Album Review: Dannii Minogue – This Is It: The Very Best Of
4 min read
When it comes to her music career, Dannii Minogue has been undeniably overshadowed by her much more mainstream and chart successful sister, Kylie, however that doesn’t mean that Dannii’s work in music is any less relevant as she makes known on a brand new singles collection that is released this month titled – This Is It…The Very Best Of.
Dannii has achieved an incredible amount of success as a solo artist over the past 25 years and has also become a celebrity outside of her recording career as an adored judge on Australia’s Got Talent and the X Factor in both the UK and now in Australia, helping pave the way for new artists such as UK winner Matt Cardle who took the crown for himself, and Dannii as his mentor, in 2010.
When it comes to picking tracks for a ‘best of’ collection it must seem quite the task when you have so many fantastic hits and career defining moments to cram inside a single disc, but Dannii has done it nicely on This Is It, showcasing the cream of the pop crop with a meaty 21 tracks, most old, some new, some collaborative and a duet with sister Kylie thrown in for good measures.
Placed within the collection we find our personal favorites which include the catchy and sexually driven Brian Higgins (producer and writer behind acts including The Wanted and Girls Aloud) co-written Top 5 hit single, All I Wanna Do, from the singers dance reinvention era in the late nineties. The track still gets us grooving along to its mid-tempo rhythm and hook heavy structure after all these years and is one of Dannii’s most defining career peaks.
Her collaborative effort with Dutch dance DJs Zki & Dobri, otherwise known as RIVA, on the dancefloor hit, Who Do You Love Now is a welcome inclusion here as it showcases the singers dance roots with splendor and spark. The track fits Dannii’s vocals perfectly as she drives the track with her sensual tones and still sits confidently in the club scene a decade after it was released. From here the track listing takes on a much more mature and dance scented feel with the singers Neon Lights singles falling effortlessly within the latter half of the collection with the engaging Put The Needle Of It and I Begin To Wonder, the latter serving Dannii with one of the most successful hits of her career.
Another highlight is the dance-pop Top 10 hit, You Won’t Forget About Me, easily one of the best tracks of Minogues career.
Early songs from Dannii’s recording career don’t unnoticed as early achievements find a comfortable nesting spot in the form of the singers debut single Love and Kisses with its R&B flavoring and the singers camp cover of the 1976 Melba Moore hit, This Is It.
The mash-up of Madonna’s Into The Groove with Dannii’s top twenty 2003 hit, Don’t Wanna Lose This Feeling is a little bit perplexing as an album inclusion but given the latter segments diversity in terms of guest spots and duets, it kind of falls into the collection naturally and offers a further injection of wonderful campness of the eclectic track listing here as it sits alongside her duet with sister Kylie on their cover of the ABBA classic, The Winner Takes It All.
Closing the collection is a token new penning – Cos’ Your Beautiful – a track that was recorded with Ruth Lorenzo who Dannii guided through the UK’2 fifth season of X Factor in 2008. The number serves as the singers most recent offering despite being put together in 2010. It’s a glimpse into a much more modern and sleek style adopted by Dannii, hopefully also serving us with a teaser of new material from the star perhaps (we hope). The track opens to a spangely, U2-esque guitar intro before lifting off into a beautiful collision of synths with the singer’s trademark dancefloor tempo propelling the track through its lively 4 minute lifespan.
This Is It: The Very Best Of is a pretty perfect pop retrospective for Dannii’s genre blending career of a quarter of a century as one of Australia’s leading recording artists and personalities.
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