‘Enjoying my own space is very precious to me right now’
When UK radio wouldn’t play her biggest hit in years, Padam Padam fought back.
Kylie Minogue is working her way around the glamorous Elephant Room at Annabel’s, the swish private members club in Mayfair, London, on her 56th birthday. Watch her in this most inner of sanctums, with its gilded walls adorned by hand-painted 18th-century panoramas, the magnificent stone fireplace festooned with bottles of Minogue’s own-label prosecco. The pint-sized pop star, at the centre of it all in a pink sleeveless gown printed with blousy peonies by British cult designer Erdem, a big bow tied across its front, is both party and gift. On this late May night, her energy is infectious. The famous toothy grin spreads wide as she imparts genuine interest to every conversation. The crowd is mostly food and wine people – some of the world’s top sommeliers who have flown in for the occasion, and London restaurateurs – as it’s also the fourth anniversary of Minogue’s wine label. Tilt your head one way, and she’s being playful and a little mischievous; the absinthe fairy she brought to life in Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge sprinkling magic dust everywhere. Tilt it another, and she’s the A-list icon radiating power. No one can take their eyes off her.
Watch her now: fresh-faced, hair pulled back, dressed casually in a chunky Loewe jumper and torn jeans as we catch up a few weeks after her birthday bash. I’ve interviewed Kylie Minogue a handful of times since 2020 and it’s clear this year there has been a radical change, galvanised by a wildly successful six-month residency at Voltaire in Las Vegas, and the chart-topping Tension, her 16th studio album. It hit number one in Australia and the UK last September on the wings of the smash hit single Padam Padam, which scored a Grammy. Minogue acknowledges her transformation instantly: “I’m in a good place,” she says. “My singers who have been on the last few jobs who weren’t doing Vegas say they recognise a real change in me. They’re just going, ‘Where is this energy coming from?’ I think that it’s a combination of many things: my current drive, the Vegas experience of being in one place for a while and [appreciating] that.”
At last the tiny singer is big in America. You may have caught a video that went viral last month during Los Angeles Pride when Minogue spotted a fan on the street wearing a Padam Padam T-shirt and beckoned him over to her car window. “Sir, I just want to say ‘Padam’ to you,” she said, cackling with joy at his stunned response (“I love you!”). Padam Padam (onomatopoeia for a heartbeat) ignited in the US, in big part due to TikTok. Fans on the platform mimicked the dance moves of an ageless Minogue in her music video, clad head-to-toe in devilish glossy red.
The Grammy win, which she shared with her co-writer and co-producer on the track, eclipsed the biggest superstars of the pop/electronica genre today – names like David Guetta, Troye Sivan, Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding.
Such is Minogue’s star power that even dipping a toe in the wine business has spawned a growing empire. It seems everything she touches right now turns to gold. How does it feel? “It’s just a totally beautiful thing – it really feels wonderfully freeing and liberating to ‘just be’ for a moment, to relax into and appreciate the recognition,” she says, though clearly taking nothing for granted. With humility forged in the school of hard knocks, Minogue wants to share the love, and the success, adding: “It’s beyond me – it’s a mirror for other people in whatever walk of life they are in, whoever they are or whatever they do, to know that all sorts of things are possible.”
Yet it almost wasn’t possible. Famously denigrated at the start of her career – she told legendary interviewer Michael Parkinson 20 years ago that “there is a tiny place in me called rage” for the way she was once dismissed as a “singing budgie” – Minogue has had to triumph over the naysayers again, in her fifth decade as a performer. Padam Padam was initially ignored by radio stations like BBC Radio 1 and Capital in the UK, inciting the track’s co-writer and producer Peter “Lostboy” Rycroft to accuse them of ageism. Publicly indignant about the treatment meted out to Minogue and the track, he told The Independent: “We were trying to get it played on the radio. It was everywhere, everyone was talking about it, and it was at least top two in the charts – but Radio 1 and Capital were refusing to play it, essentially because she’s an older woman. I could see it as clear as day. It was definitely a wake-up call.”
After an outcry from fans, the BBC relented and put the song on playlist rotation. Revenge must have tasted sweet when it became the hit of the summer. “It did indeed feel like a win,” Minogue says. “It was a win for many as I think it has made space for a more inclusive playlist… and also, possibly, a relief for radio to not be bound by pre-written limitations.”
Biff Stannard, a Minogue collaborator for 25 years and the legendary songwriter behind generation-defining hits including the Spice Girls’ Wannabe and Spice Up Your Life, agrees. “Padam has changed that attitude [ageism],” he says. “Coldplay aren’t kids, they’re not young men, yet they’re A-listed [on Radio 1 ] instantly today, so the barriers for women are still there. But they couldn’t not play it in the end.”
Minogue’s visionary longtime A&R representative, Jamie Nelson, introduced the Padam demo track to her. He tells The Weekend Australian Magazine: “If you listen to Padam, it’s like this thing from another world. What’s great to find is progression in music, things that are not boring.” Minogue, he says, is “all in for all that... she’s like, ‘What else is out there that’s going to change the mood or flip the idea into something more subversive?’”
Minogue says she watched in delight as a cult vernacular arose around the word Padam “as a noun, a verb, an adjective, even used as a greeting or farewell. I feel like it’s not my song anymore, it’s everyone’s”.
Fan love. Self love. Family love. Watch her at Minogue HQ in Melbourne. It’s often said the clan – parents Ron and Carol and siblings Dannii and Brendan – are close. “Very close,” is how Minogue puts it. Two years ago, after three decades living in the UK, she moved her base to Melbourne to be closer to them all. “When we are together, we are so quote-unquote ‘normal’, whatever that is… [talking about] who is making the stock, what time are the kids playing basketball, who is having a sleep-over where, who is picking up who…”
The only thing missing, perhaps, is romantic love. “I’m not in a relationship,” she says without a trace of sadness. “And it so happens that I’m insanely busy and don’t have that much time anyway – but hey, if I met someone I really connected with I would find enough time. But at the moment I’m really, really good. Like, really. Honestly good. Enjoying my own space is very precious to me right now.”
We’ve been watching the singer date since her relationship with Jason Donovan ended after five years in the late 1980s when she fell hard for INXS frontman Michael Hutchence.
Early last year, Minogue split from her partner since 2018, British art director Paul Solomons. Yet less than six months later, Minogue had her first top 10 UK single in a decade. “I’m not rolling around in the house collecting cats,” she says. “I’m not saying that’s a bad thing! And that’s not to say I won’t .. one (day), but right now I have no pets,” she laughs.
When I ask her about the sacrifices that come with being an ambitious woman in the global spotlight, she is philosophical. “Anything I would do differently?” she muses. “Probably many things, but here I am. And the grass isn’t always greener.” After all, “can anyone really ever ‘have it all’? And what happens if you do? For me, inspiration and motivation are found in that blank space of possibility.”
Those possibilities have turned out to be vaster than anyone – even those who grew up with Charlene from Neighbours or did the Loco-Motion at a disco in the late ’80s – could have ever foreseen. Since her first album Kylie was released in July 1988, she has amassed sales of over 80 million records worldwide and 18 ARIA awards, and is the only female artist to score a number one album in five consecutive decades in the UK. She has an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) and an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), as well as a Chevalier Dans L’Ordre Des Arts et des Lettres in France.
It occurs to me that Taylor Swift on her never-ending Eras tour could learn a thing or two about longevity from Minogue. “If I go back to the start of my career – back to when I didn’t even call it a career, it’s just what I was doing – I wasn’t on a mission to be famous or to win any awards. I was simply drawn to … singing and acting,” she says.
The accolades and accomplishments – “nice stops along the way” is how she refers to them – are innumerable. When Minogue headlined Glastonbury in 2019, it was the most watched performance in the festival’s history. She has twice hosted the hugely popular An Audience With.. shows for ITV in the UK. And she’s obviously embedded in Australia’s popular consciousness, her performance stealing the show at the Sydney Olympics closing ceremony in 2000.
The nation was shocked when she battled breast cancer in 2005. Minogue told CBS news last year: “The experience of a cancer diagnosis will live in me. It was difficult. It was also amazing… in that you are very aware of your body, of the love that’s around you, of your capability, all sorts of things.”
Watch her now – she’s almost a blur – moving at speed from illustrious stages to A-list parties around the globe. Singing I Will Survive with Madonna in Los Angeles in March, and picking up the global icon award at the Brit Awards the same month; photographed partying with Joe Jonas, Kim Cattrall and Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing on the Athenian Riviera in June, and strutting to her greatest hits on stage in Rabat for Morocco’s Mawazine international music festival in June. She’s building on a career’s worth of collaborations, which have included work with Dua Lipa, Robbie Williams and the Pet Shop Boys. She recently featured on Dance Alone, the latest track from songwriting supremo and fellow Australian Sia, and the disco-country hit Midnight Ride with her self-described “kindred spirit”, South African country singer Orville Peck.
In London last weekend she was the headliner at the British Summer Time festival in Hyde Park, debuting her newest dancefloor belter My Oh My – her 98th single – on stage with collaborators Swedish singer Tove Lo and American Bebe Rexha. In an email to The Weekend Australian Magazine Lo describes the track, released to coincide with the hotly anticipated performance in front of a 60,000-strong crowd, as a “huge tune” - “I love the theme and I think it fits all three of our voices,” she says.
And then there’s the wine business. Kylie Minogue Wines, one of the fastest growing wine brands in the world, launched its Signature Rosé on her birthday in May 2020, as the planet barrelled into lockdowns. With its focus on pink, from prestige prosecco and Provencal rosés to a top-selling 0% fizz (“a game-changer in the world of No-Alc wines,” says Minogue), it now sells across 32 countries, from the US and Canada to Portugal, Switzerland and Norway. “The first bottle is picked up because of the Kylie insignia – people feel comfortable with her, and it makes buying wine a bit more fun,” says Paul Schaafsma, the Australian-born celebrity wine impresario who partnered with Minogue to launch her label.
“And the second one is picked up because of what’s in the bottle. From the outset we said Kylie’s style had to be reflected in the wines.”
On the fourth anniversary of the label this year she launched a DOC Prosecco and a Vin de Provence, adding to a collection that also includes a Western Australian chardonnay made in collaboration with Howard Park and a Victorian pinot noir produced by De Bortoli. In his 25 years in the wine industry, Schaafsma has never had a brand that’s gone from nought to 15 million bottles in four years. “It’s extraordinary. This is something that Kylie wants to be doing for the rest of her life,” he says.
And yet, throughout an intimate interview, she does not shy from sharing the highs, and lows. “I had a moment, after I went into Greece [in early June], where I did plummet for a couple of days where, honestly, if I dropped a spoon or the silliest thing had happened, I felt like I might fall into pieces. There’s still a rational corner of my brain going, ‘this’ (falling apart) was always going to happen. “I just, I had a couple of days where I couldn’t even call a friend. I would have just fallen to pieces; I just go a bit kind of wounded animal to the den. That is how I do it, which is maybe not the healthiest of formats but that’s how it is. And it works for me. If it was to be a little bit smoother, that would be my aim.”
There’s an inevitable point in just about every celebrity profile when you’ll read something along the lines of and they’re showing no signs of slowing down...
“Well, why would she?” says Steve Anderson, Minogue’s live music director who first worked with her on Confide in Me in 1993. “She’s having this amazing moment, why would you go away from that? Especially from a creative point of view, why would you then suspend all that to take six months off?”
Stannard adds: “She’s got this thing, you know, ‘Why would I stop? I just want to make better records’. She’s always been a risk taker – she will always try anything new.”
A&R executive Jamie Nelson explains that Minogue gives everyone she works with – the directors, songwriters, stylists, dancers and producers – plenty of space to be creative, before putting her own stamp on the end product: “She pulls it all back into her world and the total vision she has of who she is,” he says, encapsulating the secret to Minogue’s enduring success. He notes that she makes minute adjustments to everything from song lyrics to the “Kylie” insignia printed on the cork that goes into her bottles of wine.
I ask Minogue about what Nelson describes as “forensic” attention to the details. “I get so forensic. I’m sure I drive them mad,” she says.
“I think my superpower is that I see everything. Maybe there was a time where I did see but I didn’t say anything, but now I do say it.”
Yet there’s still a sense in her of the songs unwritten, the career not yet fully realised. She tells me that she’d like to do more film and TV. “I do ... look forward to doing more acting,” she says. After Neighbours and the 1989 feature film The Delinquents came Street Fighter (a video game spin-off from back when video game spin-offs weren’t everyday propositions) alongside her co-star and – briefly – paramour Jean-Claude Van Damme. But then pop music consumed everything. “I sometimes wonder where I would be, when there was that fork in the road when I moved to LA [in the late ’90s], if I had gone further down the acting rather than singing path,” she muses. “I’m curious who I would have become, not so much professionally but personally. As it is, it turned out OK,” she adds with a laugh.
I recall Minogue brimming with enthusiasm as she moved around the room on her birthday. She is genuinely having the time of her life but she is also on a mission. “It’s become my purpose in life to connect with people and make them feel seen and heard,” she says. “Spreading that bit of joy when possible is my job.” It chimes with Coldplay frontman Chris Martin’s tribute to her in Time in April, when Minogue made the US magazine’s list of the top 100 most influential people of 2024. Martin wrote: “She’s an artist who knows how to be of service, making songs that fans go on to love for years.”
Stannard says Minogue surrounds herself with kind souls. “Even if it is the security guard or the driver that drops her off or the stylist, they’re all the sweetest people,” he gushes. “She either attracts that naturally or people are just drawn to her. That’s her magic.” He says it still feels surreal to see “Min” (as her close friends call her) cooking in the kitchen with his husband. “It’s like, ‘Oh, there’s a superstar here’, but it’s not, it’s just Min.”
Anderson adds: “Everyone has their own love story with her, as in when they fell in love with her music, and then once they’re in, they stay in.” He also says that, having travelled the globe with the singer for over 30 years, no one would dream of saying no to her. “She’s obviously a very sweet, lovely, nice girl, and thatcomes across. But then, she’s also the best friend, the ultimate diva on stage… an incredible live performer.”
Her Vegas success, when she dazzled intimate audiences of 1,000 people across 20 nights over six months, has fuelled a desire to take a show on the road. She reveals to me with glee that “a tour is on the horizon”.
Is she planning a cabaret-style set inspired by the show that captivated Vegas? “The audiences seemed to get wilder every night,” Minogue laughs, but she adds that she has her sights set on a bigger stage for her next tour. “I am more ready than ever to get out to reach more people,” she says.
Is she happiest on stage? “I can’t say that a two-hour show feels like you’re flying all the time. There’s a lot of work in the constant calculation of doing this and that and putting out fires; but then there’s moments where you feel weightless and you’re all in harmony with each other and that’s addictive,” she says.
“And you keep trying to reach that, knowing it isn’t always possible, but as long as people go home happy and we feel that we delivered our best, then that’s good.”
Just how much more magic dust can Kylie spread over the world? Watch.
Kylie’s playlist: the gamechangers
Better the Devil You Know (Rhythm of Love, 1990)
“I was working with [legendary hit makers] Stock Aitken Waterman and they asked me what I was listening to. We made this song, which felt like they had finally heard me. And the video really went bam! I had a lot of fun with that. It was a big step for me.”
Spinning Around
(Light Years, 2000)
“While the late part of the 1990s was creatively fulfilling, it didn’t have me at the upper echelon of the charts. So I thought, ’OK, I’m going to focus on acting.’ Then I met Jamie Nelson and Miles Leonard in 1999, and we all agreed we wanted to make a really big pop record. So Spinning Around was released and it changed everything.”
Love at First Sight
(Fever, 2001)
“That was the first time I can remember being in the studio and thinking, ‘We did it, that’s a good song’ – but initially Miles and Jamie were quite ambivalent about it. I was like, What? Their ears eventually came around to it. It was a big moment for me becoming a driving force in writing a song, and it’s a song I love to perform because it still feels like it’s so right for my voice.”
Slow
(Body Language, 2003)
“It didn’t really sound like anything else at the time, and it’s still a favourite for so many people.”
Disco album (2020)
“This was significant, in that being able to record at home changed everything for me. With my relationship to singing – you’re so vulnerable on a microphone in a studio, it picks up everything – I’ve noticed that I am just much more relaxed vocally on stage now and a part of that is just experience ... but I’ve also got more tools in my toolbox. I just wish someone had said to me, ‘Hey, spend some time learning how to do rather than just learning on the job.’ That’s been a massive change for me.”
