She’s sold over 80 million records during her lifetime, yet Kylie Minogue hasn’t had a Top 20 hit since 2014. That was until yesterday when her latest single “Padam Padam”, a gloriously synthy dance banger perfectly primed for the TikTok generation, snagged the top spot on the UK Big Top 40.
It’s now her biggest selling song since 2004, and is her first entry into the US Billboard Hot 100 in 19 years. As a result, the Australian singer is being hailed the “queen of comebacks” — with everyone who assumed the 55-year-old’s attention was solely on her multi-million-pound wine company being proven wrong. That includes major youth-focused radio channels BBC Radio 1 and Capital FM who didn’t give the track any air time when it first was release on May 18, believing that it would only appeal primarily to older audiences.
That was until TikTok quickly caught wind of the infectiously short song and rapaciously started eating it up — introducing a legion of Gen Z listeners to the ‘90s pop princess. Whether it’s the video sharing app’s signature style of dancy videos, people trying to decipher the meaning of “Padam” or older fans meme-ing themselves listening to their lifelong favourite artist, we’re now undeniably in a cross-generational Kylie Minogue renaissance.
“It’s a confident, left-of-centre turn, and people have been responding to it because of how confident it sounds, and how much it feels like a Kylie single,” said George Griffiths at the Official Charts of the song’s unexpected success, adding: “No-one else could have probably pulled this song off.”
Inspired by Edith Piaf’s 1951 heartbreak song of the same name, “Padam Padam” is an onomatopoeia for the sound a beating heart makes and punctuates the sensationally smooth and upbeat track throughout. Written with Norwegian hitmaker Ina Wroldsen, who has worked with the likes of Clean Bandit and Olly Murs, it’s been an immediate dancefloor hit — with Minogue seen dancing with UFC legend Connor McGregor last weekend to the addictive bop in a nightclub during a F1 Grand Prix after party.
Since then, Minogue has taken to Instagram to thank her fans for the viral love (and subsequent meme-ing) of the track. “My heart is bursting with joy,” she wrote to her 2.5 million followers, “I just wanted to say thank you, thank you so, so much for all the birthday messages and the Padam reaction and the love.”
With “Padam Padam” the lead single off her upcoming album “Tension”, which is out this September, it’s clear the Kylie Minogue renaissance is only just starting. And it’s not just for her music, either. The Fever hitmaker also recently re-released her 2006 perfume, Darling, due to popular demand.
“I feel like I have one foot in the old world and one foot in the new,” she said in a recent interview on birthing an unforeseen chart-topping summer anthem, before describing her renaissance as “another wild turn in my life and my career”.
