Strictly Referential Critique (1 of 2)

When I set out to complete this assignment I wanted a bit of a challenge - I didn't want to make it too easy on myself by choosing I piece I was very familiar with, or one that I already had lots of interpretive ideas about. So I did what any self-respecting twenty-first century college student would do: I set my iTunes on shuffle.

The first thing in the list was actually a song I had never heard before (and I kindof wonder how it even made its way into my iTunes!): Kylie Minogue's Burning Up from her album Fever.

But I withheld judgement (bracketing them out, in fact!), as I readied myself for some open listenings.

The title "Burning Up" fits perfectly within the images conjured up by the album title "Fever."
At the start of the song we're greeted with mellow guitar strings swinging a beat. Kylie's voice comes through them like she's contributing to the guitar's conversation - continuous ideas but in choppy bits, with gentle "ooohs" in the background - giving the impression of a mellow, pleasant acoutstic sound. But the strange effects give it away - at the very begnning of the song and continuing throughout there is a strange descending electronic effect that sounds like aliens descending on the moon. And then, suddenly, we're in a disco! Totally transported, the music explodes with House beats and slowly ascending vocals mount as the dancers in the club get sweatier and abandon themselves to the music with even more vigour.

Just as suddenly we return to the beginning section, like Kylie "burned up" a little too much and needed to step outside for a bit of air. She tells us she's going to the disco, and we accompany her on her nighttime walk to get there. Then she arrives, steps inside, and we're back amongst the dancing and the revelry until the end of the piece.

This was actually kindof hard as far as critiques go -- I kept finding myself wanting to say things about how the number of beats or different accentuations affected the structure of the piece, but then remembered that this must be strictly referential and deleted them. It was really difficult to describe the song using *only* referential, descriptive methods, and while I feel like I did the critique correctly there is a part of me that still doubts, simply because without added syntactical information the critique feels unfinished!