The best bit of Kids - Robbie Williams & Kylie Minogue
Take a ride on this 12-cylinder symphony!
Overture
Hello and welcome to yet-another-Substack blasted into the universe, drifting amongst all the other blog debris, probably orbiting a dying Livejournal star. It’s a pleasure to be floating around in cyberspace with you! In this Substack, let’s keep it simple: we’re going to be listening to some banging tunes. And what’s best to do with banging tunes? No, not hitting the dancefloor! The correct answer is having a nice sit down, deconstructing said banging tune, hyper-analysing every verse, chorus and bridge, and zooming in on all of its little musical cells, like we’re under-qualified scientists in our very own pop lab.
This Substack is about finding those magic moments in hit songs that give them an extra level of power – that ooh la la la, that je ne sais quoi, that zig-a-zig-ah. That moment where, perhaps you’ve had a couple of wines, your favourite track comes on the radio, or the dodgy speakers down at your local, or if you’re young, da club, and that iconic lightning bolt flash is about to crackle inside your ears once again. And you’re about to lose your tiny, little mind. This is what we want to examine here, across different genres, musical spectrums, artists and eras: those moments of pop that break your brain.
And we’re starting off with a right firecracker. Headphones on…
Today’s Song | Kids – Robbie Williams & Kylie Minogue
Duets between two pop behemoths can always be a mixed bag. For every “The Boy Is Mine” there’s always an “Ebony and Ivory” ominously lurking around the corner. Maths fans may think, “surely combining one beloved singer at the peak of their powers with another similarly powerful artist would only result in solid gold pop perfection every time?” – but alas, sometimes it simply ends in Lana Del Rey muttering in the background of a wistful Taylor Swift song for about 4 seconds, at the lowest possible volume. But when the chemistry is just so, with the right songwriter and the right *time*, you can create something magic, like Kids, with Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue.
The (whole lotta) history
Kids was released in 2000, the year of the new millennium, where the iron-clad grip of 90s pop culture still had a hold on our very souls. And yet, change was on the horizon. Britpop was fading and Coldplay’s Parachutes was about to usher in a new, gentler type of guitar band – and activate Zach Braff’s entire music taste. Geri had left the Spice Girls, yes, but they hadn’t broken up… yet. The flame of the 90s was still flickering – and 90s powerhouses, such as a successfully solo Robbie Williams, were about to catapult us into the future, alongside an artist who knew a thing or two about reinvention. And duets!
It was actually Kylie Minogue’s team who came to Robbie (and the source of his many powers, songwriter Guy Chambers) for the collab, hot off the heels of Robbie’s post-Take That discography: Angels, Millennium and No Regrets, bangers, all. And while Robbie was still in the honeymoon period of his own solo career, Kylie was in the peak of a renaissance, re-affirming herself as pop royalty with Spinning Around, released earlier that summer. (Despite being a consummate professional for decades, with a rich and varied discography and filmography, it was a pair of gold hotpants that commanded Kylie’s ‘comeback’ narrative in the papers of the time.)
After a couple of more subdued years exploring a new, more alternative sound (which lest we forget, birthed “Breathe”, a Kylie all-timer) Kylie had re-entered the realm of pop with her new record label Parlophone, the album Light Years, and a duet with the biggest British solo singer of the moment to concoct the perfect anthem. Kylie was in a comeback phase with so much cultural cachet already banked, while Robbie was still on a stratospheric ascent. His pivot to big band, Swing When You’re Winning, hadn’t happened yet – this was the perfect pop storm for both artists.
What is the perfect moment?
This strange, otherworldly pop song gives us so many moments to look back on fondly or otherwise (Robbie’s rap, “I’m an honourary Sean Connery” did not make the radio-edit, shockingly!) with a chorus laden with jet-fuel and verses soaked in flirtatious banter. But the moment, for me, that makes this banger truly sizzle in the pan, was thanks to our girl Kylie in that bridge.
Kylie: Come down from the ceiling
Robbie: I didn’t mean to get so high
Kylie: I couldn’t do what I wanted to do when my lip were dry
Robbie: You can’t just up and leave me, I’m a singer in a band!
Kylie: But I like drummers baby, you’re not my bag!
In this spoken word section, Kylie and Robbie are still doing their cute back and forths – but Kylie’s about to drag us back into full song.Forget the gold hot-pants! When Kylie belts the final line here, “I like drummers baby, I’m not your… BAAAAAG”, we remember exactly why Kylie will always be one of the biggest powerhouses in our pop universe, transcending any decade she likes through the sheer force of her never-ending charisma.
Kylie – telling Robbie Williams – a young man at the peak of his hotness and pop authority – he’s not her bag? Devastating! It’s almost as if she had looked into the future and saw Rudebox was coming. (I actually don’t mind Rudebox, but you know, it's an easy target, sorry Robs.) The way that the drums crescendo alongside Kylie (after all, she likes drummers, baby!) as she draws out the final word catapults the song into its final, euphoric chorus (“Jump on board, feel the high…”) sending us, the listener, on a pure rocket trip. It is the perfect hook for another hook – a gorgeous dessert for the ears – and extremely helpful for if you’re having a lull on a treadmill. And it could only be a true heavy-hitter like Kylie that could really take us here. That “BAAAAAAG” is so long because that’s Kylie singing her way into the new millennium. That “BAAAAAG” is Kylie taking us through a psychadelic wormhole with Can’t Get You Out of My Head waiting for us on the other side.
Mondegreen alert!
Did anyone listen to this growing up and mishear the line as “I like drummers baby and not your band?” - that would’ve also worked!
Final pop ponderings
The early 00s were a strange time, not just for pop music, but for pretty much all of pop culture civilisation, with the dawning of a new millennium permeating the nationwide conversation, with art stuck in an awkward purgatory (between 90s naffness and something more à la mode) trying to find its identity in this new era. Would this mean less 3D liquid-special effects in music videos and something more serious?! Were we ready to move on?
Robbie Williams was even ready for it! Millennium came out in 1998! The Y2K discourse was real – as Guy Chambers said in an interview – “There was a lot of talk about the millennium back then, it’s a bit like Brexit now, not that I’d write a song called Brexit.” This is why I think early 00s culture is so strange – the glottal stop moment, breaking away from the 90s, a decade with clear iconography and vision. Not to mention DADAist made-up words in song lyrics…
Before 9/11 (sorry to mention 9/11!!!) completely obliterated our perspectives of absolutely everything across western civilisation, where pop culture was about to get darker and more earnest (Christopher Nolan really did turn the brightness right down on those Batman films) we had a strange limbo period here in 2000 – where a rising star like Robbie, combining forces with a pop mainstay like Kylie, was the perfect way of infusing the past and present and bringing us something totally fresh for this new millennium. The song is both a bit naff but also powerful - both 90s and yet, somehow, still quite contemporary. “Me no bubbletious”? is somehow both of its time and also…ahead of its time. But could I have done without the “the purpose of a woman is to love her man” line? Yep!
But I do like to think Kylie was saying it ironically before she completely drags him later on. She likes drummers, Robbie. Gutted!