Can Kylie Minogue save Splendour in the Grass?

This is it, the smartest decision the organisers of Splendour in the Grass have ever made. They’ve finally made Kylie Minogue a Splendour headliner and now Kylie Minogue will save their souls.

That’s the kind of power Kylie has. Whatever her booking fee, it’s not enough. Because if Byron Bay’s Splendour doesn’t stand the test of time (and the crisis afflicting Australia’s festivals), Kylie’s headline set will likely be the first thing playing on the slideshow at its funeral. Hopefully, someone will be there with defibrillators in hand because even the memory of this set will likely breathe new life into Splendour – and potentially even the wider live music industry.

Lest you think I’m joking, I speak with the authority of a man who has ranked every single song Kylie has released.

Spirits were up, but ticket sales were down for Splendour in the Grass 2023. Credit: Matt Jelonek/Getty Images

This is better than that time Brian Wilson headlined. Better than when Kanye headlined. Better than when Outkast headlined. Better than the 14 times The Strokes headlined, supported by Bloc Party. This is Splendour’s Beychella. It won’t get better than this, and the line-up, announced on Tuesday, comes at a particularly decisive moment.

Australian music festivals are in disarray, even Splendour, the Godzilla of Australian music festivals. After its disastrous 2022 event, initially delayed by COVID and then held amid flooded campsites and blocked escape routes, ticket sales for last year’s event – headlined by Lizzo, Flume, and, uh, Mumford & Sons – were reportedly lacklustre, down 30 per cent on the previous year. At this point, Splendour could use a hit.

And it’s not just Splendour. People just aren’t going to music festivals any more. Australian festivals are struggling, but reportedly so are massive international events like Coachella and Burning Man. The effects of climate change mean the places where these things happen are increasingly on fire or underwater.

Personally, I don’t know why all music festivals aren’t just held in the middle of a concrete city, on the roofs of skyscrapers. Fire and water can’t get us up there!

Coupled with the cost-of-living crisis – the increased cost of organising these festivals, reflected in the price of tickets (three-day passes for Splendour are now $416.92, while a one-day ticket is $192.63), not to mention the cost of travel, accommodation and food and drink on-site – it’s understandable why prospective gig-goers have been increasingly reluctant to spend money on music festivals.

But Kylie isn’t Mumford & Sons. We gave so much money to Taylor; surely people are ready to give the rest of their money to our greatest ever pop star?

Some might question if a 55-year-old singer is the answer to enticing the all-important under-35s set back to Splendour. These people clearly don’t know the word “icon”.

It seems wild to say that a performer who did Better the Devil You Know in 1990, Love at First Sight in 2001, and Get Outta My Way in 2010 is at the peak of her powers, but that’s the pull of Padam Padam. The song’s TikTok success introduced Kylie to a new generation of pop fans, and reignited the synapses of those of us who’ve taken her for granted for decades. The fact that she’ll be pulling from almost five decades of hits for her Splendour set is mind-boggling.

Kylie performs at Glastonbury Festival in Somerset in 2019.Credit: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Some might also question whether pop music works in festival surroundings, so conditioned as they are to looking at guitars while stomping around in dirty mud feet.

But pop music is a unifying force; overseas festivals, like Coachella and Glastonbury, have increasingly understood this. Before Taylor did Eras, Beyonce’s 2018 set at Coachella was considered a generation’s defining live experience; in the UK, meanwhile, Glastonbury has made pop a regular fixture on its bills from Billie Eilish to Lil Nas X to, yes, even Kylie.

In fact, Kylie’s slot at Glastonbury in 2019 was the most-watched Glastonbury performance ever at the time, and received five-star raves from the likes of The Guardian and NME (even though Nick Cave and Coldplay’s Chris Martin interrupted her pop perfection).

People, including Kylie herself, were in tears during her set. Speaking to You magazine about it a year on, Kylie – who was originally supposed to headline at Glastonbury in 2005, but had to pull out due to her breast cancer diagnosis – said it “felt like this massive acknowledgement of me as a performer”.

That should feel like a knife to our hearts, Australia. She’s ours and we let some English festival validate her as an artist first. So $192.63 seems a fair price to cover all that shame. Kylie and shame, that’s what’s going to save Splendour.

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