From trumpets on high and murmurings on the wind, news has come that Australia’s biggest, brightest, longest-lasting and – yes – most loved pop star, Ms Kylie Minogue, will tour here in March next year. For a tour including her first big outdoor and winery shows here, she’ll be riding the wave generated by her best album in a long time, maybe even her best album ever, Golden. (Reviewed here )
Naturally, it’s a good time to dip into the Wind Back Wednesday vaults and peer back at another tour, this time in 2002 when La Minogue went from just good enough to pop spectacle, from niche star to national treasure, from wannabe to queen bee. Or at least crown princess bee.
KYLIE MINOGUE
Sydney Entertainment Centre, August 5
Kylie Minogue, the marketing exercise, is going great guns.
Her triumphant tour last year attracted an audience that could be described as girls who wanted to be Kylie when they grew up; grown-up girls who had wanted to be Kylie 10 years earlier and still liked the idea; and boys who wanted to be Kylie.
It was, in a sense, the usual suspects.
But the genius of the Minogue marketing in this past 18 months has been in slowly attracting straight men. The rampant sexuality of her videos and photographs has tapped into the Loaded/FHM boys' toys market and transformed her audience into something approaching a universal mix.
Having been given an excuse to like Kylie those straight blokes found it harder to resist the siren call of the disco-led singles - a handful of the brightest, albeit shallowest, pop baubles of the past few years. So they were happy to buy tickets to sing and perve at the same time. Like I said, marketing genius.
Strangely enough though, Minogue in the flesh has never been and probably never will be the sexpot the marketing suggests. The dancers are brazen and her costumes are flashy - micro-skirts, bikini tops, open white shirts - but she is always cute and charming and saucy rather than assertively sexual.
The other wise decision was to abandon the embarrassingly low-rent production of the 2001 tour for something flashier, louder, cleaner and more distracting. If you are not a particularly good singer (and no amount of "tweaking" and bolstering in the mix could disguise that fact, though to be fair she is improving) you had better have the brightest lights around.
And this time Minogue did. In just about every way this tour offers a high standard pop show that has enough sense to laugh at itself a little bit and celebrate itself a little bit more. The audience loved it, they always do. But this time the adulation was justified, not just knee-jerk "she's our Kylie so of course we're happy" applause.
Sure, you walk away from this series of Kylie concerts knowing no more about who Kylie is, wants and dreams about. But that's not the point, is it?
This isn't revelation; it's marketing. And bloody good marketing, too.
Kylie Minogue Australian tour 2019, on sale November 19
ICC Sydney Theatre, March 5
Adelaide Entertainment Centre, March 11
Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne, March 13
A Day On The Green concerts:
Sir James Mitchell Park, Perth, March 9
Bimbadgen Estate, Hunter Valley, March 16
Sirromet Wines, Mt Cotton, March 17