Kylie Minogue: 'I told my team, I'm a despicable human being'

Kylie Minogue loves a puzzle.

Waiting for a performance to begin, she’ll spot distant astatine crosswords, sudoku grids and the New York Times' Spelling Bee to support her nerves astatine bay.

Her friend, writer Kathy Lette, erstwhile claimed the popular prima is simply a fiend astatine Scrabble, saying: “She knows however to people large and doesn't messiness around." (Coincidentally, Kylie’s sanction is simply a valid Scrabble word, scoring a respectable 12 points.)

But erstwhile she plays Wordle, the regular word-guessing game, she has an antithetic strategy: Deliberately getting it wrong.

"It's annoying if you get it successful 2 lines," she says. "I privation it to beryllium much of a challenge.

"I similar to get down to the pointy end, wherever everything's astatine stake."

You could telephone it a metaphor for her career. Kylie thrives connected challenges, and she's faced much than a fewer implicit the past 37 years - from spiteful critics and originative mis-fires to a life-changing brushwood with bosom cancer.

Right now, she's connected a high, acknowledgment to her planetary deed Padam Padam.

Released conscionable successful clip for Pride period successful 2023, the slinky, sinuous nine anthem became an unexpected viral smash. Its onomatopoeic title, meant to correspond a heartbeat, was rapidly adopted arsenic cheery slang for thing and everything.

In the UK, Padam Padam gave Kylie her archetypal apical 10 deed successful much than a decade. In February, she Padam-ed her archetypal Grammy Award successful 20 years. In March, she was Padam-ed a "global icon" astatine the Brit Awards.

In the fluctuating marketplace of popular stardom, Kylie's banal has ne'er been higher.

"It's truthful weird, due to the fact that I ne'er halt working," she says, "but past there's these peaks.

"I look astatine it similar surfing - not that I’m surfer, but I person caught a question erstwhile successful my life, truthful I recognize the principle.

"We're paddling, paddling, paddling, and sometimes you drawback a wave. So I truly privation to thrust this 1 and bask the presumption - due to the fact that I cognize however exhausting it is to paddle and miss the wave."

That'll beryllium wherefore Padam Padam’s genitor album, Tension, is getting a sequel - an extension, if you please. Thirteen caller tracks that dive deeper into the slick electro aesthetics of the original.

"I conjecture I’m truly stretching it out!" Kylie laughs.

In the epoch of Eras, it's antithetic for a popular prima to repetition themselves but, successful this case, occurrence bred success. After Tension topped the charts, writers from each implicit the satellite started pitching their champion caller worldly to squad Kylie.

"I couldn't accidental no," she says. "The database kept getting longer and I said, 'Maybe this is simply a shaping up to be... well, not the adjacent album, due to the fact that the adjacent medium volition beryllium a antithetic thing, but a full batch much than a small spot more'."

The medium features collaborations with Sia, The Blessed Madonna, Tove Lo, Diplo and Orville Peck. But the pb single, Lights, Camera, Action, reunites Kylie with Padam Padam's co-writer Ina Wroldsen.

Packed with pulsing beats, it's each astir serving the fiercest of fierce looks. Karl Lagerfeld and John Paul Gaultier are namechecked successful the lyrics. In the video, Kylie rocks a formal made from transgression country tape.

Does she inactive get a thrill from pulling the cleanable outfit together?

"Um, the thought of fittings makes maine spell similar this," she says, rolling her eyes successful mock exasperation.

"But erstwhile you find the outfit that works, there’s a existent high. Then the adjacent precocious is getting it each disconnected - face, hair, outfit, shoes, each of it, and getting comfy again.

"I telephone it the debunk," she says. "I'll gaffe into a precise worn brace of way pants and that 1 T-shirt that's successful favour for six months.

"Fifty shades of comfy - that’s my buzz."

When connected tour, she's required to alteration her outfit mid-show 7 oregon 8 times a night, navigating her mode into corsets and sequins and feathered headdresses arsenic a timepiece ticks down to the adjacent song.

"It's frantic, it's truly stressful," she admits. "I mightiness curse a lot.

"It conscionable takes 1 happening to spell wrong, and you're each freaking out."

She adds: "I did walk by the wardrobe [department] connected a gig I did recently, and I said, 'I'm a despicable quality being. I'm truthful sorry.'

"They were like, 'No, what happens successful speedy alteration stays successful speedy change'."

The thought of the vocalist losing her temper is intriguing.

Of people she flips retired sometimes – we each bash - but "angry Kylie" is truthful antithetical to her nationalist persona that it's hard to imagine.

She's 1 of pop's astir poised stars, choosing her words cautiously and brushing distant idiosyncratic questions with a practised affability. In conversation, she offers glimpses of intimacy and vulnerability, but typically closes them disconnected with a affirmative affirmation, neatly steering the treatment backmost towards her career.

The lone radical who cognize her existent feelings are her family.

"When it's not going well, that's who I crook to - mum, dad, my member and my sister," she says.

Her younger member Brendan, a camera operator, has adjacent taught her a method for shaking disconnected stress, which she calls "the foofer valve".

"When the emotion has got to travel out, oregon you've got to person a large outcry oregon a moan, you fto retired a noise, tsssssh, similar a kettle letting disconnected steam, and you're like, 'Oh, I consciousness truthful overmuch better'."

The foofer valve was important astatine the commencement of Kylie’s popular career.

Early reviews called her euphony "hackneyed", "lightweight" and "emotionless". After watching her archetypal Australian circuit successful 1990, the Sydney Morning Herald declared: "It is astonishing however palmy mediocrity tin become."

"It wasn't chill that radical were arsenic nasty arsenic they were," she says now, "and it wasn’t immoderate invisible idiosyncratic down a keyboard.

"These were grown adults who should person known better."

How did she cope?

"To beryllium honest, I don't cognize what made maine support going," she replies. "But 1 of the blessings is that I had a occupation and I had to amusement up to work.

"There were decidedly times erstwhile I would person liked to fell successful a cave, truthful it's bully if you person that work [of acting]. You person to amusement up, and past you're distracted by different things."

Critics mightiness not person warmed to her, but the nationalist were ever connected Kylie's side.

Even during her ill-fated "indie years", fans snapped up experimental and wayward songs similar Confide In Me and the Nick Cave duet Where The Wild Roses Grow.

"I'm precise arrogant of the times I swam against the existent erstwhile it felt similar things were going against me," she says. "It's a rewarding feeling."

The caller millennium brought a large reset.

Spinning Around, released successful 2000, was a textbook comeback single, and she followed it up with the hypnotically chill Can't Get You Out Of My Head - inactive the biggest-selling azygous of her career.

Then, successful 2005, connected the UK limb of her top hits tour, Kylie started experiencing blurred imaginativeness connected stage.

Putting it down to exhaustion, she soldiered on, particularly aft a wellness cheque gave her the all-clear.

"When they say, 'You don't request to worry', that's what you privation to hear, truthful you judge it," she recalls.

But a 2nd trial revealed that Kylie had early-stage bosom cancer. Her vocation was enactment connected clasp arsenic she had chemotherapy and a lumpectomy.

The nationalist responded with an outpouring of emotion that she describes arsenic "really moving".

To this day, she's kept each the letters, drawings and cards that fans sent her.

"There were envelopes that conscionable said, 'Kylie Minogue, Australia', and the station section bothered to [deliver] them," she says.

"I conscionable felt determination was a way of emotion and support. It truly made specified a quality to me."

Kylie got the all-clear successful 2006, and she deed the roadworthy again astir immediately.

Determination and persistence person been the keys to her longevity, and contiguous it's the hunt for the adjacent Padam Padam that keeps her motivated.

It each links backmost to her emotion of connection games. "Music's a spot of a puzzle, too, trying to fig it each out."

But wherever Brainteasers are bound by logic, popular euphony is much similar gambling. Luck and timing are conscionable arsenic important arsenic originative choices. And the nationalist is petulant, demanding much of the same, but losing involvement if you don't evolve.

Kylie has successfully walked that tightrope for 5 decades, thing that chap popular icon Madonna acknowledged erstwhile she asked her to duet connected signifier successful Los Angeles this March.

"It was benignant of mind-blowing," Kylie recalls. "I spoke to her manager and helium said, 'M would truly similar to sing I Will Survive with you'.

"The reasoning for that is she mislaid her parent to bosom cancer, and she knows immoderate of my story. But adjacent much relevant, for her and I, was that we’re women who've survived this industry.

"It's ne'er easy," she adds. "I don't deliberation anyone wants it to beryllium easy, due to the fact that where's the challenge? But we’re inactive here, doing what we love."

Pausing to reflect, the vocalist is momentarily overawed.

"There's truthful overmuch that's happened that eight-year-old me, oregon adjacent 20-year-old me, wouldn't person been capable to compute," she says.

"You're going to conscionable Prince 1 day. He's going to constitute a opus for you. You're going to sing connected signifier with Madonna.

"I mean, I'm amazed. I'm like, 'Is this adjacent my life?'"

That’s 1 puzzle wherever the reply is self-evident.