Kylie’s enduring X factor

Troy Walker
It’s a story that’s been told a thousand times -” Kylie Minogue’s rise to fame from Aussie soap star to international pop icon. Her music career spans more than 20 years with numerous number one hits around the globe, 10 studio albums, and highly successful tours.

Some say an artist is only as successful as their last record and that has had some critics questioning Kylie’s career. But Kylie has long been bigger than her last record. Her longevity and ongoing global appeal are testament to that.

Her current album X didn’t hit the mark with many fans and sales failed to meet expectations. Fans and critics alike were expecting a more lyrically personal album after Kylie’s much publicised battle with breast cancer. A succession of leaked tracks and the poor performance of the singles saw the album quickly loose momentum, despite debuting in the top spot on the ARIA chart.

Melbourne radio personality Damian Nicolas thinks Kylie’s desire to break into the American market has served her poorly in recent years.

-œCamp Kylie needs to start thinking smarter, getting Kylie back to where her strengths lie in pure, unadulterated pop music, he told Southern Star.

-œIt may not provide her with the hits she wants in America, but it will leave her devoted fans salivating for more.

In Kylie’s defence, she has some of the most critical and demanding fans in the business. But are we growing tired of the musical chameleon? Or are we just complacent over her enormous success?

In 2001, Kylie’s Fever album, which spawned the internaltional hit single Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, achieved worldwide sales in excess of six million, going seven times platinum in Australia alone.

A year after its release, it is estimated that X has notched up about 1.2 million sales worldwide. It achieved platinum status in Australia before the release of the tour repackage last month.

Record company executives would be hoping that repackage, along with the release of a remix box set in Europe and the X2008 tour will spur on a few more sales.

And if the ticket buying frenzy that ensued after tickets for the concerts went on sale are any indication – that is a real possibility.

The eight scheduled UK shows sold out in under 30 minutes. Kicking off the tour in Paris in May, the tour quickly earned Kylie some of her best live reviews to date. She went on to perform in front of half a million fans across Europe, with dates in 21 countries.

Back home fans waited patiently for a tour announcement, something that Kylie wasn’t prepared to commit to until she knew that she could physically.

Patience paid off and tickets for the first Australian X2008 shows were snapped up in record time, but overall sales failed to match the heady success of past tours like On A Night Like This, Fever and Showgirl.

But Kylie doesn’t seem alarmed – and touring seems to have become something she genuinely enjoys, rather than something that must be done to push record sales.

The Australian leg of her Showgirl greatest hits tour was, after rave reviews across Europe, postponed after her breast cancer diagnosis. But Kylie still talks about how the fact that Australian fans held on to their tickets for 18 months as one of the most humbling events in her career.

The final leg of the current tour kicked off on November 1 in South America, before Kylie stopped over in Dubai to entertain a 2000-strong audience of A-list celebrities at the launch of the Atlantis Palm Resort Hotel.

Reported to have been paid a cool $3.6 million to perform a 10-song show specially designed for what has been dubbed the most expensive party ever.

With a couple of changes to the set list and some new Gaultier costumes, Kylie wowed fans through Asia and New Zealand before heading home to Australia.

Limited to Melbourne and Sydney due to the sheer size of the production, Kylie will play a limited six dates this month, finishing in her hometown in time to spend Christmas with her family.

X2008 has seen Kylie take her $A20 million production to many countries she had never before toured, sparking rumours that our Showgirl could be thinking about pulling the pin on tours of such a grand scale – at least for a few years.

With more 70 performances in 35 countries, this tour is not only Kylie’s most expensive, but also her most ambitious to date.  She has moved beyond simply entertaining an audience and found a new home on stage, to the extent that she can survive on her own in the spotlight at times, free of dancers and props.

The traditional stairs and catwalk have been replaced with high tech video curtains and flooring, creating Kylie’s own virtual playground. Presenting a selection of tracks from her current album, some classic hits and a couple of unreleased tracks, she’s having fun.

The precision timing and seemingly perfectly scripted delivery of past tours has been stripped back to reveal the most relaxed Showgirl we have seen to date.

While X2008 boasts many technical feats, the greatest spectacle is clearly Kylie’s performance. With a fresh approach to what she does, she glows with renewed confidence.

Dancers Marco DaSilva and Jason Beitel, favourites from Kylie’s Showgirl tour, made a return to the stage, as did gravity-defying acrobat Terry Kvasnik.

Allowing Kylie to play her many characters, the show is presented in stylised scenes complete with all the grand entrances, choreography and glitter we have come to expect from a Kylie show.

With the tour drawing to an end, there are rumours that Kylie has already begun work on her next studio album with suggested collaborations including Justin Timberlake and ’80s pop icons Duran Duran.

And fans were recently treated to the charity release of Lhuna, the duet she recorded with Coldplay which was deemed too sexy for inclusion on the band’s current album.

Seems like Kylie is still a very busy superstar for someone yet again rumoured to be at the end of her shelf-life.

Perhaps what we now need to recognise is that La Minogue uis a pop culture icon against whom many others are measured – not the other way around.