Best known as the vocalist on David Guetta’s number one hit Titanium, Furler is also one of pop’s most in-demand songwriters, with credits for Rihanna (Diamonds), Beyonce (Pretty Hurts) and Britney Spears (Perfume).
“I was able to offload a lot of stuff to her,” Kylie says. “I mean, I gave her everything I’d recorded, which already was a lot, and she was able to come in with a fresh set of ears, some distance.
Eventually, late last year, “we started to have a collection of songs that sounded like ‘Kylie Songs’. That’s when I first thought I could actually see the finishing line”.
Asked for the recipe to a “Kylie Song”, the singer laughs – “I wish I knew!” – but eventually conjures up three key ingredients.
“It needs to be optimistic, with a sense of euphoria. It needs to have a really strong melody. And a sprinkle of fairy dust.”
And Kiss Me Once has more fairy dust than Tinkerbell herself.
Cheeky, flirty and effervescent, it centres around a “sex trilogy” – Sexy Love, Sexercise and Les Sex – that encapsulates the star’s naughty-but-nice persona: Much more Moulin Rouge than Miley Cyrus.
If there’s a criticism, it’s that the album plays it too safe.
Kylie is at her most alluring when she stops being a glitter-cannoned, hot-panted pop gargantosaur. Her most interesting songs are side projects (Where The Wild Roses Grow, external), cast-offs (Cherry Bomb, external) and soundtrack recordings (Whistle, external).
“I’m curious,” she says. “I’ll try anything.
“So even if there’s a song where I think, ‘Hmmm, I’m not sure if that’s right for me’, a bit of me is thinking, ‘But you don’t really know until you try it’.”
