Kylie Minogue: the mysterious popstar who can do no wrong
As an album of "reimagined" Kylie songs emerges, Kate Mossman goes in search of the singer herself.
Kylie remains down to earth and essentially private. Photograph: Getty Images
The Abbey Road Sessions (Parlophone)Kylie Minogue
Recently, in case anyone missed it, a Boeing 777 was zig-zagging back and forth across the Atlantic in a complex press stunt designed to prove it was carrying the biggest pop star on the planet. Rihannas attitude towards the 200 fans and journalists on board (she ignored them someone streaked through economy class just to give people something to write about), and the uncertainty over whether shed even turn up at her nightly gigs, showed just what a big deal this woman was. That is, if you measure stardom by a distressing lack of engagement with your work, the world around you and everyone on your payroll. For some of us, Rihannas listlessness suggested something wasnt quite right: others just thought she was being a brat.
Good behaviour goes a very long way in pop music. At the risk of sounding like a horsebreeder, a steady, upbeat temperament and a commitment to back-breaking hard work can elevate a musician to mystical realms as much as any old-fashioned hellraising just look at Springsteen. Pop has to make people feel good. Your show must say: I love my work, I look after myself, Im all right, you are here to have fun, we are all in this together.
Kylie Minogue has never been the most eloquent interviewee but in the breezy, unterritorial way she talks about her music she cuts a very unusual figure today. We are li! ving in an age of musical auteurs (such as Gaga) and formidable, one-woman industries but Minogue would never claim to be in sole charge of her artistic vision. Hers is a mind formed in the Eighties workshop of Stock Aitken Waterman: music is a product and thats nothing to be ashamed of. Tours are huge fun there she is in the wings, on footage of the 2011 Aphrodite tour, whispering OK, everyone, good luck!, pulling terrified faces at the camera, leading the circle of trust she learned from the movie Meet the Parents (I thought it was important because we are a family for the next few months).
Of her many stylistic changes Minogue says simply, I think the music has always marked the time that its [made] in thats what pop should do. In 2000, after a period as indie Kylie in the mid to late Nineties (dating Michael Hutchence, recording with Nick Cave), she gave herself over to the stylist William Baker for a redesign, went head-first into the gay community and stayed there. Those famous gold hotpants, inspired by the Peruvian pin-up painter Alberto Vargas, paved the way for more than a decade of slick dance pop and all that was classically stylish.
Now, an album of reimagined Kylie songs has emerged wait, come back! which gives prominence to her voice (apparently improved over the years) with a jazz band and an orchestra. Much of her later career seems to be about gently reminding people shes not a puppet: Shes much more creative than people think, William Baker once said, clunkily. The Abbey Road Sessions gives the 44-year-old a cameo appearance within the pervasive Sixties soul revival. Like many of her creative choices playing the absinthe fairy in Moulin Rouge, or that curiously brilliant performance in Leos Caraxs Holy Motors its an elegant move, carefully designed to put a foot in another world without stretching the product out of shape.
On a Night Like This, (from her dance-pop, 2000 comeback album Light Years) has been turned, q! uite succ! essfully, into a 6/8 shuffle with shoop-shoop backing vocals; The Loco-Motion is returned to its original Motown setting, which is funny, because when she released it in 1988 people couldnt have cared less about its musical history. Some of those repetitive, throwaway pop lyrics I Should Be So Lucky, for example simply cant stand the spotlight when presented on these grand musical settings. But generally the new backdrops work: the huge club anthem Cant Get You Out of My Head simply replaces the original bubbly synth with pizzicato strings, while the cool, end-ofthe-night yearning of Come into My World works equally well with a lone piano.
Contrary to what press releases claim, youre not getting an unusually intimate portrait of Kylie because, well, she doesnt do that. This seems important so different from whats happening in new pop at the moment, where club-floor material is invested with dark, personal detail just to feed the hype. Kylies sadness, when there is any, comes straight out of the disco era: hey, at least weve got each other and were dancing. Theres a new song on the album called Flower (my love song to the child I may or may not have, she says) and listening to this rare glimpse of the interior mind, you somehow dont want to believe its about her. Shes a relief from the cult of personal life that has overtaken the world of female singer-songwriters. Shed been in the soap opera already; she didnt have to turn her own life into one.
Instead Minogue has become a mannequin upon which her fans project grand abstracts like joy, strength, liberation and love. Exactly what they are seeing remains ultimately mysterious to many of us but there are some simple things at the root of her popularity: graciousness (she really does get asked some stupid questions); a rare combination of drive and malleability. And a degree of shrugging, smiling self-sacrifice. All of which have allowed her into the small, golden chamber of public figures who can do no wrong which is a great place to be, a! nd otherw! ise pretty empty from where Im sitting.