Kylie Minogue: From soap starlet to superstar

Mrs Minogue, you've been doing this since the late 1980s, sold 80 million albums and achieved everything the music industry has to offer. Why do you still put yourself through the stress?

Why the stress? That's a good question! Simply because of the thrill and the creative desire. Because I love that. But to be honest: I sometimes ask myself that too – simply because I have to stop at some point. However, every time I talk about it, my manager rolls his eyes and says: "You can't stop."

What else do you want to achieve? In November 2023, you performed in Las Vegas for six months. Does something like that spur you on?

Yes, Vegas was something new. But I'm less interested in achieving something than simply creating something and sharing it with the fans. That's the real challenge for me.

Many of your female colleagues complain about age discrimination by the media, which simply ignores anything over 40 or 50. Have you also experienced this or are you successfully defying it?

That's not the motivation behind this album. But I'm delighted that "Tension" turns this theory on its head. Not that I was actively striving for it. But this attitude, which is really discriminatory, needs to change - and it seems to be doing that, which is good.

So "Padam Padam", your most successful single in years, is doing pioneering work because it shows that you can still storm the pop charts at the age of 55?

That's right. This success really surprised me - just like the fact that the song was also picked up by so-called youth radio. And how refreshing that it was accepted uncritically. In any case, I'm of the opinion that young people are no longer as narrow-minded as we might think. However, I have to admit that even when I was 20 I thought: "God, everyone over 40 is just old." So I understand where that comes from. But nowadays, young people are much more open-minded simply because they are confronted with so much - and because they know that it's not cool to be prejudiced.

So is another dance-pop album what the world needs to simply switch off and relax?

I always find it difficult to analyse this precisely in interviews - simply because I don't have enough distance from the album yet to be able to formulate exactly what I'm talking about. The best answer I can give is: I recorded my last album "Disco" during the pandemic and therefore wasn't able to tour with it. In that respect, it feels like water under the bridge for me. I wanted to come up with something fresh, create something new - without knowing exactly how. But of course there's a bit of escapism and hedonism involved, which also manifests itself in what many other artists are doing right now. I just wanted to let myself go and take a deep breath - inhale and exhale. I can feel that very clearly on this album.

Hand on heart: Do you still go out regularly? Does Kylie Minogue still go clubbing?

No, not as much as I used to, to be honest. My wild clubbing days were ( ...)

→ Read the full interview in rampstyle #30.