It's Kylie-mania all over again. The new three-episode miniseries from Netflix Kylie it is not the usual portrait of a celebrity, but a tribute to the stainless charm of Kylie Minogue. In a world of stars who come and go, she continues to dance undaunted. On paper it shouldn't happen, especially for a dance singer who in the 80s was considered one of the many disco dolls with teased hair. Who expected that this Australian soap opera actress could become famous and is even adopted by hipsters? Not only that, being able to stay at the top for so long is something that could only happen to someone like her.
His is a story of continuous returns, but without any absence. It simply reappears every few years with another global dancefloor hit, a Can't Get You Out of My Head or one Padam Padamand without giving the impression of making any effort. She's the Lemmy of disco: she wins because she stays herself in a ruthlessly fickle musical world. It has been around for so long that it has encountered an impressive amount of cultural phenomena. For example, two of the most important presences in Kylie they are stars from the dark side of rock: Michael Hutchence of INXS and Nick Cave. “There was something about her that I recognized, that attracted me,” Cave says. «She had everything except credibility. I had credibility, but little else.”
At the heart of Kylie is the story with Hutchence. By getting together the two surprised everyone: on one side the candid pop star of the 80s, on the other the bad boy rock. They dated from 1989 to 1991. «We were good together», says Kylie in the documentary, «you don't live with ifs and buts, you can only get on with your life. It was certainly a wonderful parenthesis.” He is still moved by the memory of his death in 1997. “I have never felt anything like that again.”
Minogue is the closest thing to an absolute certainty in pop culture. In these 1920s it reached a new peak thanks to the enormous success of Padam Padamwhich sparked a new wave of Kylie-mania, a Padamia. He rode the somewhat brash and decadent dance aesthetic into the album Tension and for Tension II. His catalog is full of wedding party classics, but also cult records adored by the most avid fans, such as Impossible Princess of 1977 or the country parenthesis of 2018 Golden.
This couldn't have been predicted when Minogue appeared on the scene. Australian television star, had starred in the soap opera Neighbors and it had little to do with music (even though Natalie Imbruglia would later emerge from the same soap). She relied on the British production team Stock-Aitken-Waterman and their typically 80s sparkling hi-nrg synth-pop style, see Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley o You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) of Dead Or Alive, even if their masterpiece is for those who write the unjustly forgotten disco-feminist bowler hat I Heard a Rumour of the Bananaramas.
I Should Be So Lucky from 1987 was written in about forty minutes, Kylie says. The producer says it took “even” two hours. At that point she was Britannia's Sweetheart, Britain's sweetheart and with Jason Donovan, her colleague in Neighbors where they played brother and sister, they were the perfect sugar pop couple of that decade, with their matching mullet haircuts and frighteningly bright smiles. Young, innocent, madly in love. What could go wrong?
Unfortunately for Jason, his Titanic was about to collide with a lederhosen iceberg named Michael Hutchence. Donovan talks about the pain of losing her, it almost seems like he never recovered and talking about it brings him to the brink of an emotional collapse. “Love hurts,” she says, barely holding back tears. As for Kylie, one look at Mister “Your Moves Are So Raw” was enough for her. Theirs became one of the great pop love stories of the '90s. He was the decadent rocker who sang New Sensation, Need You Tonight And Don't Changeshe is the girl next door whose image has suffered quite a backlash.
“Sex, love, food, drugs, music, travel, books, whatever – he wanted to experience it all,” Minogue said in the 2019 BBC documentary Mystify. «It opened up a whole new world to me. And let's face it, a lot of that world revolved around pleasure.” She was 21 and still unsure of her talent, Hutchence was 29, had already reached the pinnacle of success and exuded an adult, sensual confidence that was irresistible. He ended up writing Suicide Blonde for her, inspired by her new haircut. For two years Michael has broadened his horizons, not only artistically. “He was first in many things,” she says, “and one of those things was heartbreak.” The one in 1997, when their paths had long since separated, was the first funeral he attended. But, as he says today, “I feel that he is always with me.”
One of the people who helped her deal with the pain was Nick Cave, the damnedest of the damned. Theirs was one of the most unlikely and heartwarming friendships in the music world. Both Australian, but from opposite ends of the '80s spectrum: Nick came from the goth-punk hell of the Birthday Party, Kylie was the soundtrack of the real birthday partiesbirthday parties. When he chose her as a partner in the murder ballad duet Where the Wild Roses Growin which she played a girl who is tragically lost between sex and death, many thought it was a joke.
When they sang it together with Top of the Pops, even someone like Nick felt threatened by Kylie's most ardent fans. “They were terrifying,” he says, smiling. «Monstrous, scary girls. They couldn't stand me and didn't want me to get close to their princess. They told me: “You bastard, what are you doing? You're an old bastard.” They were evil.”
The bond between the two lasted decades. In the documentary 20,000 Days on EarthKylie suddenly appears in the backseat of Cave's car and the two confide their deepest fears. She tells him: “I'm afraid of being forgotten and of being alone.” Cave also gave her literary immortality by inserting her into the novel The Death of Bunny Munrowhich tells of a serial killer obsessed with his music. «The video of Spinning Around monopolized the British imagination for a year,” Cave told me in 2010. “Kylie's shorts were all the tabloids were talking about. I think he has to take some responsibility for that novel, for wearing them.”
In the late '90s Kylie released some of her most artistic and daring work, approaching the rhythms of Mo' Wax and trip hop with the underrated Impossible Princess. It was his way of telling us that he was now thirty-one years old, something like that Ray of Light of Madonna oa Deadline for My Memories by Billie Ray Martin, sophisticated record for connoisseurs. But she eventually returned to mega-pop giving rise to 2000s classics like Can't Get You Out of My Head And Love at First Sight.
Curiously, it was Nick Cave who convinced her to return to the dance floor. «I told her: what the hell are you doing? Indie? Nobody wants to be indie! Maybe she says so, but that's not what Kylie is. Kylie is a force destined to reach thousands of people. It's all projected outwards. He has a gift. This is the great beauty of pop music: it is a machine that produces joy.” Kylie took those words to heart. «There's the coolest guy on the planet who asks you: “Where are the pop songs?”. So that's fine: let's start the engines and get back on track.”
From then on it was all padam padam. The joy-making machine made woman has continued to reap successes, having faced a well-known battle with cancer in 2005 and another more recent one, kept secret until this documentary. Musically he can afford to do anything including Goldenher country jewel immersed in a shimmering Nashville disco cowgirl imagery, a mature work that goes from melancholic Music's Too Sad Without You to the banjo-disco of Raining Glitter.
As is typical of music documentaries, Kylie it is built following the classic three-part scheme of rise, fall and rebirth. But it's a narrative that doesn't work in this case because Minogue hasn't experienced any of the professional disasters that documentarians like to talk about. He never lost the public's favor, he never had to play the role of the outsider.
The miniseries even tries to arouse sympathy for some negative reviews – oh, poor thing – but it is probably the most superficial possible way of describing such a fortunate life. I mean, Kylie never even went broke: her accountant father advised her to invest in real estate early on and so she has always been enormously rich. Can you remain a pop legend for four decades without ever stumbling? For Kylie doing so was no problem.
From Rolling Stone US.
