The Rolling Stones release a new album next month, in between Mick Jagger’s and Keith Richards’ 80th birthdays, no doubt igniting another debate about when rockers should retire. In the pop world, however, I’m starting to think that Kylie is going to end up lasting even longer. At 55, working with synthesized sounds that date far more quickly than guitar riffs, you can never write her off.
Just as it was starting to look like she was ready to keep her glittering greatest hits tracklisting as is, with her first Las Vegas residency booked to begin in November and run until May, her single Padam Padam became her biggest chart success since All the Lovers in 2010 (top five in Croatia, Hungary and Chile! Number one in Israel!) and yet another chapter at the top begins.
As most of the world already knows, Padam Padam is a slinky, Eurovision-style firecracker catchy enough to cause sleepless nights. Its USP is that title, an exotic-sounding play on the sound of a loved-up heartbeat, and a muffled, moody intro that must send people sprinting to the dancefloor, immediately knowing what’s coming.
Kylie herself, as ever, is a blank canvas for showroom-perfect pop. The song could have been delivered by plenty of other singers (its writers, Ina Wroldsen and Peter “Lostboy” Rycroft, have said they were thinking of Rita Ora) but the audible wink in her voice and the lifelong esteem in which she is held makes even the most generic lyrics here sound warm and fun rather than coldly cynical.
Tension sits nicely beside the lockdown disco of her last album. Even when, six songs in, it looks like she might actually do a slow one, You Still Get Me High performs a spectacular handbrake turn into an air-punching chorus.
You won’t learn anything about her life other than, from Vegas High, that she’s more than ready for the Sin City shows she was always destined to play. Despite apparently being newly single, the easygoing R&B of Hands, robotic romance of the title track and the synthpop euphoria of Things We Do For Love suggest her love life is just fine.
Overall, it feels like nothing has changed since all the other times she released a collection of impeccable pop. Never mind turning 80. Technology by then will surely be ready to combine AI and ABBA holograms to keep her going for decades beyond that, and our children’s children will rightly be Kylie fans.
