Kylie Minogue concert delivers for all the lovers
Kylie Minogue had something for all her fans at her Sydney concert as she morphed from Dixie Chick to Vegas show girl as she delivered all her hits.
Kylie Minogue introduced her inner Dixie Chick meets Vegas pop incarnation to her fiercely loyal Australian fans with her opening Golden concert in Sydney.
Wearing a fushcia and sequined handkerchief dress and white cowgirl boots, Minogue cured the post Mardi Gras comedown on Tuesday with her infectious energy and megawatt smile.
While everyone got to their feet quick smart when she hit the throwback gem Better The Devil You Know, the opening desert pop treatments of Golden and Get Outta My Way showcased the Kylie fashioned by her Dolly Parton-inspired quest to bring a little country into her disco ball universe.
After she offered a toast to the audience, took a perch on a stack of suitcases, as her dancers brought the Broadway choreography, she sang the banjo-flavoured take on her previous romantic travails, A Lifetime To Repair.
The coquettish, silky rendition of Blue Velvet in the video package after the first act and pre the costume change — to white suit with black laces tie — demonstrated Kylie’s ambition to shake up her artistic evolution.
When that song melded into the tribal-drums tension and dark drama of Confide In Me, our pop queen reminded us she has never been a one trick pop pony.
If that clutch of eclecticism wasn’t enough to put Kylie on a gold medal podium alongside any other artist who has managed to carve out a three decade plus career in the most fickle and unforgiving of endeavours, then bow down because Minogue sang an acapella excerpt of Where The Wild Roses Grow to a mini-fan within the first half of the show.
She has proved most intriguing to the fringe dwellers among her fans when she has ventured out of the dance pop realm to explore the rock and now country feels.
Not all of the artistic experiments succeed.
The obvious Parton tribute Shelby ‘68 didn’t have the same wow factor as the next track called Wow; and that didn’t pack as much of a pop punch as the rockin’ piano and guitar driven remix of Can’t Get You Out Of My Head.
That song will never not be a jam, however she chooses to trick it up, and may ultimately figure as her greatest contribution, among many of her worthy offerings, to the contemporary pop canon.
This astute student and practitioner of live performance also knows exactly what buttons she is pressing as she borrows Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain to soundtrack her stage exit after that Can’t Get You Outta My Head moment.
She returns as biker chick Kylie to sizzle with her remake of Slow, which referenced the pioneering electronics of Visage’s Fade To Grey.
And then she absolutely smashed it out of the arena with the rocking release of Kids, which was undoubtedly the scream-aloud, air-punching highlight of the night.
Dialling down the energy with the more delicate The One as the next song does highlight the Golden concert’s up and down pacing.
The audience is on their feet one moment and then sitting again the next; you feel a little like a human yoyo in the middle of the set.
Yet she is so sweetly generous to her adoring crowd that taking a breather to sit back and have Kylie share sunshine with her lovers — that’s the fans for the uninitiated — with chats and shout-outs to audience members she has scouted on Instagram, is endearing rather than as momentum-crushing as that typical interaction interlude was during a few international A-list concerts last year.
The setlist is reflective of her 50th anniversary on the planet as much as it is of her three-decade pop presence, reaching all the way from The Loco-motion and Especially For You to Golden’s lead single Dancing.
And there is a lightness and confidence in this version of Kylie which absolutely marries with the Fearless theme of last weekend’s Mardi Gras which she embraced with such elation.
The Golden tour is the Kylie concert we are enjoying and Las Vegas is missing out on.
She performs at the ICC Sydney Theatre on Wednesday, Adelaide Entertainment Centre on March 11 and Sidney Myer Music Bowl on March 13.
Golden heads to the A Day On The Green on Sir James Mitchell Park, Perth on March 9, Bimbadgen, NSW on March 16 and Sirromet Wines, Mt Cotton, QLD on March 17.
Big career update for viral Wiggles star
He’s a social media sensation with more than 200 million views online, and now, the Tree of Wisdom has made a mega announcement.
Wild crowd scenes as Oasis tributes Ozzy
Liam and Noel Gallagher paid tribute to the late Ozzy Osbourne on their first sold-out night at Wembley, and fans went absolutely wild.