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Whisper it, but there was a feeling as recently as 2020 that Kylie Minogue was put out to pasture. There had been a greatest hits collection, a Christmas album and A legendary slot machine at GlastonburyShe had also released two nicecore dance-pop records apparently designed for BBC Radio 2’s time slots. “When I go out, I want to go out dancing,” she sang fatalistically on the 2018 album Goldenas if she were standing above a vast abyss of pop music exile, ready to plunge.
What a difference a padam makes. The Kylie at London’s Hyde Park is not the nostalgic, snug-skirted number she seemed to be transforming into. Tonight, she arrives in red latex and high heels, changes into silver fringe and later thigh-skimming dresses, raps and struts and follows a group of dancers dressed in Matrix leather. This is a woman who remembered that she was still, in fact, incredibly cool.
Last summer’s hit “Padam Padam,” with its sweaty, beady synths and chilly vocals, was a creative resurrection for the 56-year-old, and its success is reflected in this hard-hitting 90-minute show of her greatest hits. Out with the bland, uplifting bops. Back to the sex-fueled earworms. Opener “Tension,” on which Kylie Minogue urges a lover not to be shy and touch her there, sets the tone. “Red Blooded Woman,” a rare pivot to hip-hop, is her first release since 2009. The minimalist, carnal “Slow” is revved up into a more erotic frenzy than on its original recording. “Confide in Me,” a mid-’90s operatic blur of icy deadpan and ambiguous sexuality, is performed alongside an army of black-cloaked minions—this is Kylie’s cult favorite.
Only the middle section of the show hints at the cheese that is often forced into Minogue’s discography. “Spinning Around”, the disco track that saved her from commercial oblivion in 2000, doesn’t quite work as well as one might have hoped – probably because she’s made much better versions of it in the years since. New hit “The Loco-Motion” still feels like it should soundtrack a Butlin’s-sponsored coach trip to hell, but at least Minogue herself seems bewildered by her legacy. “It was amazing but really weird,” she laughs at the end of the song.
Throughout the show, the passage of time seems to occupy Minogue’s mind. She is, undeniably, in uncharted territory when it comes to her place in the industry, territory that only Madonna can truly relate to. This is a woman who has long since outlived the expected shelf life of pop stardom, whose work continues to fill clubs and inspire new artists – the excitement on the faces of pop stars Anitta, Tove Lo and Bebe Rexha, who all join her on stage tonight, is a sight to behold. At one point, Minogue reminisces about being just another “TV girl” who had left the Australian soap opera Neighbors to launch a music career. In another, she expresses gratitude to the young people in the crowd who weren’t even born when she wore gold hotpants around the time of the millennium. “We have history, people,” she jokes.
There are about ten minutes of her taking song requests from the audience, starting with an a cappella snippet of the Goldfrapp-like “2 Hearts” that isn’t particularly popular (“half the chorus is all you get”), then a verse of “I Should Be So Lucky.” Minogue is open, delighted and emotional from the start. Barely a quarter of the show has passed before she rushes to the back of the stage to wipe away a tear.
But those drops of treacle are kept to a minimum, in a show that contextualises Minogue as a still very creative and successful pop force. She’s a woman who is renowned for being very, very nice – in a way that sometimes makes her seem like an outsider, but more often makes her seem human – but part of the pleasure of watching her make music over the years has been when she sheds the grace and gratitude and becomes an absolute beast on stage.
Think of the pin-up glamour of her “Better the Devil You Know” reimagining; the punk style of her late-’90s swing into trip-hop and rock; the electropop ice queen of the Fever tour. In Hyde Park, lying astride dancers and climbing stairs with the wind in her hair, she displays a glamorous, unwavering ease that has been missing for some time.
She seems to know it, too. Notably, it’s a svelte rendition of “On a Night Like This” and a rousing version of “Love at First Sight” that close tonight’s show – and not, as some might have predicted, “Dancing,” that song about death and oblivion that, when it was released, seemed destined to close a farewell tour. In fact, the song, along with the entirety of Minogue’s last two albums before “Padam Padam,” is entirely absent. It’s whispered, but I suspect it may be deliberate.