The Singles Jukebox

Kylie goes (kinda) country…

[Video]
[5.67]

Katie Gill: Everybody’s going to claim this is “country influenced” just because this song has an acoustic guitar. But this is KYLIE MINOGUE. She’s as country music as Dolly Parton is pop-punk. This is Kylie doing what she’s done best for the past thirty plus years: giving us a cute and fun poppy jam of a dance song, only this time she’s using a prominent guitar. It’s a bit more sedate than past Kylie (if you wanna go out dancing, might want to actually sell it a bit more) but that insanely catchy chorus helps make up for the song’s flaws.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Although Kylie Minogue favors producers who apply a lacquered finish to dance tracks, “Dancing” is an idea of dancing not borne out by the results. The verse melody and Minogue’s lilt evoke Dolly Parton, but Dolly Parton went disco too, fabulously. When Kylie hits the dance floor, “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” is her idea of release. 
[5]

Iain Mew: Using “go out dancing” like “go down fighting” is one of those lines so perfect that it made me wonder why I’ve never heard it before. I love the way it takes pop’s recurring dance-until-the-world-ends theme and reins it in to the personal and intimate. And Kylie is the right singer for the sentiment, not overdoing the bittersweetness but giving it a heart-swelling clarity.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: The dual meaning of the line “When I go out I wanna go out dancing” gives this a bit of added poignance that the rhyme-and-hope of the verses don’t even hint at. Corny as they are, they’re also over pretty damn fast. In mood, it puts me in the mind of fellow Australian fifty-ish Tina Arena’s “You Set Fire to My Life,” only this one has a great chorus, and this is my favourite Kylie lead single since Fever.
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: If this song didn’t revolve around a lyric as emphatically multiplicitous as “when I go out, I wanna go out dancing”, it would be far lesser. After a vaguely Postman Pat, kids-TV-theme intro, “Dancing” develops into quite heartwarming sentimentality, and it does so with the moderate but concerted power of that chorus. Mortality meets euphoria with subtlety, and the latter two take control.
[7]

Micha Cavaseno: You know, the fake out from acoustic strummer into dance-pop has to get some sort of praise. It’s too late to feel like we’re dealing with hangovers of that weird blend of folk-pop and EDM so instead you get something akin to the idea of “Stevie Nicks 21st Century Mainstream Comeback Album” (which is now going to haunt me for a good six hours), but at the same time it just doesn’t have the full impact you’d hope for such a clever trick.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: The acoustic guitar is fine; it’s neat hearing Kylie’s voice shade from sounding exactly like Dolly to indelibly like herself and back. But the chorus is a throwaway, and the vocal snippetizing after it a plunge directly into anonymity. Extra point because co-writer Amy Wadge deserves more than being the woman not credited for Ed Sheeran’s success, and if it takes late-career Kylie so be it.
[4]

Will Adams: So is “I’m making a country album lol jk it’s dancepop but there might be guitars” the new marketing strategy for big pop albums? “Dancing” reaches for expansiveness like “Into the Blue” did, but it’s even less impactful, mashing guitar noodles and chopped vocals into a loaf of a song.
[4]

Stephen Eisermann: Oh, honey, just because you decide to try out country instrumentation doesn’t mean you have to use the same platitudes so many country artists use.
[3]