“I had a huddle with my band before we came out and I said to them, ‘Welcome to my home country!’” announced Our Kylie to a, very loud, enamoured ICC at the end of her first act.
“To health, happiness and love,” she toasted, sipping on a double shot of whisky, backdropped by a Nashville themed stage.
And the crowd roared.
There’s a few unspoken rules in the music/music media industry
Wear black, don’t fangirl (be cool), congregate somewhere at the back – usually left of the sound desk, and whatever you do don’t dance too hard. An occasional one-two-step and a quiet sing-a-long to the more obscure B-sides (to prove your cred) is acceptable.
Seated somewhere left of the sound desk, it’s clear those rules don’t apply when at a Kylie concert. Especially a Kylie concert in her ‘home country’, on the recovery end of Mardi Gras (where, by the way, she completely stole the show).
A perfectly curated affair of the best cuts from her 14th studio album, Golden, mixed with all your favourite Kylie bops, the Golden Tour showcased the Queen of Pop at her best – intimate, up-close and dancing. And of course, perfectly curated (which could be the name of Kylie’s biography), a quality more important and rare than we give her credit for.
One of the more intimate moments of the night came when introducing ‘Shelby ’68’ (taken from Golden), which she wrote about, and dedicated to her father. “Mum and Dad and my brother are somewhere here tonight!” she revealed.
And the crowd roared.
Kylie is a pop star-cum-country queen
Serving dive bar realness, and pop star-cum-country queen choré, Kylie has the sold out venue on their feet for at least half the show. Healthy lashings of lasers and glitter are drip-fed to the rapturous crowd, but never overdone. Like all her endeavours, the show has just the right amount of everything. Perfectly curated.
The last vestiges of the music industry still holding out to their cool-ness are all but completely won over when Kylie goes full-Kylie – following up ‘Spinning Around’ with ‘Love At First Sight’. Lasers. Glitter. Choreography.
And the crowd roared.
And the crowd roared and roared.
Kylie cried a little bit. Not too much though, just the perfect amount of crying, before segueing into a perfectly curated finale with ‘Dancing’.
With that, the final industry dude finally stood up and sang, “When I go out I wanna go out dancing!” He then split before the song ended to beat the rush of plebs exiting, of course.
