At age 56, dressed in head-to-toe pleather and looking odds-on to fall foul of the Challenge 25 policy self-scanning a bottle of her own-brand rosé in Sainsbury’s, Kylie Minogue has managed the impossible: to remain contemporary. In the fickle music industry a decades-spanning career is a risky business: artists tend to cling too tightly to the past or doggedly, bitterly push their new projects. Not Kylie.
Last year, her summer hit “Padam” propelled her to the top of the charts, making her queen of TikTok and earning her a new generation of fans. After all these years, since she broke out as a pop star in the late 1980s following her role in the Australian soap opera Neighbours (the beginning of many noteworthy Aussie showbiz careers, including Margot Robbie ’s), Kylie looks, and feels, as fresh as ever. Yet last night, headlining BST Hyde Park, where plenty of those new fans mingled with old faithfuls (Minogue joked that several people in the front row, clad in “Padam red”, were probably not born when “Spinning Around” came out in the year 2000) another thing was clear.
Minogue – effervescent in various shiny outfits, brimming with southern hemisphere sunshine, and with a voice as sugary sweet as ever – has been waiting her whole career to become a legacy act. It was a show where the old and the new set each other off beautifully; neither would have the same impact without the other. She kicked off with “Tension”, her second biggest hit from 2023’.