What about Kylie's 1988-1990 period where she was undoubtably one of the biggest artists in the UK. Wasn't Kylie the highest selling artist of 1988? The songs might sound dated now but at the time Kylie was a bonafide success story.

Isn't a large part of the problem that she hasn't really developed as she's got older? She tried to do this with the Kylie Minogue / Impossible Princess eras and because the sales suffered, she retreated to Sexy Kylie for Light Years and Fever. In the short term it worked out well, but flash forward 15 years and not much has changed. I know it's ageist (and very sad) but there isn't a market for that type of artist when it's a 40 plus lady. Jennifer Lopez has a similar problem. Teen girls and young women are going to look to somebody closer to their age and guys who think Kylie is still "fit" aren't going to run out and buy her records.

Radio play is big issue not just for kylie but for all female artists over a certain age. It's so sad as male artists don't suffer the same problem. Particularly djs.
I find it disgusting that the public who pay for bbc r deprived of a variety of music from artists of all ages rather than having what THEY think ppl want to hear rammed down our ears.

She should work with the likes of Grimes or whoever Sky Ferreria works with. If at 40+ she still insists on going down the pop route then at least work with people who will help give her some edge. Maybe go leftfield and work with people like Arca, The Knife, Four Tet or Andy Stott for example - something that won't result in just cookie-cutter pop music. Personally I'd rather she went down the Impossible Princess route and actually make music that reflects her age.

She should do Eurovision for Australia.....the publicity would do wonders for her career all around Europe.

I think you hit the spot here!!!
Since the Millenium her music career can be called "La la la" and you cover 75% of the output.
Looking back at the singles from Impossible princess, the subjects are not that much different than the "Pop" era, I hate it when a guitar comes in music suddenly has a edge for a lot of people

Even without the SAW machine pumping her out number ones she seemed to do very well in the late 90's early 00's but yes admittedly it would seem she has dried up. Perhaps not a question of artists block but more that she doesn't slot into the mainstream like she used to. The audience are into canadian 21 year olds it seems.

Just seen the top 100 best selling albums of 2015...oh and look who's at 61....Kylie Christmas.
Above the likes of Madonna, Lana Del Ray, 5 Seconds of Summer....
So no, I wouldn't call that a flop after what 6 weeks of sale.
Maybe flopping now, now Christmas is done but come December may shift a few more copies...
And I want a whole album of Kylie and Garibay material. I loved the stuff they have doso far...

I'm a huge Kylie fan but I've not been wowed by anything for a while.

Only You is pretty enough,Into The Blue was a good pop song - but Kiss Me Once was a really boring album.

I think the wheels came off at X and she's struggled since.

I saw her live last year and it was a great show - but very scaled back compared to her previous tours.

We could ask when Madonna, Janet Jackson, Cher, Mariah Carey and just about every other female artist over 40 are going to get their groove back. Cher hasn’t had a top 20 hit in the UK for 15 years, Janet Jackson for ten years and Madonna and Mariah Carey for seven years. Kylie’s last top 20 hit was barely two years ago. It's true, Kylie is the same age Madonna was when she had a big hit with Hung Up in 2005, but it was a different industry then. Madonna is ten years older than Kylie and was able to benefit because the industry wasn't so ageist. I doubt Hung Up would be a hit if it was released today. Has Madonna had a massive worldwide number one smash in the US, the UK and worldwide in her fifties like Cher did? Nope. She was 49 when 4 Minutes topped the charts in the UK, and her last number one in the US was in 2000 when she was 42.


If you look at Madonna and Kylie’s stretch of top 20 hits in the UK, they are pretty similar:

Madonna - 1983-2009
Kylie - 1988-2013

Madonna is ten years older than Kylie, she also started her career five years before, something people on here seem to overlook. Kylie’s had four top 20 hits in the UK since 2010 including a #3 hit that has sold 400k. Madonna hasn't sold that many copies of a single since 4 Minutes in 2008 and Justin Timberlake was the reason why it did so well. Timebomb by Kylie got great reviews from critics and stayed in the top 10 on iTunes for a whole week, but her label screwed it up by releasing it on the Friday instead of the Monday and Kylie only performed it on TV once. Madonna made numerous appearances on TV – Jonathan Ross, The Brit Awards - and made headline news but Living for Love still flopped. When Radio One refused to play the song, why didn’t all of those people who tweeted their support for Madonna go out and buy it? They weren’t interested in the song. They were just jumping on a bandwagon. How can people expect Kylie to get big hits in the UK in 2016 when Madonna can't? Radio stations like Radio 1 and Capital refuse to play music by artists over a certain age, it doesn't matter to them that Kylie is the most played female artist on UK radio since 1990. She's had a phenomenal run of hits in the UK, they can't last forever. Other than Kylie, Jennifer Lopez is the only other female artist over 40 who's had a top three hit in the UK since 2010.

MDNA and Rebel Heart have combined sales of 200k in the UK. The Abbey Road Sessions by Kylie has sold nearly 210k by itself and the other albums she has released this decade (Aphrodite, Kiss Me Once, Kylie Christmas, Best of) have combined sales of nearly 600k in the UK. Kiss Me Once and Rebel Heart did similar business in the UK, but overall Kylie has done far better this decade than Madonna and most other female artists over 40. Jennifer Lopez's last album never even made the top 40, Mariah Carey's has only sold about 20,000 copies and Janet Jackson's hasn't even sold 15,000 copies. Maybe Madonna should release her next album at Christmas and she might get another gold album like Kylie just has.

Skylight the OP asked if Kylie could have a hit, not for a detailed list of Madonna's chart failings.

Kylie hasn't had a hit in years because the songs released have been poor. Madonna hasn't had a hit in years because the songs released have been poor.

As a fan of both Kylie and Madonna I now don't think either will have a hit again. I would also suggest Kylie would have loved Madonna's career because let's face it it has been much better.

It would seem that person has hundreds of accounts on here and all they can do is talk about Madonna even in topics where Madonna isn't even the subject. Its the same long list of 'facts' in every post they make, only a different username making the comments. Yet its clear they are all coming from the exact same person with a Madonna fetish. They don't realise they are giving all Kylie fans a bad name with this trolling.

I'm finally going to ask DS to investigate it.

Impossible Princess is my favourite album by a female solo artist. I was so annoyed when she reverted back to the cheese for Light Years but Fever is a pop masterpiece. X wa alo very important, without X I doubt the whole electro pop wave what followed would have happened, Kylie instigated that movement not Lady Gaga.

Kylie last decent single was All The Lovers, its been very weak since then.

I think there are two issues affecting Kylie at the moment.

The first, as many have said, is that mainstream radio seems to have a real problem with featuring any woman over 40 so unless she releases something so incredible that they cannot ignore her that particular avenue is closed to her.

The other problem as I see it is some quite poor choices being made around her output.
Kiss Me Once was a bit of a disappointment. Aside from Into The Blue and the title track it was a rather generic pop. However almost all the other tracks she released around the same time (Skirt, Crystallize, Golden Boy, Sparks, The Other Boys, both Garibay EPs) are far superior and show a willingness to try new styles. So it's not that she's not capable of coming up with the goods but someone (either her or someone at her label) doesn't think they're right for a Kylie album so they end up coming out in bits and pieces over a longer period.

The OP asks whether she's lost her "vibe". Judging from subsequent posts this seems to equate her "getting it back" with commercial success but I don't think they are the same thing at all.
The Garibay EPs in particular show that she can still come up with great material but the audience for it is no longer as big as it once was. Part of the problem with Kiss Me Once was it sounded like an attempt to capture an audience that is no longer there for her.

It's a shame as she is a great pop star but I suspect her future is going to be appealing to her core audience only. That doesn't mean it can't be good quality but it simply won't get the same amount of attention as it would have previously.

I think she's at an interesting point where she needs to decide what direction she wants to take - constantly chasing for elusive mainstream commercial success or be satisfied with producing strong interesting pop that doesn't reach beyond her core fanbase.

As for the Xmas album - I don't think you can judge it by the same standards as a normal album. I've seen many people on various message boards saying that they're Kylie fans but wouldn't touch a Xmas album as they just don't like them. Personally I love a Xmas album so was very happy with it but it is a niche product. As another poster said, they can be a nice pension if you get it right though as they will sell regularly every year.

Firstly, Kylie Christmas has reached Gold Status, the album has sold just under 108,000 copies in the UK, Gold is anything from 100,000 to 299,999. That is good sales for a Christmas album as its sales life is limited.
I have always liked Kylie, but her output is mediocre for a while now. The Christmas album had some enjoyable moments and the Albert Hall Show i thought was wonderful. The remainder of her recent output left me disappointed. Kiss me Once was her weakest studio album of her career.
I do believe if Kylie works with the right people she could have some top 40 hits again and a decent selling album. I believe she needs to stop working on one off singles with others and concentrate on her own sound and direction for the next album.
That said Kylie has nothing to prove, she has an excellent back catalogue full of wonderful songs that will always be treasured, she can still deliver highly successful tours but i would be delighted if she could get at least one more big hit to her name.

Great post I do like how she is trying other stuff and not jumping on bandwagons by working with current "names".
Mind she did work with Calvin Harris first!
I like Kiss Me Once but agree it is weak, she should have never recorded Sexcerise...And some of the great tracks that are left just about every album since she went to Paralophone amazes me!
I think when X came out, many people thought it would be an album about her battle against cancer be more personal and inlooking. What we got was felt at the time a mish mash of different styles. I think this left people confused to who Kylie was...
I really think X was under rated and hearing it now, still sounds fresh. She releases the wrong tracks off albums also...While I do like, 2 Hearts, Imaging if The One had been lead single? Number 1 me thinks...
Then there's botch up by the record company with All The Lovers...That would have went to number 1 if they didn't release the download 2 weeks before.
So I blame the record company, back in 2010, I remember seeing Kylie on CH5 news, on about how her record company failed her as they failed to grasp how to release her new single, at the time was Better Than Today, (another one that should never have been released as a single). She had just done a Performance of it on The X Factor, (at the time when it was popular!) And the song wasn't proper available to download for another 2 weeks!!!
Into the Blue would have been top 10 if Parlphone didn't pull the single version of the song half way through its first week on sale on I Tunes, loosing sales for that version, as they wanted buyers to go to album version, in the hope they would buy the whole album...Madness!
She really needs to get rid of them and find a new label or start her own.....

I don't want to get involved in any arguments about either who's best, but I have also saw on another thread not related to Kylie, you brought her up in a negative manner. so maybe that is why this poster keeps mention Madonna when you start a thread knocking Kylie, as you are obviously a big fan of her (Madonna)?
(and the thread was about if David Bowie liked Madonna, you made mention of Bowie slagging Kylie, which was unnecessary, as it were about Bowie and Madonna!!)

Not if she sings live as poorly as when I saw her at Earls Court, the show that was televised on Channel 4. Hopefully she's become a better singer in the 10 years since.

Kylie has (rightly so) turned down Eurovision. Why would she need to do Eurovision? It would be a massive step backwards for her

Yes I did mention Bowie claiming Kylie was everything wrong with music in that anti Madonna topic which was started by someone as revenge for me starting this topic. That't how tragic this whole Kylie vs Madonna thing is, although its mainly that one Kylie fan behind all the trouble to be fair, yep this is without even factoring in 3 of the users in that said topic all being the same person with multiple logins. Everyone can see and and everyone is calling him up on it. One account is more than enough when its the same essay word for word posts on repeat.

And for the record I am a Kylie fan, hence this thread. I'm also a Madonna and Lady Gaga fan but unlike immature sections of each fanbase I am above slagging each off to make the other appear better. It seems Kylie fans can't handle anyone questioning her recent output without multiple accounts to slag off Madonna turning up.

Kylie is a great singer live. Certainly better than Madonna....

ohh controversial

Having seen both I would agree.

Ppl can slag her off all they want she sings great live more importantly her stage presence is fantastic