Aussie music icon Kylie Minogue has last laugh after years of ’backlash and ridicule’

For years she was cruelly ridiculed and mocked – but this Aussie superstar has well and truly come out on top and proved everybody wrong.

It has been 35 years since Kylie Minogue released her debut album Kylie, which topped the charts in Australia, the UK, Europe and beyond for weeks in 1988.

COMMENT

It’s simply joyous to see Kylie Minogue get so much support at the moment thanks to her global new hit Padam Padam.

In July it’s 35 years since Minogue released her debut album Kylie, which topped the charts in Australia, the UK, Europe and beyond for weeks in 1988.

At 55, Minogue is at the top of her game, just as she was all those years ago.

Back in 1988 the likes of Tiffany, Debbie Gibson and Belinda Carlisle were her pop music contemporaries sharing the top spots on the charts.

While all are still touring in smaller venues, the only other peer that really has kept up with Minogue on a global scale is Madonna.

As any Australian Minogue superfan will tell you, as well as Padam Padam becoming a global hit and the 35th anniversary since the release of that first album, there is another career event that is just as important for the singer.

It’s 25 years this month that Minogue toured Australia in her groundbreaking Intimate And Live tour.

Kylie Minogue on the set of her video shoot for I Should be So Lucky in 1987. Picture: Supplied

Neighbours star Kylie Minogue pictured in 1988 after she finished shooting her last episode.

It heavily featured songs from one of her fans’ favourite albums, Impossible Princess.

The tour, which consisted of a couple of dancers in angel wings backed up by musical director Chong Lim and many members of the John Farnham band, was a homecoming tour like no other.

Because the 1998 tour was a time when Minogue was finally embraced by her home country as the superstar she is.

Much loved, instead of much ridiculed, you could say.

The singing budgie was dead.

The tour was also a time for fans like myself to fully, publicly embrace Kylie and be out and proud about our longtime love of her music.

I remember finishing a shift reading the news at Melbourne radio station Hitz FM one Saturday afternoon and going down to camp out at the Palais Theatre in St Kilda for tickets that went on sale at 9am on the following Monday morning.

I made lifelong friends that weekend during that camp out, and I will cherish it forever.

I was 19 at the time in 1998, and like many original fans – especially males – being a Minogue fan was a rough road.

I remember in late 1991 being at Brashs in the Melbourne suburb of Chirnside Park and buying the cassette tape of her new album at the time – Let’s Get To It – and running into a high school friend.

Aged 13, I lied to my friend and hid the tape because it was just so uncool, especially for a teenage boy, to be a Kylie fan.

At 55, Kylie is at the top of her game. Picture: Instagram

Padam Padam is a global hit. Picture: Twitter/@kylieminogue

Perhaps it was also linked to being a gay teenager who had no idea at the time what he was, being something else us male teenage fans wanted to hide.

There is a Masters degree why Minogue has had such a long connection with the gay community around the world.

I think one of those reasons is because we remember in those early days what it was like being a teenage boy and a Minogue fan.

We love the fact she has been with us since day one, when we remember secretly dancing to I Should Be So Lucky with our female cousins with probably a hair brush in hand.

So all these years later, when Kylie releases a banger like Padam Padam that really is a global hit, we can’t help but be sentimental about a time long gone.

Kylie Minogue is releasing her new album Tension, Picture: Supplied

The gays have stuck by Kylie, and she has stuck by them.

She’s also shown us that you can face backlash and ridicule for who you are, but you keep fighting back.

Talk about determination.

Kylie is a true Australian icon, and as we all embrace this latest Padam Padam era, we look on with a sense of happiness at everything she has achieved.

Think about it – 35 years since the release of her first album.

It’s truly, truly, remarkable.

Luke Dennehy is a Melbourne based freelance journalist.

Originally published as Aussie music icon Kylie Minogue has last laugh after years of ’backlash and ridicule’