2000 // Robbie Williams, Sing When You’re Winning & Kylie Minogue, Light Years // “Kids”
This is a tip of the hat to Tom Ewing’s brilliant piece on the last decade in pop that appeared in Pitchfork today. For all that I rag on Pitchfork, they do some things terribly well — like the massive top 500 songs of the 2000s (even if the last 20 seemed like some sort of affected one-for-me-one-for-you tug of war between canon indie and canon hip-hop, but I digress).
As I riffled through the shelves tonight, actually in search of another album entirely, Robbie and Kylie’s duet jumped out at me as the perfect response to Ewing’s article.
As a music critic, I don’t really have any specific allegiances. I’m not an indie snob, I’m not a hip-hop nerd, I’m not a poptimist, I’m not a country fiend — or a metalhead for that matter. I have an impossible time explaining to people that I like artists in all these genres — and everything else I can listen to. The only criteria I have for liking a specific piece of music is, well, whether I like it or not. That’s all. Believe me when I tell you that listening to satellite radio with me is a nightmare (ever flip-flop between big band and euro house? fun!), as is my ability to still flip between MTV Hits, VH1 Soul, GAC and MTV3 with lightening speed.
The dowside of this is that it’s become utterly impossible to keep up with all the new music that interests me (and all the old things I keep discovering), and I staunchly still refuse to take any side or specialize in a particular genre. Which means that in recent weeks I’ve been excited by the return of teen popper Fefe Dobson, the melodic dramatics of Mt Eerie and the grandiose bombast of The Big Pink.
Anyway, back to the subject at hand: “Kids” is a pop song about being a pop star, by two people who pretty much know how to do one thing really, really well: be a pop star. Both have careers reaching back further than either would care to admit, and both have been around the block with more image reinventions per capita that would put any American hit-maker to shame.
And yes, at this point, it does bear mentioning that despite many, many attempts to break into the U.S. market, Minogue and Williams never achieved a level of fame here on par with the mania they inspire in their native countries and the majority of the British post-colonial world. I bore sad witness to the year Williams and Co. desperately tried to build a sliver of buzz for his album The Ego Has Landed at SXSW. No one cared.
On the other hand, “Kids” peaked at #2 in the U.K. a few months later. And it wasn’t anywhere near being biggest hit that either artist has generated in their careers (look to “Angels” and “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head,” for that, respectively).
All of which makes me wonder if “Kids” is of interest to someone not familiar with Minogue and Williams’ careers. To me, the song holds up remarkably well after all this time (it helps that both ooze sexiness and have charisma to spare), and it’s actually quite charming to hear them trying to one-up each other in the lyrics, make fun of themselves and deconstruct the artistic responsibilities of the pop idol all in one go.
American pop hasn’t come close to producing anything this self-conscious like this until recently — look at Madonna’s “Four Minutes” or Britney and Pink’s latest work — in fact, “Kids” brings a bravado more often seen in hip-hop (is Williams’ Rex Harrison-esque “rap” at the end a nod to this fact?). And as much as I want Lady Gaga to succeed on her drive for world domination, she’s got nothing on the combined star wattage and power of this pair.
Because, yes — they still keep chugging along: Williams is poised for a comeback of sorts in a few months and Minogue is finally (yes, finally!) touring North America after all this time in September and October of this year.
