Kylie Minogue
Has someone checked lately to see if there is anyone left in Australia? If there is, it's a cinch he or she can't sing a lick, since all the Australian singers are obviously concentrating their efforts in London, New York or Los Angeles. Minogue, 20, is an Australian soap opera star—voted the country's most popular TV personality this year—who has branched out as a pop music star. She is the peachiest of cutie pies, and her reworking of the Carole King-Gerry Goffin tune The Loco-Motion has an appropriately adolescent verve (even if it has a zero soul quotient compared with the original Little Eva version). The rest of this debut album, however, is a series of bland pop tunes underwritten and overproduced by the team of Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman. Their credits include albums by such people as Bananarama and Samantha Fox, so it's clear they're not allergic to performers whose substance is not always as attractive as their style. On this album Minogue is overdubbed, backed up and orchestrated so heavily that it's never really clear how good a singer she might be. While I Should Be So Lucky and Got to Be Certain have become hits in Europe and Australia, they have a run-of-the-dance-pop feeling and could be interchanged with dozens of tracks on other current records without anyone noticing the difference. (Geffen)
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