impossible Princess actually flows together as an album. Worth another look”.
I want to end with SLANT’s thoughts and take on one of Kylie Minogue’s most important albums. Impossible Princess was a needed revolution and reinvention from a growingly ambitious and successful artist who could not repeat herself and wanted to break away from the more manufactured and factory-written Pop many associated her with. It cleared the way for hugely successful albums like Light Years and Fever a few years later:
“Kylie Minogue’s Impossible Princess bears a striking resemblance to Ray of Light, that other worldwide pop queen’s landmark album. Both are deeply personal efforts. Both feature tons of guitars. And both were considered risky efforts by firmly established artists to update their respective pop sound. Madonna’s excursion into electronica may have saved her from imminent irrelevance. In Kylie’s case, however, Impossible Princess garnered harsh reviews and barely made a blip on the European radar—strange for an artist whose every style-change and lip-lock is reported feverishly in the U.K. tabloids. But trying to hypothesize why the album didn’t resonate with critics, or the public (her fans either love it or hate it, and are passionate about their opinions either way), is a moot point. What’s important is the music, and Impossible Princess is easily Minogue’s best album to date.
Inspired by both the Brit-pop and electronica movements of the mid-‘90s, Minogue enlisted Welsh rockers Manic Street Preachers and techno gurus Brothers in Rhythm to helm the project, but the singer had a hand in writing every song, giving the album a starkly personal and unified cord. From the get-go it’s clear this isn’t the same girl who sang “The Loco-Motion.” The opening track, “Too Far,” mixes crisp breakbeats with a Moby-style piano progression and lush strings, while the very next track, “Cowboy Style,” features a tribal percussion break and a string quartet that sounds more celtic than country. Like Madonna, Minogue acknowledges the limitations of her vocal range by never venturing outside of her comfort zone. But Impossible Princess finds Minogue stretching herself way beyond anything she had done before—or anything she’s done since. The album isn’t a spiritual revelation in the vein of Ray Of Light—this is the voice of hurt and searching. “I ache for great experience…I’m not happy/Waste till I’m wasted,” she sings on “Drunk,” one of many anthemic trance tracks littered throughout the album.
Impossible Princess runs the gamut of styles, but manages to remain cohesive and fresh, even six years later. The sleek trip-hop of “Jump” and the deliriously spacey “Say Hey” fit like puzzle pieces next to the Chemical Brothers-style techno/rock hybrid “Limbo” and the frenetic “I Don’t Need Anyone.” Minogue fiercely declares her independence, but admits to her innate vulnerability: “I don’t need anyone/Except for someone I’ve not found.” Co-produced by former Soft Cell synth-master Dave Ball, “Through the Years” evokes Björk’s “Venus As a Boy,” but creates its own smoky atmosphere with muted horns, experimental vocal tracks and elegiac lyrics: “Too many a twisted word was said/My body was porous/I savored every drop of you.”
Maybe Minogue overestimated her audience and her critics. Like the impossible princess of “Dreams,” the album’s cinematic final track, perhaps she simply wanted it all: creative freedom and her throne. But Impossible Princess is the work of an artist willing to take risks, not a pop queen concerned with preserving her reign”.
On 22nd October, Impossible Princess is twenty-five. Some may say it is dated, but I think that it sounds fresh and exciting today. It has aged well! I am tempted to get the album on vinyl when it is released next month. Another step forward on onwards from the incredible Kylie Minogue of 1994, 1997’s Impossible Princess was this midway point between the first signs of Minogue growing as a Pop artist and someone who sort of return to Pop with Light years. I don’t think this album is a retreat. Instead, it is Minogue, again, fitting with the Pop sounds of 2000 (the early-‘00s) and adding Disco, Dance and other strands to ensure that she remains fresh, evolving and exciting. Many might see Impossible Princess as this unusual and experimental one-off that did not work - and left Kylie Minogue to return to her Pop-based roots a few years later. I disagree. Impossible Princess is an excellent album in its own right, and it should be celebrated! On 22nd September, Light Years turns twenty-two. I am excited looking ahead to 22nd October and Impossible Princess reaching twenty-five. A marvellous and enormously broad and unexpected album from a Pop pioneer and treasure, I would advise any fan to re-explore Impossible Princess. It is an album that has been recast and given a fresh taken years later. It just a shame critics and the public did not see its purpose, potential and excellence…
BACK in 1997.