Steve Anderson has opened up on working with Kylie Minogue on her sixth album ‘Impossible Princess’ as the record turns 25.
Originally released in 1997, the record celebrates its latest milestone with its first-ever vinyl edition this autumn, following years of calls from fans for the LP to be revisited.
Speaking in Retro Pop’s November 2022 issue ahead of its release, Kylie’s co-writer and producer looks back on the creation of the project, which was conceived at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios near Bath, England.
“She was in an incredibly creative place in her life, coming off the back of how well things like Confide In Me had been received, which was very, very different for her. And she had really started to get involved in wanting to write and started to write in a book, lots of lyrics, scribbling lots of things down,” he says.
“[She was] just really inspired. I think the combination of our musical ideas that we were coming up with and the lyrics she was coming up with just seemed to gel really well.
“Lyrically, it’s really poetic. It really is poetry that she was writing. So we would just be in a tiny little room at Real World – not even the big studio, it’s a residential studio where we would all stay – and she would wander over and we’d play something and she would say, ‘Oh, that fits with this’. Or she’d come in with something like Say Hey, which was almost a finished song, and she just said, ‘I woke up and I’ve got this thing, what do you think?’ and then we’d help finish it.
“So it was really that; it was complete freedom to go away without any deadline, or any idea of where it was supposed to be heading, and just come up with something that we felt could be a good route for her to find a new sound for the next album.”
The album is undoubtedly the superstar’s most personal to date, marking the first time fans had seen the real Kylie – beyond her stage persona – and beneath many of the lyrics is a deeper story.
“The 10 track album that we made had a flow to it and we were telling a bit of a story,” Steve reveals. “But again, so much of that comes through her writing and her adaptability and these themes that go all the way through it, which are just genius.”
Reflecting on the significance of ‘Impossible Princess’ when it comes to Kylie’s career, Steve insists it was an essential record that paved the way for her next chapter.
“I always say that, regardless of how people see this, whether a success or a failure, it was necessary that she did this to scratch that itch, and then come back to pop and to Spinning Around and to ‘Light Years’,” he explains. “Without one thing, I’m not necessarily sure if the other thing would have happened quite as organically…”
‘Impossible Princess: 25th Anniversary Edition’ is out October 21 and available to pre-order now.
Read the full interview in the November 2022 edition of Retro Pop, out now. Order yours or subscribe via our Online Store, use our Store Finder to locate your nearest stockist, or get Digital Copies delivered direct to your devices.
