Yello – Zebra

If you could pinpoint the period when Yello really found themselves, I think 1994’s Zebra would be a decent estimate. Now eight albums into their career, they had gone through the slightly silly novelty stage, tried serious pop, motorsport-inspired energetic electronic pop, and a very strong smattering of jazz. But it was with Zebrathat they truly embraced dance music – maybe not quite for the…

And it mightn’t last more than a day But I’ll take my chances anyway

from the album Light Years

Remixes aside, Kylie’s mid-nineties Deconstruction era had left little room for dance music, with the two albums from this period preoccupied instead with R&B and alt-rock influences. Light Years was constructed as the triumphant return of Pop Kylie, and in the eight years or so since she had left pure pop behind, the genre had become heavily intertwined with dance - even Dannii’s latest album at the time, Girl, had drawn from trance and techno to push her to a new creative peak. It was a natural move for Kylie to do the same, and the most successful foray onto the dance floor on Light Years was the epic ‘Butterfly’.

Though it was written by Kylie with regular collaborator Steve Anderson (who was a club veteran in his own right as one of the Brothers In Rhythm), ‘Butterfly’ was produced by Mark Picchiotti, who had spent the nineties racking up countless classic remixes and club hits. Bringing in a producer for just one track can risk the cohesive feel of an album, but ‘Butterfly’ fits right in on Light Years, playing with the LP’s bubblegum vibe and pushing it to extremes - the lyrics are as light and airy as ‘Please Stay’ or ‘Koocachoo’, but Picchiotti’s production and Kylie’s earnest delivery push it to a whole other level of intensity.

Light Years was a fairly quick campaign, with barely six months separating the first single ‘Spinning Around’ and the last UK release ‘Please Stay’, but certain territories were gifted further singles: Australia and Germany got ‘Your Disco Needs You’, while the US got ‘Butterfly’. It made sense to push ‘Butterfly’ to American clubs - a pop release would do very little, as Kylie had not seen success on American pop charts since the late eighties, and ‘Butterfly’, released on Picchiotti’s own label, served as a reintroduction to the clubs that would stick with Kylie through the next two decades, regardless of whether the US general public was on board or not. Follow-up album Fever would take Kylie in an even more club-oriented direction, pushing her back into the American mainstream in the process, and it was ‘Butterfly’, above all else, that laid the groundwork for that evolution.

‘Butterfly’ audio:

Amy Grant Remix Album Coming In August, Mixes From Dave Audé, Tony Moran, More

[dropcap]C[/dropcap]hristian pop singer Amy Grant is gearing up for a stroll on the dance floor….well, her music is. Grant will release an as-yet untitled remix album on August 19, 2014. The album will include amped-up mixes of her biggest hits, including “Baby Baby,” “Every Heartbeat,” and “That’s What Love Is For.” So far we know that Superstar DJ and producer Dave Audé has remixed “Baby Baby,”…