Kylie Minogue and Jessie Ware give us disco dining in "Kiss of Life"

When Kylie Minogue had appeared on Jessie Ware's podcast Table Manners back in September of 2020, the two of them discussed (off mic) doing something together, which Jessica had let slip immediately. We already knew the song wasn't going to feature on Kylie Minogue's Disco album which hadn't been released at that point. And when Jessie put out the re-release of her 2020 album What's Your Pleasure? and it wasn't on there, I figured that whatever she and Kylie did was cut, or maybe they never managed to get anything off the ground. But here comes Kylie with a Disco re-release and a song featuring Jessie Ware, called "Kiss of Life".

After Jessie giving us an era of videos that she barely featured in, its nice to see her back in one again; showing a side to herself that we never get to see in her own music videos. The inclusion of food was also a nice touch, given that Jessie Ware has released a cookbook and has a popular podcast called Table Manners.

HENNYWAY. Let's talk about this song.

I think the prospect of Kylie and Jessie Ware excites fans more than anything they could ever put out. But with this said, this is a nice song. I don't think it's anything special. But it has a nice groove and I think it'll be a grower. By Christmas I'll probabaly be all over it.

"Kiss of Life" is fine, but it feels more like a What's Your Pleasure? cut than a Disco one, which is because the song is co-written by Danny Parker and Shungudzo Kuyimba and produced by James Ford, all of whom were Jessie's partners in crime for pretty much the entirety of What's Your Pleasure?. This makes me wonder whether this song was initially intended to feature on Jessie's album. Everything about it is Jessie. She sounds better and more at home on the song than Kylie does, to such a point that I'd rather had just heard Jessie do the whole thing with her backing singers.

Kylie is a strange artist in the sense that I don't feel any type of way about her doing collaborations. Kylie has never been an artist who brings a lot to songs. Kylie's gambit has always been that she's had a great image which is synonymous with her music, and that she's always worked with great songwriters and producers who can give her great songs. She's kind of non factor as to whether a song is good or bad. So when Jessie was like 'I'MMA DO SOMETHING WITH KYLIE' I was like 'That's cute'. I wasn't overly excited, especially as Jessie had already given me everything I didn't even know I wanted from her with her album What's Your Pleasure?.

Kylie has such a huge fanbase, did all the things on the UK albums chart in 2020 with Disco that Jessie didn't, and "Kiss of Life" marks what is probabaly one of the biggest features of Jessie's career to date. So hopefully Jessica being tied to a Kylie song will introduce her to a wider audience and have them discover What's Your Pleasure?, which was hands down one of the best albums of 2020 and was a better disco album than Kylie's Disco.

HENNYWAY.

"Kiss of Life" will feature on the re-release of Kylie Minogue's Disco album, which despite still being a huge success, I felt had its single run cut short. "Supernova", "Miss a Thing" and "Where Does the DJ Go?" all shoulda been singles. But this has been a trend with Kylie's albums since Aphrodite.

💿 Album reviews: Jessie Ware: What's Your Pleasure? (Platinum Pleasure Edition) | What's Your Pleasure? | Kylie: Disco | Kylie Christmas | Kiss Me Once | Aphrodite | Fever