Кайли в журналах

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И еще один вариант того же интервью о Kylie at Home в журнале Hello!
http://www.hellomagazine.com/travel/201 ... spiration/

То, что осталось после удаления дублирующихся ответов

Kylie Minogue reveals the home comforts she can't live without
The singer launched her successful Kylie Minogue At Home collection in 2008
OCTOBER 06, 2017 - 15:05 BST BY CHLOE BEST

Kylie Minogue is set to inject some sparkle into homes around the UK with the launch of her new bedding collection for AW17. The singer's Kylie Minogue At Home range has been hugely successful since its launch in 2008, with designs inspired by her travels and music career, and the new collection is sure to be no exception. Here, Kylie reveals her favourite pieces, her home styling secrets and shares the home comforts she can't live without.



What pieces do you particularly love from this collection?
It's not easy to answer that! Each design has its own identity and story to tell. I especially love the Glitter Fade for its ombre effect and Atmosphere for its lovely texture and shine. Each piece has been carefully designed with the wonderful team at Kylie Minogue At Home. We had a very specific vision for this collection and I'm delighted with the results!

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The Sunday Times Magazine
О разбитом сердце, шортах и приближающемся пятидесятилетии.
Откровения королевы поп-музыки о возвращении в строй после расставания и планах на следующие десятилетие.

Будучи ребенком восьмидесятых, я выросла, наблюдая за Кайли Миноуг в роли автомеханика Шарлин Робинсон в бесконечном австралийском сериале «Соседи». На стене мой спальни висел постер с ней и Джейсоном Донованом, и я страстно мечтала, чтобы они и в реальной жизни состояли в романтических отношениях (как выяснилось позже, они состояли).

Моя подруга Сюзан познакомила меня с ее первым альбомом с незамысловатым названием «Кайли», и мы слушали его во время автомобильных путешествий, заставляя родителей перематывать кассету снова и снова.

Я повзрослела, и Кайли, в свою очередь, выросла как артист. За три десятилетия она выпустила 13 альбомов и продала больее 80 миллионов записей. Попутно она беспрестанно переосмысляла себя: секс-кошечка, шоугёрл, королева электро-поп-дэнс-музыки, и, наконец, после переезда в район Лондона Найтсбридж в 2011 году, почтенная жительница Британской империи.

Альбом Golden представляет Кайли в новом свете кантри-певицы. Частично записанный в Нэшвилле, он наполнен удалыми, переливистыми, неумолимо броскими мотивами, которые гарантировано засядут у вас в голове и останутся там до конца дня. В видео на первый сингл Dancing Кайли исполняет лайн-дэнс в ковбойских сапогах и сиянии страз.

В отличии от Мадонны, перевоплощения которой были не менее радикальными, Кайли никогда не казалась ни поверхностной, ни надменной. Если визуализацию известности изобразить в виде наложения кругов, один из которых представляет собой личность звезды, а другой — личность, с которой может соотнести себя каждый из нас, то Кайли одна из тех редких людей, что находятся в золотой середине на их пересечении. Нам кажется, что мы знаем ее, потому что мы выросли вместе с ней.

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Когда Кайли Миноуг врывается в лобби отеля Ритц, где назначена наша встреча, она выглядит едва ли иначе, чем на том постере в моей спальне 30 лет тому назад: улыбчивая, с выразительными глазами и круглыми щечками. В мае ей исполнится 50, но возраст выдают лишь морщины вокруг глаз. Во плоти она миниатюрна и гибка, словно гончая, одета в белую рубашку, золотистые сапоги из змеиной кожи и юбку с каймой из страз и похожа на украшение для особо гейской ёлки.

«Это так много значит для меня!» — восклицает Кайли, когда я рассказываю свои забавные истории, связанные с ней. — «Обожаю такие рассказы, я от них без ума. Если бы ты мне не рассказала, я бы никогда не узнала».

Она говорит, что одна из самых важных причин, по которым она любит находится на сцене, это чувство тесной связи с аудиторией. «На космическом уровне, мне это очень нравится. Люди купили билеты, слушали песни. Кто-то ради концерта оставил ребёнка с няней, кто-то сделал укладку, все эти усилия, о которых я даже не знаю, они переполняют мое сердце».

Очевидно, что её поклонники важны для неё. Песня Sincerely Yours с нового альбома посвящена им («Даже если больно, я всё на свете сделаю для вас»), и становится понятно, что она черпает свои силы из их преданности. На их глазах она прошла через многое, включая недавний разрыв с 29-летним женихом, актером Джошуа Сассом, на фоне слухов о его неверности.

Они познакомились в 2015 году на съёмках американского телесериала «Галавант», а разрыв в феврале 2017 года был столь драматичным ещё и оттого, что Кайли, которая обычно избегает разговоров о личной жизни, в декабре 2015 года в радиопередаче Desert Island Discs поведала о своих чувствах с нехарактерной для неё откровенностью. Она называла Джошуа «моя любовь» и говорила, что была бы необычайно счастлива создать с ним семью. Нарушив правила передачи, она позволила ему выбрать один из восьми треков в качестве сюрприза для неё (им оказалось эротическое стихотворение, написанное отцом Сасса, Домиником).

Кайли откровенно признаётся, что к финалу их отношений, она была «подавлена». Для того, чтобы прийти в себя, она отправилась в Таиланд с двумя подругами.

«Я хотела, чтобы всё закончилось. Я поняла, что мне нужно восстановиться… моё физическое здоровье было под угрозой. Полагаю, это было то, что называют нервным срывом».

Она наглядно демонстрирует, что имеет в виду, скорчившись, сжавшись в комок: «Я думала: нет, нет, нет, нет…»

Таиланд дал ей возможность «прийти в себя, набраться сил и жить дальше». Она проводила дни на пляже, разговаривая с подругами или же наоборот, не говоря ни слова, и наконец почувствовала «абсолютное умиротворение».

Как долго ты там пробыла? «Шесть дней». Я подумала, что полгода. «Боже, нет! Шести дней предостаточно. Наверное, я отреагировала слишком резко. Я могу уйти в крутое пике, но долго там не пребываю. У меня практичное отношение к жизни».

Отчасти Кайли сочла, что общепринятый путь с помолвкой и замужеством — это именно то, что ей нужно (даже невзирая на разницу в 20 лет в возрасте с Джошуа). «Я прошла через все стадии принятия того, что «это делают все», но на самом деле этот союз был мне не нужен. Я никогда, ни девочкой, ни женщиной, не мечтала пройти к алтарю, так что я встряхнула себя и перешла к «больше никогда не собираюсь этого делать».

И всё же, Кайли не кто иной как неисправимый романтик. Её отношения с обескураживающе привлекательными мужчинами — от покойной рок-звезды Майкла Хатченса до французского актера Оливье Мартинеза и испанского манекенщика Андреса Веленкосо — всегда страстные, длятся не менее двух лет и изобилуют подробностями в колонках сплетен.

«Я обожаю романтику, мне нравится влюбляться и пребывать в состоянии любви» — признаёт она. Теперь, когда потрясение после расставания с Джошуа проходит, её внутренний монолог о поисках любви преисполнен оптимизмом, но все же осмотрителен: «Я наверняка снова попытаю счастья. Что будет дальше? Получится ли на этот раз? Скорее всего, нет. А может статься, что да. Я сделаю еще одну попытку» — она улыбается. — «Обычные вопросы! Не столь важно, сколько тебе лет [в момент разрыва], но в моём возрасте всё же начинаешь задумываться: «И что теперь?» Хотя прямо сейчас меня это не так уж и беспокоит, мне нравится… как это сказать? Быть полностью самой собой».

Занятно, что на протяжении всего разговора, Кайли ни разу не назвала имени Джошуа Сасса. «Я очень не хочу вдаваться в подробности, потому что считаю это нечестным по отношению к нему». Затем она добавляет: «Я уже пережила эту историю» — и вы получаете представление о силе её характера, когда под внешней оболочкой милой и мягкой куколки на миг проблёскивает сталь. «Как ты смогла справиться?». Она пожимает плечами: «Я просто сделала это».

Будучи в первую очередь артисткой, Кайли всегда жила в соответствии с принципом «шоу должно продолжаться». Ничего другого она не знала. Ещё ребёнком в Мельбурне «я мечтала только об этом и ни о чём другом».

Её отец Рон работал бухгалтером, а вот мать Кэрол была профессиональной танцовщицей, и нередко приводила своих троих детей на театральные постановки или уроки музыки. Кайли обучалась игре на фортепиано и скрипке, но затем, открыв для себя Принца, Адама Анта и Duran Duran, потеряла интерес к классической музыке. Она захотела стать Оливией Ньютон-Джон из «Бриолина» или «блондинкой из АББА», на какое-то время предавшись мечтам, что глава семейства по соседству «окажется музыкальным продюсером и случайно услышит, как я пою».

Её сценический талант позволил ей получить сначала небольшие роли в сериалах, а затем и роль Шарлин в 1986. Этот прорыв принес ей известность, а кульминацией сериала стала свадьба Шарлин и Скотта в исполнении Джейсона Донована, привлекшая к экранам Великобритании аудиторию в 20 миллионов человек.

Давление нарастало. В какой-то момент, страдая от беспокойства, она доверила тревоги брату, которого называет «скалой, потому что он надёжный и заботливый». У него есть отличное выражение, он сказал: «Спусти пфф-клапан!». Что-что? «Пфф-клапан. Ты выдыхаешь — пффффф! — как паровой двигатель. Выпускаешь пар».

Кайли пользуется пфф-клапаном по сей день. Сейчас, например, из-за большого числа разъездов «наступил момент, когда я устала настолько, что мне просто необходимо хорошенько выплакаться». Она подыскивает какой-нибудь фильм, снятый будто бы специально для этой цели («девчачье слезливое кино, под которое можно рыдать всласть») и в итоге соглашается на классику «Из Африки».

В разгар подростковой славы, Кайли запела. Сначала в Австралии, затем отправилась в Лондон на встречу с продюсерским трио Сток, Эйткен и Уотерман. Несколько дней в ожидании их звонка она гуляла по городу, посетила музей Мадам Тюссо, прокатилась на двухэтажном туристическом автобусе, в надежде, что о ней не забыли. Когда же она наконец предстала перед продюсерами, они решительно не знали, что делать с этой голубоглазой инженю. По её словам, кто-то из них проронил: «Ей потребуется немало удачи», вжух и так поп-классика появилась на свет. Сингл I Should Be So Lucky был продан более, чем одним миллионом копий.

С тех пор темп работы стал беспощадным. «Так уж я приучена», — говорит Кайли, — «загорается красный свет [лампочка «в эфире»] и я включаюсь. Продаю, неважно что. Наверное, корни этого кроются в съемках в сериале «Соседи». Нет времени, учи слова, произнеси их, следующая сцена».

Такое отношение позволило ей успешно преодолеть её худшие времена, хотя, поддавшись её чарам сердечности и дружелюбия, легко забыть о том, через что она прошла. Два года, с 1989 по 1991, она встречалась фронтменом INXS Майклом Хатченсом, который был найден мертвым в номере сиднейского отеля в 1997 году.

«Покойся с миром», — вздыхает Кайли. Такая трагедия, говорю я. «Это так», — она кивает, — «Что за личность, такой харизматичный, прекрасный, весёлый. Великая утрата». Она признает, что именно Майкл научил её уверенности в её сексуальности, как на сцене, так и вне её. Перед каждым выступлением Кайли он говорил ей, что «пришло время надеть эго-накидку».

«Половина из нас, артистов, самые неуверенные в себе люди из всех, что вы видели. Мы постоянно задаемся вопросом, когда же все поймут, что я только притворяюсь». Хатченс с его безапелляционной мужественностью и уверенностью в себе, помог ей преодолеть сомнения. Она надевает «эго-накидку» каждый раз выходя на сцену: «Ты можешь быть больна, твое сердце может быть разбито, ты могла только что получить дурные вести, но шоу должно продолжаться».

Вне света рампы Кайли считает себя немного застенчивой. Во время съемок в Spinning Around ей пришлось забраться на барную стойку в золотых шортах, купленных подругой за 50 пенсов на рынке Портобелло, тогда она будто бы перевела мысленный переключатель в положение «да, отлично, сделай это, извивайся на стойке…» — являясь весьма подвижным собеседником, она прерывается, чтоб изобразить несколько танцевальных движений плечами. — «Да, будучи самой собой, я бы эти шорты ни за что не надела, но в том мире они казались уместными».

Ее соблазнительные формы стали настолько знаменитыми, что в начале двухтысячных таблоид The Sun инициировал кампанию, преследовавшую целю внесение ягодиц Кайли в число объектов Всемирного наследия на том основании, что они являются образцом исключительной природной красоты. А золотые шорты доживают свой век в Центре искусств в Мельбурне, где никому не дозволено прикасаться к ним без пары белых перчаток.

В те дни, она начала считать свой собственный зад «отдельной сущностью». «Тогда только и было разговоров, что про эти шорты. А я думала: «Вот пусть они идут и дают все эти чертовы интервью, а я дома посижу!» Интересно, есть ли и другие составляющие ее творческой сущности, о которых она думает в третьем лице? Быть может альтер-эго дивы, как Саша Фирс у Бейонсе?

«У меня нет для нее имени, однако определенно существует… не знаю, как назвать это правильно, не пропасть, не вакуум, но некое расстояние, вполне ощутимое, которое ты преодолеваешь прежде чем переключишься, и все вокруг изменяется». Когда она выходит на сцену? «Это изумительное чувство, не буду лукавить. Ты сбегаешь от всех своих проблем в турне. Там жизнь проще».

Однако порой жизнь может вернуть в реальность с сокрушительной силой внезапности. Кайли была посреди турне Showgirl в 2005 году, когда узнала, что больна раком груди. Ей было 36 лет, она нащупала опухоль и обратилась в поликлинику за маммографией. Полная благих намерений медсестра сказала ей, что та слишком молода для выполнения этой процедуры. «Она сказала мне: «Тебе не о чем беспокоится, тебе даже сорока лет нет», а я отшутилась, что мне до сорока немного осталось или как-то в этом духе».

Получив результаты, «я не вопрошала, почему это случилось именно со мной, я об этом не думала. Очевидно, я была в состоянии шока. Я помню каждую секунду этого мгновения, всё было словно в замедленном движении. Время остановилось».

Она отменила тур и отправилась лечиться в Париж, где жил её тогдашний возлюбленный Оливье Мартинез. Она прошла через частичную мастэктомию и несколько курсов радио- и химеотерапии, которые истощили её настолько, что «спуститься в кафе было достижением. У тебя нет ни волос, ни бровей, ничего, и ты думаешь: «Так, я собираюсь дойти до кафе». Это было достижением». Ее голос становится все тише. Ее глаза тускнеют. «Об этом нелегко вспоминать».

Она примирилась с тем, что смертна? «Это сложный вопрос. Я не знаю».

Я осознаю всю иронию обсуждения подобного предмета с тем, кто столь неразрывно связан с вечной молодостью. До последнего времени Кайли казалась не подверженной возрастным изменениям, отчасти — по её собственному признанию — из-за того, что слегка перегнула палку с ботоксом. Она отказалась от него и теперь выглядит намного лучше, черты её лица стали более чёткими и изящными и она, кажется, пребывает в мире с собой. Она по-прежнему выглядит на добрых двадцать лет моложе истинного возраста, и мысль о том, что в мае ей исполнится 50, поражает воображение.

«Я знаю…», — начинает Кайли уныло, но прерывает саму себя. «Я должна говорить не так». Она расправляет плечи и говорит с воодушевлением: «Я знаю, мне будет 50! Мне ужасно хочется сделать что-то, что выйдет за рамки привычного, быть может устроить грандиозную вечеринку. Я обычно отмечаю не так, но почему бы в этом году и не поступить иначе».

В прошлом Кайли не раз говорила о желании завести семью. Приближающийся полувековой рубеж бросает тень сомнения на вероятность того, что это осуществимо. Она все еще хочет иметь детей?

«Нет, это не для меня», — отвечает она твёрдо. — «Я уже наступила на эти грабли не раз, задаваясь вопросом, смогу ли это осуществить. Но нет. Я имею в виду, когда я задумываюсь о том, каково это, быть матерью, смотреть в глаза своего ребёнка…», — она подбирает слова, в попытке облечь в них то, что стало для неё несомненно болезненным откровением. — «Конечно же, я воображаю, на что бы это могло быть похоже. Но что суждено, то суждено, не представляю, если бы вдруг, каким-то чудом, я заберемела… в данный момент моей жизни, я не знаю, разве я смогла бы на это пойти?». Она делает паузу. «Это не часть моей жизни. Не буду лгать и утверждать, что не грущу об этом, но и не принимаю слишком близко к сердцу. Я же не могу ничего изменить. К тому же велика вероятность, кто если/когда я найду свою половинку, у него уже будут дети. Так что я могу представить себя мачехой».

Повисает пауза, затем атмосфера сокровенных размышлений будто по щелчку невидимого переключателя сменяется жизнерадостным оптимизмом. Кайли улыбается, ее золотистые сапожки блещут и мерцают. Я задумываюсь о том, пересекла ли она только что ту самую пограничную зону, облачившись в эго-накидку, которую надевает выходя на сцену. Ведь что бы с ней не происходило, Кайли Миноуг знает — шоу всегда должно продолжаться.

Автор: Элизабет Дей (хе-хе )
Фото: Стив Шофилд для The Sunday Times Magazine
Укладка и макияж: Кристиан Вермаак
Стиль: Саша Лилик
Розовый свитер: Temperley London
Платье на обложке: Питер Дандас
Сапоги и ремень: винтаж
Перевод: moi
Оригинал: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/magazine/the ... -qnhc6ml9p


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As a child of the 1980s, I grew up watching Kylie Minogue playing the role of the car mechanic Charlene Robinson in the long-running Australian soap Neighbours. I had a poster of her and her co-star Jason Donovan on my bedroom wall and fervently wished the two of them were romantically involved in real life (later, it would turn out they were).

My best friend, Susan, introduced me to her first album — called simply Kylie — and we listened to it on long car journeys, forcing our parents to rewind the cassette tape over and over again.

As I grew older, Minogue also matured as an artist. Over the course of three decades, she has released 13 albums and sold more than 80m records. Along the way, she constantly reinvented herself: sex kitten, showgirl, electro-pop dance queen and honorary Brit after moving to Knightsbridge, London, in 2011.

Her new album, Golden, sees Minogue in her new incarnation as country-music babe. It was written partly in Nashville, and the songs have an upbeat, twanging lilt that ensures they lodge in your brain and stay there, relentlessly catchy, for the rest of the day. The video for the first single, Dancing, features Minogue line-dancing in rhinestone and cowboy boots.

Unlike Madonna, whose reincarnations have been just as dramatic, Minogue has never seemed brittle or aloof. If fame consists of two overlapping circles, one denoting celebrity and the other relatability, Minogue is one of those rare beasts who occupies the sweet spot at the centre of the Venn diagram. We feel we know her because we have grown up alongside her.

When Minogue sweeps into the lobby of the Ritz hotel, where we’re meeting, she looks almost exactly the same as that poster on my bedroom wall from 30 years ago: smiling features, expressive eyes and chipmunk cheeks. She’s 49, turning 50 in May, yet the only sign of age is a radial smattering of crow’s feet. In person, she is tiny and lithe, like a glamorous whippet, and wears a white T-shirt, gold snakeskin boots and a skirt hemmed with sparkling thread. She looks like something you’d find on top of a particularly camp Christmas tree.

“It means so much to me!” she whoops when I tell her my Kylie anecdotes. “I love hearing these stories. It blows my mind. If you didn’t tell me, I wouldn’t know.”

She says that one of the things she most likes about being on stage is that sense of intimate connection. “On a cosmic level, I love it. People have bought the tickets, they’ve listened to songs. Or they’ve arranged babysitters or they’ve done their hair, it’s all that other stuff that I don’t know about that just fills my heart.”

Her fans are clearly important to her. There is a track, Sincerely Yours, on the new album that is dedicated to them (chorus: “Even when it hurts / There’s nothing on earth I wouldn’t do for you”) and you get the sense she takes strength from their loyalty. They’ve seen her go through a lot over the years, not least her most recent break-up, from her 29-year-old fiancé, the actor Joshua Sasse, last February amid rumours of his infidelity.

The couple met in 2015, on the set of the American TV show Galavant, and the end of their relationship was all the more cruel because Minogue, who is usually reticent about her private life, had been on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs in December 2015 professing her devotion with unfiltered enthusiasm. She referred to Sasse as “my love” and said it would be “incredible” to start a family. For one of her eight selected tracks, she broke with convention and allowed Sasse to choose a recording as a surprise (it was of him reading an erotic poem written by his father, Dominic).

Today, Minogue says candidly that she was “broken” by the end of the relationship. She took herself off to Thailand with two girlfriends to recuperate.

“I just wanted to stop,” she says. “I knew I needed to heal my … My physical system was compromised. I think it’s called a nervous breakdown.”

She shows me what she means, and starts to shiver, hunching over, curving in on herself. “I just thought, ‘No, no, no, no.’ ”

Thailand was an opportunity to “reclaim myself and get strong and get going”. She spent her days on the beach, talking to her friends or choosing to say nothing at all, and at the end of it she felt “absolutely calm”.

How long was she there for? “Six days.”

I thought she was going to say six months.

“Oh God, no! Six days are for ever. I think I reacted pretty quickly. I can take a nose dive pretty fast, but I won’t stay there long. I’m too practical.”

She says there was a part of her that had felt getting engaged to Sasse and following a conventional route to marriage (albeit with a near 20-year age gap between them) was the right thing to do.

“I went through all the motions of ‘This is what people do’, ” she says. “And it wasn’t the right union. I’ve never been that woman, that girl who dreams of walking down the aisle. You dust yourself off and you go through that period of ‘Never again. Not going to do it.’ ”

Minogue is nothing if not an incurable romantic, however. Her love affairs with dashingly handsome men are passionate and always seem to last at least two years, the details endlessly pored over in the gossip columns — from the late rock star Michael Hutchence to the French actor Olivier Martinez and the Spanish model Andres Velencoso.

“I love romance and I love to feel in love or be in love,” she admits. Now that the shock of the break-up with Sasse has worn off, Minogue says her internal monologue about finding love again is both optimistic and circumspect: “I probably will do it. What’s going to happen? Will it work? Probably won’t work. Might work. I’ll give it a try.” She smiles. “All these questions! I don’t think it really matters what age you are [after a break-up], but at my age you do go, ‘What now?’

“Although I’m not that bothered right at the minute, I’m enjoying being … how can I say this? Being fully within myself.”

It’s interesting that, in all of this, Minogue never once mentions Sasse by name.

“I really don’t want to talk about it much because I don’t think it’s fair on him.” Then she adds, “I’m beyond that story,” and you get a clear sense of her strength: a glimmer of steel beneath the sweet pop-poppet exterior.

“How do you get over it?” She shrugs. “You just do.”

As a performer, Minogue has always lived by the guiding principle that the show must go on. She has never known any different. As a child growing up in Melbourne, “I didn’t dream of doing anything else”.

Her father, Ron, was an accountant, but her mother, Carol, was a professional dancer and used to take her three children (Minogue has two younger siblings, Brendan, 47, a cameraman, and Dannii, 46, who of course followed her into pop) to theatre shows and music classes. Minogue played the piano and the violin, but then discovered Prince, Adam Ant and Duran Duran and lost interest in classical music. She dreamt of becoming “Olivia Newton-John in Grease or the blonde one in Abba” and for a while indulged in a fantasy that the father of the family next door “would be a record producer and would hear me singing”.

Her flair for performing landed her small parts in soap operas before she made her debut in the role of Charlene in 1986. It was a breakthrough that made her a household name and that culminated in an on-screen wedding to Scott, played by Jason Donovan, which attracted an audience of 20m in Britain.

The pressure was intense. For a while, she suffered from anxiety and confided in her brother, who she describes as “the rock, he’s just so solid, caring. He’s got a great expression — he says, ‘It’s just the pfffffer valve.’ ”

The what?

“The pfffffer valve. You just go pfffff, like something on a steam engine. You’ve just got to let it out.”

She still uses the pfffffer valve. Recently, because she has been travelling a lot, “I’ve had few moments where I’m so tired I just feel like I need a good cry.” She wants to find a weepy film she can watch expressly for this purpose (“a good chick flick so I can have a really good howl”). She’ll settle on a classic such as Out of Africa.

At the height of her teenage fame, Minogue started releasing music in Australia, before being flown to London to meet with the record producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman. For days, she wandered around the city waiting for their call. She visited Madame Tussauds and went on an open-topped bus tour, all the while hoping they hadn’t forgotten about her.

When she was finally summoned, the producers sat around unsure of what to do with this blue-eyed ingenue. According to Minogue, one of them said, “We need a song,” another said, “She should be so lucky,” and lo, a pop classic was born. I Should Be So Lucky went on to sell more than 1m copies.

Since then, Minogue’s pace of work has been fairly relentless. “I’m conditioned,” she says. “When the red [on air] light goes on, you’re on it. Sell it, whatever it is. I think that’s from my days on Neighbours. There’s no time, learn your lines, do it, move on to the next one.”

It’s a get-on-with-it attitude that has got her through some of her toughest times — because it’s easy to forget, given her warmth and down-to-earth charm, that she has been through a lot. She dated the INXS frontman, Michael Hutchence, for two years from 1989; he was found dead in a hotel room in Sydney in 1997.

“RIP,” Minogue sighs.

It was a tragedy, I say.

“It really was,” she nods. “What a creature! So charismatic, so gorgeous, funny, all of that. A great loss.”

She credits Hutchence with giving her confidence to explore her sexuality, both on stage and off it. He used to tell her, before she performed, that it was time “to put your ego jacket on”.

“Half of us performers are the most insecure bunch you’ll ever come across,” she says. “We’re asking, ‘When are they going to find out I’m a fraud?’ ”

Hutchence, with his strutting machismo and self-belief, helped her get through that. She still thinks of the “ego jacket” every time she goes on stage.

“You could be sick, you could be going through a break-up, you could just have had really bad news about something, but the show must go on.”

Away from the limelight, Minogue describes herself as “a bit shy”. When she recorded the now-infamous video for Spinning Around, writhing atop a bar in gold hot pants bought by a friend for 50p down Portobello Market, it was as if a mental switch had been flicked and then it was “cool, go for it, slide down the bar …” She breaks off for a sexy little shimmy — Minogue is a very physical conversationalist. “Yeah, I wouldn’t wear the hot pants as me, but in that world, it makes sense.”

In fact, her pert derriere became so famous that The Sun sponsored a campaign in the early Noughties to have Minogue’s rear end listed as a World Heritage Site on the grounds that it was an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The gold hot pants, meanwhile, have been permanently rehoused at the Arts Centre Melbourne, where no one is allowed to touch them without putting on a pair of white gloves first.

She began to think of her bottom as “a separate entity”. “At the time, there was so much talk about the hot pants I was like, ‘Well, they can go and do all the bloody interviews then, I’ll stay home!’” It’s intriguing how much of her performative self she thinks of in the third person. Does she have a divaesque alter ego, like Beyoncé’s Sasha Fierce?

“I don’t have a name for it like Beyoncé does, but there’s definitely … I don’t know what to call it, it’s not a chasm, it’s not a void, but it’s a space, it’s a real space right before you go on and everything just changes.”

And when she gets on stage?

“It’s amazing. I’m not going to lie. You escape your problems on tour. It’s simpler there.”

Occasionally, though, real life intervenes with shattering force. She was halfway through her Showgirl tour in 2005 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was 36, felt a lump and went for a mammogram at a walk-in clinic in Melbourne. The well-meaning nurse told Minogue she wasn’t old enough to be there.

“She said, ‘What are you doing around this end? You’re not 40.’ I made some joke about, ‘No, I’m not 40, but won’t be too far off,’ that kind of thing.”

When she got the results, “I never really thought, ‘Why me?’ I didn’t think that. But it was a total shock, obviously. I remember every moment. It was absolutely slow motion. Time kind of stood still.”

She cancelled the tour and was treated in Paris, where she was living with her then-boyfriend, Olivier Martinez. She had a partial mastectomy and rounds of radiation and chemotherapy that left her so weakened that “walking to the cafe was a big deal: you’ve got no hair, no lashes, no nothing and it was like, ‘OK, I’m going to go down to the cafe.’ That was a big deal.” Her voice becomes quiet. Her eyes glaze over. “It’s not the easiest thing to remember.”

Has she reconciled herself with her own mortality?

“It’s a huge question. I don’t know.”

I’m aware of the irony of discussing this with someone so inextricably linked to eternal youth. For so long, Minogue has seemed ageless, partly because — by her own admission — she went a little overboard with the Botox. She has since ditched the botulism and looks much better: her face is more structured, more graceful and seems more at peace with itself. She still looks a good 20 years younger than her real age and it’s fairly astonishing to think she is turning 50 in May.

“I know,” she groans, and then she stops herself. “I shouldn’t say it like that.” She sits up straighter and says brightly: “I know, I am!”

“I do feel like doing something a bit out of character like throw a massive party. That’s not what I normally do, but I think I’m going to do it this year.”

In the past, Minogue has spoken about her desire to start a family. Approaching her half-century has thrown that into doubt. Does she still want children?

“No, not for me,” she says firmly. “Been down that road, numerous times, as in, ‘Can I make this happen?’ But no. I mean, if I think about what it must be to be a mother and look into your child’s eyes, I mean, that’s …” She scrabbles around, searching for the right way to express something that has clearly been a painful realisation. “Of course I wonder what that would be like. But your destiny is your destiny and I can’t imagine, if by some miracle I got pregnant … at this point in my life, I wonder, could I even manage that?” She pauses. “That’s not in my life.

“It would be a lie to say there’s not a bit of sadness there, but I don’t get caught up in it. I can’t. I mean, what can I do? And there’s a high probability, if/when I meet someone, that they will have children anyway. So I could imagine being a stepmum.”

There is a beat of silence and then the atmosphere shifts, from inward reflection to upbeat optimism at the flick of an invisible switch. She smiles and her gold boots shimmer and twinkle. I wonder if she’s in the space, that liminal zone where she puts on her “ego jacket” before going on stage — because whatever else happens, whatever she has been through, Kylie Minogue has always known the show must go on.

[Glock]

Спасибо большое!

[hemulith]

Интересное интервью с неизбитыми вопросами. Впрочем про альбом ничего нового.

Kylie Minogue: Her golden year after heartbreak
ELEANOR BLACK

There's something about Kylie Minogue. Still. After 30 years of working the corsets and the feathers and delivering the perfectly adequate but not startling vocals, the occasional acting gig and the marriage equality work, she remains effervescent, lovely and widely admired, especially in the United Kingdom, where she was awarded an OBE, and Australia, where they have already immortalised her in bronze.

Kylie is one of a handful of performers of her generation who can legitimately be called an 'icon'. She's sold 80 million records, her gold hot pants are in a museum, she's part of our cultural history, she's a circus master, she's Kylie – so when you get a chance to chat to her, you grab it.

And then you wonder what on earth you'll talk about, because you don't want to be one of those vultures who pick over her operatic love life or make sly allusions to her age (she turns 50 this year), and frankly there's not a lot to say about another album of upbeat, disco-inspired poppy froth. It's nice, you know?

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Disclaimer: I am a Kylie fan. The 2001 Fever album helped me through a difficult time, and hearing it still makes me happy. When she brings her new tour to New Zealand, I will be there, spinning around in the crowd. Move outta my way.

I really don't want to provoke her, so it's a relief when she jumps on the touchy topics right off the bat. Kylie has one of the most obsessively reported love lives in modern history. Jennifer Aniston-level ridiculous. Jason Donovan, her first famous boyfriend and Neighbours co-star, helped her become a household name; INXS frontman Michael Hutchence turned her goodie two-shoes image on its head; French actor Olivier Martinez supported her through breast cancer; Spanish model Andres Velencoso left her crying alone every night after he left.

Kylie says making Golden soothed her during her most recent heartbreak, after she ended her relationship with British actor Joshua Sasse, to whom she was engaged. She spent two weeks in Nashville concentrating solely on writing music. "It was incredible, there is something in the air, that place has a magic quality and I don't think I would have the album I have today if I hadn't made that trip," she says. "And if I had the opportunity to go back, I'd go in a heartbeat. I loved it."

Her first original album since that stinker Kiss Me Once in 2014 (215,000 worldwide sales, compared to Fever, with 6 million sales) Golden hits the market next month. It is her 14th, and even she seems surprised by that.

"I was being a clown as usual the other day and went off into some spin laughing with a friend and I said, 'This my 14th studio album!' and he said, 'Is this number 14?' and I thought, 'Is it?'"

She has returned – joyfully – to the formula that worked so well for her in the past, and without being rude or unkind, because she is Kylie, she reassures us that this album will not be an unsatisfying pastiche like Kiss Me Once, which was produced by a cast of 18, including Sia and Pharrell Williams.

"The A and R is someone I worked with at my previous label for 10 or 11 years. Spinning Around, Can't Get You Out of My Head, On a Night Like This – we had a lot of success together. It was different to the last album where I was sort of ferried around to tonnes of different studios, did tonnes of different songs and didn't really have a guiding light or know where I was really going. Not to totally down that project, but that's just the way it was and for this one I wanted to make it a bit easier. Just because something's easier doesn't mean it's not going to have as good a result."

Also different to the last album, she won't be indulging others' interest in her age while promoting Golden. In fact the name pre-empts it. "I did say early on, I like Golden [as a title]. Golden came from just a sentence that I wanted to put in somewhere, and it morphed a bit. At first I wanted to say I'm not young, I'm not old, I'm golden. Yes I'm older than I was before, but I'm younger than I will be. Golden is sunny, many great things are golden: golden stars, how we see the moon, golden light, golden sand, golden hair, blah blah blah...

"The last album, I got so tired of the question, 'How do you feel being 48, 49, whatever it was, in the pop music business?' My answer was that the question was wearing me down more than actually being what we were actually talking about."

A quick poll of my friends and acquaintances on social media suggests that while Kylie is "insanely hot still" and "awesome" in person, she is best-loved for not taking herself too seriously and for her resilience, an old-fashioned quality that is making a comeback in this age in which we carp on about millennial snowflakes and pre-schoolers who are already afraid to fail.

"She's good at taking the piss out of her own early bubblegum hits," says one commenter, who happens to be music writer Grant Smithies, who has also interviewed La Minogue.

"She has had some crap come her way over the years and she still gets back up," says another. "She reads as a complex and tragic personality," says the friend with the advanced education degree and two babies at home.

Another friend finds her teeth "almost threatening", which seems worth mentioning if not entirely relevant.

Singer Rufus Wainwright explains her appeal this way: "Kylie knows herself inside out. She is what she is and there is no attempt to make quasi-intellectual statements to substantiate it." He also says Kylie is "gay shorthand for joy".

As for her superstar career path, Kylie says she has no plan, and never has. "I didn't set out to do it [for 30 years] I've just gone step by step, project by project. I was absolutely useless at having a long-term plan. I admire people who have that commitment and that ability to plan, I'm just not that person. The way I went about it seems to have worked so far.

"I'm a Gemini, there are so many voices in my head – there's a committee. Gemini is the twins, but there's a committee up there, there's generally a lot of noise up there, so I don't think a committee can organise themselves to plan for five years in the future."

So far 2018 has been hectic, which possibly proves her point. Not only is she doing the promo circuit to support Golden, but she has been promoting the Australian film Swinging Safari, about a boy who is captivated by a 200-tonne whale that has washed up on the beach, while his parents (played by Kylie and Guy Pearce) experiment with key-swapping.

A semi-autobiographical dramedy, the film was written by Stephan Elliott (Priscilla, Queen of the Desert). "None of us can convince anyone it was anything other than fun," laughs Kylie of the shameless ode to 70s suburbia. "It was work but everyone had a blast. Every day when one of the six adult cast would come out in a new outfit, it was already a good start to the day.

"I would have loved to keep [my character's] wig, I thought it was fantastic. Lizzie Gardiner was the wardrobe mistress. There was one dress an extra was wearing and I said, 'Oh what's that?' That's now in my closet. Straight off an extra's back!"

When we speak, she is still figuring out how she wants to perform her first single, Dancing, and an upcoming TV performance is giving her "mild anxiety".

"The first few performances of a song that has only ever lived in a studio [are always tough]," she says. "Get Outta My Way [from the 2010 Aphrodite album] had all this intricate choreography and a dozen dancers, maybe more, and chairs and avoiding chairs, dancing on chairs, crazy heels I could barely walk in. I hadn't figured out how to sing the song live and it all seemed impossible.

"Once you've done it half a dozen times and with older songs, you don't have to think, you can have fun with it."

WHY KYLIE STOPPED PUSHING FOR MARRIAGE EQUALITY

A vocal campaigner for marriage equality in Australia, Kylie Minogue worried that celebrity support for the bill to allow same-sex couples to marry would taint the public postal survey.

She says that as the vote approached, she "pulled back", to avoid putting people off voting 'yes', given the rallying from celebrities including Ricky Martin, Miley Cyrus and Ellen de Generes.

"Most people were just over it, even if you were really passionate about it," she says. "I have a friend who's been in a relationship with the same guy for 30 years. His mother said, 'Oh, I am just so over it all,' and it was kind of reaching that stage.

"I was in London when the marriage equality announcement came through. I was standing by and going, oh my god, oh my god, please please please. The closer it got to the end of the postal ballot, I was worried that having more and more and more celebrities [supporting it] might backfire, and so I kind of pulled back a little bit.

"I just found it was a bit of a conundrum how to handle it. I was thinking of Hillary Clinton having all that star power on her side and people thinking this is a no brainer [and still she lost the US Presidential election], so part of me was worried that would happen. So the relief when the yes vote came through, I was just so happy."

Источник: https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/c ... heartbreak

[hemulith]

И снова рубрика "очевидное-невероятное". Интервью, в котором не спросили ни про 50-летие, ни про Сасса

Kylie Minogue Was So Starstruck By Dolly Parton She Barely Remembers Meeting Her
By Noah Michelson

“Golden” is the first collection of songs entirely co-written by Minogue since 1997.
When Kylie Minogue headed into the studio to begin work on a new album last year, she was all set to cook up another batch of the irresistible pop goodies she’s come to be known ― and adored ― for delivering over the past three decades.

But thanks to a little nudging from her A&R guy and an exploratory two-week songwriting trip to Nashville in July, the pop star suddenly found herself with visions of cowboy boots and banjos dancing in her head.

Drawn to the sounds of country music ― and its rich history of storytelling ― Minogue returned to London to record “Golden,” her 14th studio album. The first collection of songs to be entirely co-written by the singer since 1997′s “Impossible Princess,” the album, which features elements of country music but is still decidedly pop (and filled with trademark Minogue bops) is being touted as one of her most personal to date.

Though she’s currently recovering from a bout of bronchitis, Minogue ― ever the trooper ― refused to let a little coughing come between her and a conversation about some of the influences that make “Golden” truly shine. She called HuffPost earlier this week to chat about being starstruck by Dolly Parton, the dangers of line dancing and the unexpected cameo her father (and his muscle car) made on the album.

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When did you hear your first Dolly Parton song?

I would have been under 10 years old and it would have been in a suburb called Wantirna in Melbourne, Australia, sometime in the ’70s. I don’t remember which song I heard first. It could have been “Jolene.” Or maybe “Islands In The Stream”? Those were probably the first two songs.

I saw her perform for the first time at the end of 2015 at the Hollywood Bowl. Back then, I had no idea that I would be making an album with any reference to her or any kind of country influence. But I did feel like I saw the light when I saw her perform. She was unbelievably inspiring.

What is it about Dolly that makes her such a goddess?

I think it’s almost impossible to say, which is why she is one. I keep coming back to this light that was emanating from her. It helped that she was dressed in white and had the spotlight on her and all of that but you really get invested in her songs, you get invested in her wit and humor — her banter is hilarious — she’s just got it. You’re so entranced by her.

So then, when I started making this album and I went to Nashville and bought the T-shirt that says “What Would Dolly Do?” I was really very pleased that I had seen her perform live. I had a sense of what those kind of songs can say and transmit to an audience, and that influenced the writing of “Golden.” That’s not to say that I don’t have 30 years’ worth of songs that connect with people but I think the fact that these new songs are story-based is the real difference.

Did you get to meet her?

I met her before that show and I was totally starstruck. I’m quite sure my hands ended up around her waist and I don’t know how they got there. [Laughs] I don’t even know what happened! I was just thrilled to meet her. I don’t even know what I said! I think it was something about Australia? Maybe “Australia loves you!” [Laughs]

It’s almost impossible to imagine Kylie Minogue being in a situation where she’s the one who’s starstruck.

It takes a lot, actually. It really does. She’s one of the people that did it to me.

You’re line dancing in the video for “Dancing.” Had you done it before? Is line dancing even a thing in Australia?

Oooh, good question. I’m sure it is somewhere. But for me, what I knew of line dancing was that everyone from 7-year-olds to 70-year-olds does it, so it can’t be that difficult, right? Now, I don’t know how difficult your basic line dancing is but what we needed to do was take line dancing and somehow mix it into my world. Let’s just say I think I suffered for that video — I really do. I know I did! The repetitive movement, all of the leg lifts on just one side of my body — in fact, when the choreographer sent through the four different sections of the dance routine I almost balked. I said to him, “Looks amazing, but I think you’re going to have to simplify it,” because I had actually had a bit of a back problem, so I was extra worried.

As per usual, I go into rehearsals and I’m still rolling my eyes and going, “That’s not going to happen” and “That’s why [these backup dancers] are dancers, they can do that but I’m not going to do it” but I ended up doing all of it.

Talk to me about Nashville. I get the feeling you fell in love with it.

Nashville was an unforgettable experience in so many ways. I went in July and up until then, I’d been working in and out of different studios in other places. In each session, I’d go in and say, “Did Jamie — my A&R guy — say ‘country’ to you?” And they’d go, “Yeah.” And I’d ask, “Do you know what he means by that?” And they’d say, “Nope!” So I’d say, “OK. Let’s just write a song.” So we went down the traditional path for me which is pop, dance, electro — whatever.

Then to go to the source, to go to Nashville, somewhere I’ve never been — already that’s exciting because it’s somewhere new. Prior to that when I was in studio sessions in London I started asking other writers and producers and musicians, “I’m going to Nashville. Have you been?” And the enthusiasm and the love with which they spoke of Nashville was pretty amazing so I thought, This has to be good. From a musician point of view — it sounded like some kind of mecca. And they were right! Suddenly I had emails saying, “Go here for coffee” and “Go here for the beers” and “Here’s my friend’s number.” It’s like you’ve landed in a community that’s all at the altar of the song.

Actually, I really did pray the night before I started working in Nashville. I clasped my hands together — OK, I was on a rooftop bar, but — I had my hands together and I shut my eyes or I looked up to the sky, I can’t remember exactly, but I said, “I just need one! Please just give me one song! Two or three would be great — but I just need one song.” And I got that song — I got three of them, actually. The whole experience was amazing and going to the Bluebird Cafe and The Listening Room and not knowing any of these artists but just being an audience member and listening to a person talk about their song and then sing, it was incredible. And I knew it was about the song, not the production. The production could turn into anything when we got back to London, which is what happened with “Dancing.” The demo is not the record that you hear — the song is there, but definitely not the production.

What were the other two songs that you wrote while you were there?

The two that made the album are “Sincerely Yours” and “Golden.” There are a bunch of others that did not make the cut.

I go to Nashville three or four times a year to visit my best friend and I love it. Did you feel seduced by the city? Will you end up back there at some point?

Definitely. It was July, it was balmy, I was there with one of my managers — a woman — and I had no distractions. I was only there for one reason ― to work. I mean, I wanted to explore, too, but I didn’t have much time for extracurricular activities. But on my first day, I felt like, “I think this trip is going to work out.” And when I left there, I did a few more months of work in London. But everything that I had learned and absorbed in Nashville just stayed with me. That’s where we got the DNA for the record and brought it back to London.

And, importantly, the two main co-writers I had — I had one for each of the two weeks that I was there — are both English and about my age, so they know my whole history. I didn’t have explain anything or school them in anything. They know me. They get it. I’m part of their youth and their lives, but they both have apartments in Nashville and are in and out of the city all of the time. They were really good bridges or conduits to access what would work for me, but obviously, I haven’t made a country record. It would make no sense for me to make a country record! That would be disingenuous and not authentic, but to tap into [that genre] and find what flavors I could take from that was important.

Which brings me to my next question: Did Taylor Swift’s music or career have any influence on the album? She went from country to pop, and now you’re heading in the other direction and I know you worked with Nathan Chapman, who produced several of her albums, so it seems like she might have been on your radar.

In as much as she’s such a famous country export and does have that pop hybrid career, her name was bound to come up in my writing sessions ― and it did. But there really wasn’t a song or a sound that I could say, “That’s what I want.” We just had to find it for ourselves. But I was aware that what I’m doing was kind of the inverse of what she did except for me, it’s just a country influence, it’s not a country album. I was inspired mostly by the storytelling of country music and I think of a song that was written back here [in London] — “A Lifetime To Repair” — I just wouldn’t have had the words or that delivery if it wasn’t through that country portal. It was just a different kind of writing. And then the challenge was to bring it into my world so that it remains authentic.

I know you’ve been to Thailand several times in the last year. Did anything from your time there influence or change your approach to the songwriting for “Golden”?

I want to say no but in effect, it did because I went to Thailand at the start of 2017. I needed to get away — I needed to get out of London and I went with a couple of friends. So, I guess it did because it was a really amazing week I spent with them. You know when you have friends that you can talk all day with or you can say nothing at all ― you’re comfortable with each other. I just felt a weight lift off my shoulders. So, it did affect the album because it affected my headspace, it affected my physical health — I just felt better — even though I didn’t end up writing any songs about balmy beaches or palm trees.

Tell me about the song “Shelby ’68.” How did your dad and his love of cars end up on the album?

I thought I’d really like to do a song for my family, and to say my dad is a car enthusiast is the understatement of the century. He could tell the story of his life through cars: how he paid for each one, where he got them from — it’s his thing. As a teenager, he lived in Orange Country — and that was the mid-50s —and it was all about cars and the turn ups and the ducktail haircut and all of that. I think that’s where his love of American cars came from. To cut a long story short, Mustangs became his thing. He’s had this Shelby for a number of years. It’s candy-apple red and it’s been souped up to be a racing car — even though he’s getting on a bit [in age] to be racing [Laughs] but he’d still take a slow burn around the lap if he could. So by writing about his car, [the song] was still in that countrified, Americana world but, again, still has an authenticity to it — which is through my dad. The Mustang is at his house — it’s there.

We did the song and I called my dad and told him about it and as soon as the demo was knocked into shape, I told him, “I’ll send it to you. It might not make the album, but I’d like you to hear it.” And then I asked my brother if he could record the car. My brother was actually unwell at the time but he still went over to my parents’ place and voice-noted the car. He sent me all these notes [that were labeled things like] “starting up,” “ambling,” “driving away,” “driving back,” “power down” — recordings of all of the different stages of the car in action. So then I forwarded all of them to my producer who wrote back in a heartbeat saying, “Oh my God. This is why I make records. This is such a beautiful thing.”

When the car is driving away at the end of the recording, at the end of the song there’s a tiny, tiny, little bird tweet — I don’t know if you’ll hear it but we both heard it and it was breaking our hearts. So, when I performed that song on this little mini-tour that I just did and you hear all these recorded car elements in it — it’s just so touching! I was like, “That’s my dad’s car. Wait a second ― that’s my dad driving his car! He’s on my album! It’s amazing!” The story in the song is a fantasy, of course, but it comes from a genuine place.

Did you get bit by the same bug as your dad?

I do like a muscle car, and I guess that’s because I’m my father’s daughter. I drove across America in the mid-’90s with my boyfriend at the time in a ’78 Trans Am T-Top with no air conditioning in August. We drove all the way across the country and it was hot as it could be — actually it was hot in every sense of the word [Laughs].

“Golden” is available for purchase and streaming on Friday, April 6. For more from Kylie Minogue, visit her official website, follow her on Twitter and check out her Instagram. For upcoming tour dates and other appearances, head here.

This interview was lightly edited for clarity and length.

Источник: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ky ... a1eb210a9d

[hemulith]

Лучшие песни Кайли по версии Official Charts которые почти не являются хитами
http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-new ... fe__22091/

[moneycantbuy]

Занимательная статья. С некоторыми выводами полностью согласен.
Интересное сравнение: автор называет Burning Up ранним прототипом Dancing. Честно, не совсем улавливаю сходство.. Но зато очень чётко представляю себе версию Dancing в обработке а-ля Abby Road Sessions.

[hemulith]

Интервью для журнала You
Фотографии - зачем-то отзеркаленные фото от Кристиана Вермаака

'I'm not giving up on relationships, I'll be foolish again': Kylie Minogue on heartache and turning 50
By CHRISSY ILEY FOR YOU MAGAZINE

After last year’s split with fiancé Joshua Sasse, Kylie Minogue is back, ‘giving it everything’. She talks frankly to Chrissy Iley about heartache, her greatest fear and – who’d have thought it? – turning 50.



For me, there will only ever be one Kylie.

By that I mean forget Jenner, I’m talking Minogue – the girl from Melbourne who bounced on to our television screens at 18 playing Charlene in Neighbours and dazzled us with her charm and energy. And she’s gone on dazzling us ever since – through the reinventions, the break-ups (Jason Donovan, Michael Hutchence), the bad hairdos and her 2005 breast cancer diagnosis. The perennially youthful pop princess has taken it all on and is still the sweetest, smiliest diva you’ll ever find in The Royal Suite at The Ritz, which is where we meet, near her Knightsbridge flat. Her complexion is flawless, her hair longer and more golden than ever – I can’t believe she’ll be 50 next month.

Last year Kylie split up with her fiancé, actor Joshua Sasse, 20 years her junior. It was a heady, crazy love: they met when she made a guest appearance on his musical comedy show Galavant, he proposed after six months, but just over six months later they’d fallen out of love. All kinds of rumours circulated: that she’d changed her mind days before the wedding, that he’d had an on-set romance. The truth, of course, was more subtle and more painful, and the only way to release it was through songs from her heart. So Kylie’s latest album, Golden, is her most personal ever, her deepest thoughts set to music in a mixture of seamless pop and hypnotic country. Her voice is perfect for country – pure and empathic – and the lyrics are soul-baring, as she reveals…

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Was I really going to get married? I had the ring on the finger, didn’t I? But we hadn’t actually planned a wedding. It was a beautiful moment and I loved it, but then, you know, as time goes on… What happened? It’s complicated. To try to put it in a nutshell would not only be too difficult but unfair.

Actually, I never thought I was the marrying kind. In my song ‘A Lifetime to Repair’ I say, ‘I thought I’d settle down, a happy-ever-after princess…’ I know for a lot of people that’s where they want to end up but, for me, it never was. I guess I thought, ‘That’s what people do, maybe I’ll give it a try.’ But either it isn’t for me or I was with the wrong person. I was swept up in the moment and I’m not afraid to admit that.



I’m not giving up on relationships, though, and I’ll probably be foolish again. Otherwise I might as well stay at home and get lots of cats. No offence to multiple-cat-loving people who stay home, but my greatest fear is loneliness, even though sometimes I crave to be alone. I just want some quiet. Some days I want to date, other days I think I just don’t want a boyfriend right now. I’m not looking for a cat either.

Making the decision to end the relationship was the hardest part. After the break-up people were saying, ‘I hope you’re OK’, and I thought, you know I am OK. I’ve coped with the help of laughter, friends, music and family. Once it was done it was a relief to both of us because it’s hard. You hang on to what is good and it’s hard to let go and you feel strangely embarrassed, thinking, ‘Oh, are we supposed to try to make this work?’

I don’t know how I became a gay icon. When I started out I hadn’t had much tragedy in my life – apart from bad hairdos
I sing ‘I’m Broken Hearted’. Actually, I was broken. Because for a long time I was in a relationship that we both knew was ending, and that takes its toll on you. So going into the studio and getting all that stuff out of my system was a way of dealing with it.

In the beginning the album was very much a Dear Diary... Now I’ve moved on, and the songs have, too. It’s about me, my relationship, where I am in my life. I reached a point where I thought, more than anything, I’ve got to be honest with myself, so I wrote about relationships and love and the usual culprits.

The great thing about country music is that you can put more of a story in the song. You can work some humour in. And the beautiful thing about the really sad songs is that as well as being hauntingly sad they are upbeat. It was my A&R guy Jamie Nelson’s idea to give them a country edge. We started in the UK and then went to Nashville where I worked with English writers who live there.



Nashville had a profound effect on me – people there seem so emotionally connected. There’s such a different feeling about the place. It’s not like London, LA, Melbourne or Sydney. I loved seeing an audience of all ages at The Bluebird Café in stetsons and cowboy boots. I would love to go back to Nashville. I feel I’ve just scraped the surface and I want to get to the next level. It really helped me believe in the songs. That’s the energy: you go to performance rooms there and the songwriters talk about how the song came about. I felt I could fall in love a million times.

I didn’t know this album would be called Golden. But I was sifting and chipping away [at it] for such a long time, and I thought, I just need a nugget of gold… Songwriting can be a bit like therapy, so it was the style of my healing. And I liked the idea that we’re all golden – not old, not young, but golden.

You can’t make yourself younger. I’m always asked how I feel about being my age in this industry, and such questions perpetuate the myth that you can’t be older. You are who you are. People also used to ask me how it felt to be 18 when I was starting out. I didn’t know because I had nothing to compare it to. Men don’t get asked these questions. They don’t get told they look too young, too old, not good enough.

But I’d be lying if I said I never think about getting older. Just today I was looking in a magnifying mirror, putting on mascara, and I said to the guy doing my make-up, I think I need to do something. I’m not pro or against [surgery]. One of my absolute idols is Jane Fonda, and the way she has handled it is admirable. I remember her saying something like, it’s 80 per cent genetics, ten per cent taking care of yourself and ten per cent a good surgeon. So if, and when, the time comes I’ll be taking a leaf out of Jane Fonda’s book.

The heels come off as soon as I get home. High heels and walking down stairs – my knees make sure I know about it. They’re saying, ‘How much longer are we going to be doing this?’ A lot of people I know are turning 50 and one thing that seems to ring true for all of us is: this is me, I feel better within myself now – I’m turning another corner of who I am. And a lot of things start to make sense. Things that you can’t have known when you were younger.

I have to go through the menopause twice. I’ve done it once already. The first was medically induced when they suppressed my oestrogen for my cancer treatment. So at least I know what it will be like. You are flummoxed, you are hot and you forget what you’re saying. So I’ll be back in the fridge! I remember a friend of mine a bit older than me used to open the fridge and stand in front of it. I’m ahead of the game with that experience.

I felt a lot of guilt for my family when I had cancer. I was in that moment, trying to get through, and they felt helpless. They weren’t, because their strength was important to me. It was tough to see them hurting so much and putting on a brave face. I don’t know how much they cried because they just couldn’t show that hurt to me then. Now I’m going to say clichéd things: you take a look at the bigger picture, what’s important to you, who is important to you, what you want to do differently – although I didn’t want to do anything differently. I just wanted to get better and get on with it. But I did realise that I love what I do and sometimes the good things come from beautiful moments of connection. I’ve got pretty good fans. They’re really kind.



I don’t know how I became a gay icon. When I started out I hadn’t had a lot of real tragedy in my life – apart from bad hairdos. Perhaps it was playing someone who goes against the grain: Charlene was a tomboy mechanic. And then when I tried to release a single people said, ‘You can’t do that, you’re an actress not a singer,’ and I had to overcome that. I campaigned for gay marriage in Australia. I was in London during the voting process last November, and I remember texting my sister Dannii and saying, ‘What if it doesn’t happen?’ It’s a modern country and we want to feel that we are forward-thinking and liberal, so it was kind of shocking that we were so far behind in that. I did wonder if people are sick of celebrities talking about it, but the irony is you’re more likely to be heard if you have the platform of celebrity.

I’m really unfaithful to beauty products – I use whatever is in the cupboard. But I always cleanse my face and I could probably count the number of times I’ve gone to bed with mascara on: I have to get everything off. I’m currently using Charlotte Tilbury because I worked with her recently and she generously gave me a ton of make-up, but I also love exploring. I swear by using a muslin face cloth for exfoliation because it’s never too harsh, and I like a good sunblock. You can’t really stay out of the sun in Australia, and I love the vibes of the sea, so I get myself a bit of vitamin D. But I reapply sunblock all the time, and I’m under the tree with a hat, fully covered, swatting mosquitoes!

My body clock wakes me up early, at 5 or 6am. But then I tell myself to go back to sleep, and that’s my best sleep. I’ll wake up again at 9.30, although that varies with where I am and what I’ve got to do that day. Breakfast at home is Illy coffee and a bread called pain Poilâne – you could break a tooth on it – with goat’s butter or almond butter or avocado, or maybe toasted with an egg.

I like to get fit by working as opposed to having a regime. I’ve been very lax on exercise, but I do like yoga. When I was about 19 I went to a retreat. I was the youngest person there, the smallest and the thinnest, but everyone goes for different reasons. It’s the kind of place where you wake up at 6am and they tell you that by the end of the week you will abseil. Everyone goes, ‘No, we can’t do that’, but sure enough everyone does it. I liked that empowerment thing.

If you don’t give it everything, you may as well not be here. I took a cab the other day – I had an appointment but I really wanted to take a detour to get a coffee on the way. The driver said, ‘Hey, of course. I want to thank you. You sent my daughter a picture.’ I remembered I’d been in that cab before and he’d said it would be such a thrill for his daughter. He said, ‘We got it, we framed it and wrapped it up, and she opened it on her birthday and burst into tears.’ It was a beautiful moment.

Kylie's Kicks

TV Feud, the TV drama about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.
FILM Baby Driver and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
LISTENING TO I like mellow stuff. I love Nick Mulvey. And Dua Lipa.
MOST ANNOYING HABIT Probably being indecisive. I do a lot of panic-ordering in restaurants. It’s a pressure to have to choose.
BIGGEST FEAR Loneliness and the fact that I might have to get a cat one day – but I don’t want to upset my friends with cats.
DESCRIBE YOURSELF IN THREE WORDS Caring, indecisive, a clown.
IF YOU WERE A POLITICIAN… I’d say, let’s all sit down with a cup of tea and work it out.

Kylie’s new album Golden is out now through BMG