Let's Get to It is the fourth studio album by Australian singer Kylie Minogue. It was the final studio album with Pete Waterman Limited (PWL), being released by the record label in the United Kingdom on 14 October 1991. Mushroom Records distributed the album in Australia on 25 November 1991. After Matt Aitken left the trio Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW) in early 1991, the remaining producers wanted to make another album with Minogue, although it was not a contractual obligation for her. Mike Stock and Pete Waterman agreed to share their songwriting credits with Minogue for the first time on six tracks. They spent months recording at PWL Studios, more time than any of her previous studio albums.
Musically, Let's Get to It varies in sound, with it including hip hop, new jack swing, house and dance-pop genres. Music critics provided mixed reviews, recognising Minogue's creative control and her provocative image despite them being ambivalent towards the production. The album is one of Minogue's least successful studio albums to date, missing the top 10 in both her native Australia and the UK. Nonetheless, it has since been certified gold in Australia by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA).
Four singles were released from Let's Get to It, including UK top 10 entries "If You Were with Me Now" and "Give Me Just a Little More Time". The other singles, "Word Is Out" and "Finer Feelings", attained top 20 positions in the UK. Minogue further promoted the album with her Let's Get to It Tour, which traveled throughout Europe in October and November 1991. Minogue was disappointed with the final result and left PWL in 1992. The album was re-issued in the UK for the first time in 2015.
Background In 1990, Minogue released her third studio album Rhythm of Love, reflecting a more sexually liberated image and dance-influenced sound. She became more involved in the album's creation and arrangement than her previous projects alongside being credited as co-writer for the first time, while Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW) were the primary producers.; Promotion for Rhythm of Love included controversial music videos for "Better the Devil You Know" and "What Do I Have to Do", which continued to foster Minogue's increasingly provocative image.; ; ; Her romantic relationship with Australian rock band INXS's lead singer Michael Hutchence, one of her biggest influences during the production of Rhythm of Love, also generated intense publicity.; ; In early 1991, Hutchence ended their 16-month relationship over the telephone.;
After finishing the Rhythm of Love Tour, which spanned through Australia and Asia in February and March 1991, Minogue took a short break and spent time in Paris with her friends.; Among them was British photographer Katerina Jebb, who later became a frequent collaborator of hers. She dated model Zane O'Donnell, who appears in the music videos for "What Do I Have to Do" and "Shocked".; During the production of Rhythm of Love, SAW struggled to find an audience for their pop output. They were disappointed by the contemporary trends in music; Mike Stock commented: "We always tried to create pop hooks... By the 1990s, it was made by people who were off the heads on ecstasy. They'd be fascinated just with two notes going backwards and forwards." As a result, Matt Aitken left SAW in 1991 because he felt he was burnt out. "People say all our records sound the same, but it came to a point where they started sounding all the same to me," he said.
Recording and production
Let's Get to It was not a contractual obligation for Minogue; Pete Waterman Limited (PWL) had signed her initially for three studio albums.; However, Pete Waterman and PWL co-owner David Howells wanted to make another album with her because of the commercial benefits.; Stock contacted Minogue while she was in Paris and they both agreed to do it. While Minogue had been reticent about resigning, her manager Terry Blamey convinced her it would be a good creative opportunity to write with Stock. Over the course of 1991, Minogue left the city and returned to PWL Studios in London with her remaining producers Stock and Waterman.; The two agreed to share their songwriting credits with Minogue for the first time; she was listed as a co-writer on six tracks out of the nine original tracks.; Waterman would provide hints about the content and song titles, while Stock and Minogue put the songs together by humming different melodies and recording them within a day. She spent months working on Let's Get to It, more time than any of Minogue's earlier works.
During the production, club music and the London club scene fascinated Minogue. Although her music had always been played in commercial clubs, the pop element of her earlier works made the exclusive clubs look down on her.; "If you go into Bowlers or you go into the Haçienda, you can't play 'I Should Be So Lucky' can you? They're going to lynch you!", Waterman said. To give herself more credibility with clubs, Minogue created an alias for herself as "Angel K" and released several white label promotional vinyls. The tracks released included "Do You Dare" and "Closer", which later appeared as B-sides on the singles "Give Me Just a Little More Time" and "Finer Feelings", respectively. Waterman also wanted to produce more "cutting edge dance music" for Minogue to fit in his show The Hitman and Her, which he considered a trendy show back then. Minogue suggested she hoped to find time for more recording in 1991, telling Smash Hits in August that she "may do some more writing in America which may lead to another recording there", but the recordings never materialised.
Waterman and PWL imported songs for Let's Get to It recorded by foreign acts like 2 Unlimited, whose song "Get Ready for This" (1991) is sampled heavily on "I Guess I Like It Like That". Their intention was to buy these songs cheaply and make a profit from them. Stock felt uninspired by this and the mostly sample-based album, saying: "There's no point having an artist like [Minogue] or a writer like me there if the rule is [buying] cheap from abroad." He composed "Finer Feelings" with Waterman, as Minogue wanted to put more sexual content on the album. Minogue and American singer Keith Washington wrote and recorded the duet "If You Were with Me Now" separately. It was her first duet on any of her albums; "Especially for You" was recorded previously for Jason Donovan's Ten Good Reasons (1989).; One of the last tracks to be recorded for Let's Get to It was the cover of Chairmen of the Board's "Give Me Just a Little More Time" (1970).
Music and lyrics
Music critics identified Let's Get to It as a genre-spanning record, departing from the predominantly teen pop sound of Minogue's early works.; ; Minogue stated her songs on the album ranging from "big band swing stuff to a more soulful kind of thing", and more sophisticated dance music.; Chris True of AllMusic found the songs have "heavy breathing effects" and are as danceable as Rhythm of Love. Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine and Lee Barron noted the sounds of R&B, hip hop, new jack swing, and house are featured prominently on Let's Get to It.; Nathan Wood of Foxtel's MaxTV called the album "a musical exploration". He felt Minogue's fondness for dance music began to emerge on the album, with forays into house and techno.
Let's Get to It opens with "Word Is Out", a new jack swing track with elements of jazz fusion.; ; Minogue duplicated General Johnson's trademark vocal style on her cover of "Give Me Just a Little More Time". Joe Sweeney from PopMatters noted she puts more of her own personality into it than previous cover songs like "The Loco-Motion" or "Tears on My Pillow". The house track "Too Much of a Good Thing" is followed by "Finer Feelings", a song that includes a reference to Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" (1982) in the chorus with the lyrics: "What is love without the finer feelings / It's just sex without the sexual healing."; Digital Spys Nick Levine felt that the lyrics show a "sexier and more sophisticated" side of Minogue. "If You Were with Me Now", Minogue's duet with Washington, is a non-sexual and string-drenched sentimental ballad.;
Minogue urges her lover to "get this thing on the move" in the Cathy Dennis-influenced title track.; "Right Here, Right Now", a house floor-filler track, follows it. Sweeney found the song has a similar groove vibe to the work of CeCe Peniston, while the title is the same as that of the 1990 song by British rock band Jesus Jones. It is entirely unrelated to the song of the same name that Minogue recorded with Italian producer Giorgio Moroder in 2015. Minogue sings about living life to the fullest in "Live and Learn", followed by the acoustic ballad "No World Without You".; ; The six-minute techno-pop "I Guess I Like It Like That", which serves as the album's closer, includes grunting samples and a stadium keyboard part that lays the foundation of the song.; ; The song contains a sample from 2 Unlimited's "Get Ready for This", and an uncredited interpolation of "I Like It Like That" (1988) by Salt-N-Pepa.; Belgian producers Phil Wilde and Jean-Paul de Coster, who wrote and produced "Get Ready for This", were only credited as co-authors of "I Guess I Like It Like That" on the 2012 re-release of Let's Get to It in Japan.
Artwork and release
German fashion photographer Jürgen Teller produced the artwork for Let's Get to It.; On the black-and-white cover, Minogue sports a 1960s-style bouffant and looks away from the camera, with three men partially shown in the background.; She wears a sleeveless minidress that was designed by Nobuhiko Kitamura for Japanese fashion brand Hysteric Glamour. The minidress is a stretch lycra piece with multi-coloured vanity print and has shoestring spaghetti straps of the same fabric. Minogue found the cover interesting, saying it "will worry fans the most [with the] weird expression on my face". Oliver Hurley of Classic Pop felt that Minogue looked moody and the artwork was "a striking contrast to the grinning popstrel" of her previous image. Writing for Idolator, Mike Wass complimented the cover as "hip and edgy", and commented that "[Minogue] was entering her cool phase." True commented that the sinister cover, and the title, helped Minogue transform fully "from her innocent dance-pop image to what the press dubbed 'SexKylie", and described her as a "self-made sex kitten". In 2004, Minogue donated the dress worn for the cover shot to the Cultural Gifts Program of the Arts Centre Melbourne.
Minogue named the album Let's Get to It; she first revealed the title on 31 August 1991 while she was performing "Word Is Out" on the children's television series Motormouth. It was her final studio album under PWL released in the UK on 14 October 1991. Mushroom Records released the album in Australia on 25 November 1991. In Japan, it was first released on 21 November 1991 by PWL under the title of あなたもM？ (Are you M too?), with instrumental bonus tracks.; WEA re-released it twice Let's Get to It in 1993 and 1995, respectively, and PWL reissued it in 2012 with bonus tracks and mixes.; ; In October 2014, it was announced Let's Get to It, along with Minogue's studio albums Kylie (1988), Enjoy Yourself (1989), and Rhythm of Love, was to be re-released by Cherry Red Records and PWL.; The original release date of 27 October 2014 was later postponed to 9 February 2015.; The albums were digitally remastered from the original studio tapes and were made available on vinyl, CD, and DVD. This was the first time these albums had been re-released in the UK.;