After ten albums, 30 top ten hits and 40 million record sales, she's reduced to impersonating Gwen Stefani's backing dancers. 'Speakerphone' features a wonderfully knowing Kylie lyric – "Drop your socks and grab your mini boom box" – but sounds like an outtake from Britney Spears' Blackout album 'All I See' could be a Janet Jackson track from seven years ago and 'Nu-Di-Ty', a woefully-dated R'n'B filler, features Kylie doing her best impression of the Harajuku Girls. Though Kylie's never been the most charismatic recording artist, it's still upsetting to hear her feasting on the sonic scraps of other, lesser artists. Unfortunately, this safe, frequently uninspired LP isn't quite up to the job.
Nevertheless, were X the collection of brilliant pop songs that it was supposed to be, Kylie's triumphant comeback could still be salvaged. Kylie's iconoclastic 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head' outfit had, to all intents and purposes, gone up in flames. As Kylie asked a knackered-looking Jason Donovan for his autograph, winking frantically at the ITV1 audience in the process, the stench of burning was unmistakable.
Then came The Kylie Show, a Saturday night special featuring some of the most laboured comedy skits in living memory. Lead single '2 Hearts' wasn't the delicious slice of instant dance-pop gratification that fans wanted, but rather a slow-burning electro-glam stomp that – Shock! Horror! Outrage! – repaid multiple listens sure enough, the public voted by withholding their iTunes passwords and Minogue's "surefire number one" turned into a number four damp squib. X, the iconic popstar's first album since beating breast cancer, was shaping up to be one of the year's biggest pop albums, until dodgy decision-making threw a spanner into the works. It's been a tough few weeks for Kylie fans.