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Neon Nights is the fourth studio album by Australian singer Dannii Minogue. It was released through London Records on 17 March 2003. Spurred by her success with the 2001 single "Who Do You Love Now?", Minogue signed a new record contract and began working on her first album in six years with the likes of Ian Masterson, Korpi & Blackcell, Neïmo and Terry Ronald.
The effort culminated in a dance-pop record largely influenced by 1980s music and the European club scene. Neon Nights became the most successful album campaign of Minogue's career, peaking at number eight in the United Kingdom and spawning four top-ten singles in the territory, including "Put the Needle on It" and "I Begin to Wonder".
Neon Nights received generally positive reviews from Music journalism, who praised its cohesion and mixture of styles; it has come to be regarded as a Cult following among pop music fans. Minogue went on a limited tour in support of the album, which included a one-off show in New York City. Neon Nights has been reissued twice since its release, marking its 15th and 20th anniversaries.
"Sometimes you need that bushfire to clear the slate and regenerate. We all get to know—when we've got enough years behind us—when you need to firmly shut a door for a very different one to open. It was like that. I was at peace with everything being finished."In 2001, DJ Pete Tong approached her to record vocals for the Trance music instrumental "Stringer" by DJ duo Chocolate Puma, which was becoming a hit in European clubs. The track became "Who Do You Love Now?", which peaked at number three on the UK Singles Chart in late November and remains her longest-charting entry, spending 16 weeks on the chart; in Australia, the song peaked at number fifteen. DanniiMusic.com Chronology. Retrieved 30 June 2006
The single's success led to a six-album record deal with London Records, a subsidiary of Warner Music, and work on a new album soon began with London giving Minogue free rein of its production. "Dannii Minogue Ditched By Record Label". ContactMusic.com. Retrieved 22 January 2007. Minogue turned 30 while recording the album, a milestone that she wanted to celebrate with Neon Nights and reflect her positive mindset as a time capsule.
Minogue worked on the album in London, Paris, and Stockholm, and was majorly involved with the songwriting process, having writing credits on 12 of the 15 tracks on the standard edition. Longtime collaborator Terry Ronald accompanied her on many of the songwriting trips. The recording process commenced in 2002 at Murlyn Studios, a cabin located in the outskirts of Stockholm. She first met with Henrik Korpi and Mathias Johansson, better known as Korpi & Blackcell, and Karen Poole; the four wrote three of the tracks on Neon Nights, including opener "Put the Needle on It".
The French indie rock band Neïmo became involved with the album after sending several backing ideas to Faversham. In Paris, their studio was a living room outfitted with vintage music equipment, with Minogue's vocals recorded in a spare bedroom. She and Ronald finished three tracks with the band. Their third time in Paris, in May 2002, became the pair's last writing trip together as Ronald later started chemotherapy. Ronald is a co-writer on six Neon Nights tracks, and survived his cancer diagnosis.
"Dance music is such a huge passion of mine, so the was a dream. I wanted to hear the songs and feel, as I closed my eyes, that I'm on a dance floor, in the club, under a mirror ball. That's what that album is for me. In fact, that's why we called it Neon Nights—it just had to be something that felt like when you're at a glitzy party with your dancing shoes on."
The initial output from Neon Nights mimicked the Trance music sound of "Who Do You Love Now?", a brief discarded early on, whose vestiges appear in the closer "It Won't Work Out"—later retooled into a flamenco-tinged trip hop ballad. "Mystified" was one of the first tracks to be finished for Neon Nights which helped to mold the album's electropop template, while the band Neïmo influenced its sonic palette with a pared-down "tough Electronic rock sound". "Put the Needle on It", the opener, and "A Piece of Time" are both electroclash songs that convey this underground element; the former has been compared to Donna Summer, while the latter to Daft Punk and Miss Kittin. "On the Loop" continues this experimentation with the use of distortion. (pictured in 1987) served as an inspiration for album, who later approved her song "Into the Groove" for a mash-up treatment.]]
Critics have identified Disco as a prominent influence throughout Neon Nights, from the aforementioned "Put the Needle on It", to "Creep" and "Mighty Fine". Music writer Quentin Harrison described the former two as pulling from American aesthetics in channeling electro-funk, R&B and hip hop. Jack Smith from BBC Music likened "Mighty Fine" to the P-Funk style. The record evolves into eurodisco on the "dark and gritty" "I Begin to Wonder" and its "dreamier" counterpart, "Come and Get It". Elsewhere, "For the Record" and "Don't Wanna Lose This Feeling" are pure pop songs.
Minogue also drew inspiration from artists she listened to in her youth including Madonna, Scritti Politti, and Kraftwerk. The album utilizes several samples: "Mighty Fine" features the 1980 song "Thighs High (Grip Your Hips and Move)" by Tom Browne, and Prince-influenced "Push" borrows from the 1983 song "White Horse" by Laid Back. As mashups gained traction in the early 2000s, "I Begin to Wonder" and "Don't Wanna Lose This Feeling" were augmented for promotional use, blended with "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" (1984) by Dead or Alive and "Into the Groove" (1985) by Madonna, respectively.
The album's lyrical themes revolve around romance and sex. "Put the Needle on It" is innuendo-laden, and "Vibe On" is about vibrators, reportedly an inside joke from the 1997 film Private Parts where a woman straddles a speaker between her legs. Critics have noted that Minogue infuses the record with a "sultry" and "sleazy" persona, with John Lucas of AllMusic writing that she is "sexually charged but smart and slightly aloof". Alexis Kirke of MusicOMH made the case for Minogue as the inverse of her older sister Kylie Minogue: "There's a Willow Rosenberg in Buffy, a Dark Phoenix in the X-Men – and there is also a "Dark Kylie". Dark Kylie exudes more of a night-time sexuality than Kylie herself." Kirke and Smith described her vocals as "powerful", which Minogue credits her stint on the musical Notre-Dame de Paris with developing.
The cover photograph for Neon Nights was taken by Matthew Donaldson. Its minimalist composition sees Minogue against a white backdrop, propping herself up from the floor with one leg extended and reaching for her shoe: "It was like, there's a white board, just lie on it and roll about and we'll see what we come up with. There was a freedom to it and we wanted it to feel like an outtake from Studio 54 or something." It was particularly inspired by a photograph of actress Liza Minnelli crawling on the floor at the aforementioned nightclub. Minogue said that its laidback approach was due to her camera shyness. Rob Copesy of Official Charts called the artwork "strangely brilliant", while Ron Slomowicz of Dotdash Meredith compared it to Calvin Klein—"slice of life, like a bedroom photographer".
Neon Night has seen three separate re-issues. A 2007 deluxe edition had made the album into a 33-track double disc.
In March 2018, as part of the celebration of Neon Nights' 15th anniversary, Minogue announced a special reissue of the album on streaming, CD and, for the first time, on a limited edition 180g pink and blue double vinyl. "@danniiminogue on instagram". instagram.com. Retrieved 23 March 2018. While the digital and CD versions followed the same tracklisting of the Deluxe Edition released on 2007, the double colored vinyl featured a slightly revised selection of bonus tracks, most notably omitting the B-side "Nervous". "Dannii Minogue Neon Nights : Vinyl 12" Album | HMV Store". store.hmv.com. Retrieved 23 March 2018.
Another reissue of the album, Neon Nights 20 boasted over 100 tracks across seven CDs.
| + List of tour dates ! style="width:200px;" | Date ! style="width:200px;" | City ! style="width:150px;" | Country ! style="width:300px;" | Venue |
| Europe | ||||
| 28 April 2003 | London | United Kingdom | Hackney Empire | |
| 6 July 2003 | Party in the Park | |||
| 27 July 2003 | Glasgow | Hampden Park | ||
| 3 August 2003 | Cork | Ireland | Guinness Michelstown Festival | |
| North America | ||||
| 24 September 2003 | New York City | United States | Webster Hall | |
| Europe | ||||
| 25 August 2004 | Athens | Greece | MTV Beach Beats | |
| 28 August 2004 | Istanbul | Turkey | Club Laila | |
| 23 October 2004 | London | United Kingdom | London Astoria | |
Ron Slomowicz of About.com, who was a fan of Minogue's prior output, felt that the album "starts out amazingly" with "massive club hits", but criticized its middle section as "wandering into a murky area of 80's throwback-inspired retreads". However, he felt that Minogue had the complete package as a pop star. Writing for RTÉ, Cristín Leach gave high praises to "I Begin to Wonder" and "Push", which the album's more "bland" material helped to elevate, and felt that Minogue was still "on her way" in carving an identity distinct from her sister's. In other mixed reviews, critics opined that the material on Neon Nights was generic. Karen Bliss from Tribute wrote that the album is "full of average booty-shaking dance tracks, good for the moment, but nothing memorable," though "It Won't Work Out" was highlighted as a "beautiful, earnest ballad". Kristina Feliciano of Entertainment Weekly echoed this sentiment and felt that Minogue "needed some of her big sister's cheekiness" on a set of "dance-floor trifles that's passable (especially "Put the Needle on It") but not very memorable."
Retrospective reviews of Neon Nights were predominately positive. Writing for The Arts Desk, Thomas H. Green found it to be "a sassy and bouncy surprise" full of "chewy, invigorated club-pop, imaginatively constructed". Peter Piatkowski of PopMatters called it a "minor classic" that "displayed an artistry that Minogue hadn't shown before". Quentin Harrison of Albumism outlined Minogue's "club siren transformation" and commented that " Neon Nights remains a distinct dance-pop marker". Mike Wass of Idolator wrote that "it's one thing to create an excellent three-and-a-half-minute dance-pop song, but another to sustain the appeal over an entire album. Kylie Minogue managed it with Fever, Madonna followed suit on Confessions on a Dance Floor. Dannii's contribution to the genre is every bit as good as those classics."
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| 20th anniversary deluxe edition | LMS5521940 | 16 June 2023 |
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