Ask any serious minded Kylie fan and there’s a fair chance that they will tell you ‘Slow’ is one of their favourite songs by the Aussie pop star. Hell, you could even ask Kylie herself and she’d say the same thing, frequently announcing it her crowning glory. Twenty years after the song went to number one in Britain she’s still as keen as ever, telling Vogue that the song is a reference point for new album ‘Tension’. There’s certainly parallels between the ‘Body Language’ lead song and the smash first single from the new LP, ‘Padam Padam’, with Kylie meeting an object of lust in a club and having such a connection that causes heartbeats to come centre stage (“Skip a beat and move with my body” she purrs in ‘Slow’).
The song comes from the powerhouse pop songwriting and production team of Emiliana Torrini and Dan Carey, who you’ll also know for writing huge hits for… well, no one actually. Emiliana had had some success as a solo artist in her own right, with the deliciously languid ‘Unemployed in Summertime’ and was heading towards recording raw yet beautiful folk album ‘Fisherman’s Woman’ with Dan. ‘Slow’ was a brilliant diversion for the pair, and one they didn’t try to repeat. Dan is now the indie producer du jour, guiding Wet Leg, Squid and Foals to album success, while Emiliana, after great solo records, joined with the Colorist Orchestra for a pair of highly regarded chamber pop albums, including 2023’s ‘Racing The Storm’. We tracked her down to her Iceland home to ask her about the making of the classic Kylie record.
‘Slow’ is a stone-cold, timeless classic – was it hard to write?
It was really easy – I think we wrote it in half an hour. We kind of woke up after and said, ‘Wait, did we just write that?’ You know, those are the best songs you write. I always get this feeling – are we just stealing it from somewhere? Did we hear it somewhere else? Or we're just taking it by accident? As a songwriter you have this feeling that it's so familiar. Those are the best songs, they come from the gods. Instead of finishing it, we were so excited we started debating if we shouldn't just release it ourselves. We even had an amazing band name, Darkness Is My Tracksuit. That always happens – I get kind of territorial. But then there was this middle part that we just couldn't get through. So we asked if Kylie wanted to come in finish the song with us.
Read the rest in Classic Pop’s forthcoming Kylie special issue.