‘The singing budgie‘ the British press called her. The singing parakeet. We unsuspecting children of the eighties were happy with the arrival of Kylie Minogue, a pop star so sunny and touchable that from her first hit ‘I Should Be So Lucky’ (1987) she was an obvious presence in the Top 40 – but the serious music press did not like her. Minogue was a nineteen-year-old soap opera actress from Australia with a vibrant soprano voice and an eternal smile whose hits came from the music factory of Stock, Aitken and Waterman: it couldn’t be lower, in the strict cultural pecking order of those days.
Nearly forty years later, Minogue’s star still shines. In 2020, more than 80 million records were sold. More telling is the high number of Kylie hits from five consecutive decades: club bangers like ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ (2001), ‘In Your Eyes’ (2002), ‘Slow’ (2003), ‘All the Lovers’ (2010) and, most recently, ‘Padam Padam’ (2023), with which Minogue was also discovered by the TikTok generation. In the new, three-part Netflix documentary that consolidates her status as pop princess (Madonna is the queen, in this universe), Minogue is almost dismissively modest about her own writing and singing talent, but her nose for good pop music cannot be disputed. You immediately recognize a Kylie song. Her perfect styling and strong live act do the rest.
Kylie Fortunately, the documentary is not an attempt to summarize her career in its entirety: it is an exciting three-hour ride, full of smart choices and time jumps. Director Michael Harte previously made a name for himself as an editor: the great edits Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (2023) and Beckham (2023) are also his. In Kylie concert and studio images alternate with impertinent questions from journalists (“Is it true that you have discovered sex?” “Isn’t it time for children?”) and sneering headlines; Minogue did not receive success as a gift. Her most consistent fan base comes from the LGBTQ+ community, which embraced her “when it wasn’t cool at all,” as she puts it.
Nick Cave had never met anyone who liked life until Kylie Minogue came hopping into his studio
A select group of intimates have their say: music producer Pete Waterman (,,And that is a very true story!“), sister Dannii Minogue, colleague and former lover Jason Donovan and rocker Nick Cave, an unlikely and crucial mentor figure who gave Minogue her only ‘alternative’ hit in 1995, the murder ballad ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’.
Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue in the series ‘Neighbours’, second half of the eighties.
Neither Cave nor Donovan seem to have fully recovered from the little blonde tornado that first tore through their lives decades ago. Donovan says wearily that he is still constantly asked by strangers about his first love (,,Come on man!“), Nick Cave recalls how he and his somber bandmates had “never met anyone who liked life” until Kylie came hopping into the studio. Cave saw more clearly than Minogue herself where her strength lay: dance music, positivity, no more indie excursions. “No one actually wants to be indie,” he says with merciless self-mockery.
Director Harte also spoke to Minogue himself several times and continued to refine his interview technique: fewer studio lights, fewer prepared questions, more room for Minogue’s own associations. Gradually you see her relax and she becomes more open-minded. She talks at length about her breast cancer diagnosis in 2005; the images of the paparazzi army around her parental home are as poignant as those of Minogue’s pale appearance with a headscarf on the streets of Paris, where she underwent her treatment. But she rose again, resumed her canceled tour and her openness about her illness created something like a ‘Kylie effect’: young women were demonstrably more likely to attend screenings.
In the last ten minutes we see Minogue jamming and singing in a home studio with a group of musical confidantes, and in that relaxed atmosphere she comes up with a revelation that puts everything that has come before in an even more sympathetic light. Anyone who loves Kylie, or loves pop music, or is simply curious about how an artist gets the most out of her talent through perseverance and unwavering enthusiasm, will enjoy this documentary.
