“A new generation discovers me with Padam Padam and they have never heard of The Loco-Motio,” smiles Kylie Minogue: the Australian is still dancing after 35 years of career, driven by this new viral single on TikTok.
Padam Padam, the first track released as a scout for a new album, Tension, scheduled for Friday September 22, is not a cover of Padam Padam by Edith Piaf but an electro track which was a hit this summer (more than 71 million copies sold). ‘listening on Spotify, market leader in music streaming platforms). “Until now, the only Padam Padam in my world was the song by Edith Piaf, but the only similarity is the title: a lot of crazy things have happened to me in my life and that’s it. “It’s another thing to find myself linked to the same two words from Edith Piaf,” she laughs, during a meeting with the AFP in Paris.
“I wondered if the French would agree,” continues the 55-year-old star, pronouncing this last word in the language of Baudelaire. The singer was able to judge the good reception in France while listening to the album in a club in the center of Paris. The lucky ones in the know were surprised to see her come down from the stage to dance in the audience, dressed like Little Red Riding Hood, perched on high heels that she eventually took off.
France was not the only country to catch on and Tiktok even took over. “I didn’t see it coming,” she whispers. Enough to ensure a new audience on the borders of adolescence. “Being accepted at my age by this audience gives me energy. A new generation discovers me with Padam Padam and they have never heard of The Loco-Motion or Can’t get you out of my head.
The Loco-Motion appears on her first studio album Kylie, released in 1988. We also hear the hit I should be so lucky. This first opus has sold more than five million copies. To celebrate 35 years of this release, a limited edition will be released on November 24. The one who first burst onto the screen in Neighbors, a blockbuster TV series, has now sold more than 80 million records and has more than five billion streams, according to her record company. Tension, designed for the dancefloor, should in turn allow him to fill theaters around the world. Ten new dates have been added to his Las Vegas residency in November. And Padam Padam has, like many of his songs, become a hit in the LGBTQIA community.
It was when his manager, at the start of his musical career, told him about “Kylie Nights” in Oxford Street, a street of gay clubs in Sydney, that the artist became aware of this sounding board. “There are drag queens and, in these shows, I am the last Kylie. There are supersonic versions of me, against whom I could not win the competition,” she laughs. In early 2023, Kylie Minogue participated in WorldPride in Sydney. “It was electric and, as a bonus, my sister (Dannii) was there. It was a surprise, at the end of the show, we sang the last song together. Seeing two Minogues together is like seeing a unicorn.”
Recently, when asked which actress could star in her possible biopic, Kylie Minogue answered Margot Robbie, compatriot, topping the box office this summer with Barbie. “This story turned out well. When someone asked me that, I was panicking (laughs) and I said Margot Robbie. That would be her in my dreams. I’m a big fan but I know it won’t happen. So, if a biopic is to be made, it would need someone not so well known, for the different Kylies, baby, little, older.”