Telling the Pop-Star-Goes-Country Story Again
The Australian dance-pop institution Kylie Minogue does what she exists to do—coo high and flighty over disco thrump—across her new album, Golden. But on the title track, her coo forms a little, coyote-howl-like pattern that listeners will recognize as being lifted from somewhere else. It’s Ennio Morricone’s theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, repurposed for the gay bar.
This is a camp move, but also a statement of purpose. Minogue’s 14th studio album portrays her as a rodeo queen toting a bedazzled six-string (literally: check that photo above). Partly is dusted with fingerpicked guitars and double-time hoedown refrains and liberal use of the word . But its version of rural Americana is knowingly filtered and fetishized from afar, much like a spaghetti Western, that genre of Italian-made cowboy flicks of which is sheriff.
