Kylie Minogue

Kylie Minogue popped by to perform and host a quick Q&A at Spotify’s London HQ on Wednesday 12th February. Music-News.com managed to sneak in and catch-up with all the gossip. The uncut interview is below.

Acoustic performance set list:
• Can’t Get You Out Of My Head
• Kiss Me Once
• Into The Blue


Spotify: Tell me a little bit about how and why you chose the songs for today? What was your thought process?
KM: Well I had 4 to do. I thought three new, one old would be great. ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’, believe it or not, is 12 or 13 years old now, so it’s an oldie now – it’s an oldie but a goodie. And then just thinking which songs would work acoustically. We had so much fun in rehearsals putting that together. We have also rehearsed them big style with all the bells and whistles. I just like being with those guys and making noise.

Spotify: Making a new record with a new label is there a sense of creating yourself again in a new way?
KM: Well I’m still with my old label but just with a new home. But I have signed with new management, so that would be the biggest difference - signing to Roc Nation and recording a lot in Los Angeles and New York, and I always do some recording in London.

Spotify: How are they as management?
KM: Good – some of them are here so I’ve got to say they’re the best! It was a big, big change in my life and that doesn’t come easily so there’s a lot of adjusting and getting used to a new way when you’ve done something another way for 25 years. But it’s all good – I feel reinvigorated, having fresh energy and fresh ideas, and merging that with the history I have. You don’t want to mess with the foundations but definitely put something new on top.

Spotify: I was looking at the track listing and there’s a few on there – Sexy Love, Sexercize and Les Sex. Is there a subliminal theme there?
KM: Sex sex sex! Actually there wasn’t. Sia is executive producer with me, which is amazing and a little dream come true, and there was a certain point on the album where we had countless songs, and she said “we need some sex on there.. we need a hot song”. Next thing I know there’s Sexy Love, Sexercize and Les Sex! And even looking at the album titles, trying to figure out what makes it on the album, I thought ‘I can’t really do that’, and then I thought ‘yeah, I really have to do that because they’re all really great songs’. And I couldn’t call them anything else, because that’s what they are.

Spotify: Do you have a date for Valentine’s Day?
KM: No, I don’t have a date for Valentine’s Day. I’ll be working, with people I love. But you know, what’s really exciting is when you don’t know what’s going to happen.

Spotify: Are you enjoying presenting The Voice, and is ‘Spinning Around’ in the chair as fun as it looks?
KM: Yes. A lot of it is a lot of fun. I have to say it’s full on, it’s intense, you think that you’re just never going to come up for air again because the days are very long and for someone who doesn’t really like decision-making, all day is decision-making. Having to explain to lots and lots of people – the show is obviously edited to pack it all in – so you don’t even see that we comment after every performance, every one of us comments, and it can get you a bit down trying to think of ways to say no, because no one wants to say that. But, having said that, the contestants that go into the show… the BBC assured me they have never had complaints. The get taken care of so well, whether they go through or they don’t, they really leave with a lot of experience. Mostly it’s fun, the fun bits are really fun, the not fun bits.. you just don’t want to be there.

Spotify: Is there a particular song you’d love to hear someone come on and sing?
KM: I’ve had a few of my favourites… ‘Bette Davis Eyes would be good’.
Spotify: What’s the last record you heard that made you say ‘wow’?
KM: It has to be ‘Happy’, and then the video came along, and he nailed it even further.
Spotify: And of course he’s on your record!
KM: Oh yes, he is! I’ve had a few dreams come true on this album. I have a song on this album that Pharrell wrote and produced for me called ‘I was Gonna Cancel’, because I was gonna cancel that day, but I didn’t, thank goodness.

Spotify: Who from musical history would you most like to duet with? Alive or dead?
KM: Prince. The 14-year old me.. The fact that I have met Prince… I could be on Cloud 9 forever. I met him around the Diamonds and Pearls Tour.
Spotify: You were writing a song together, a long time ago?
KM: Yes, a long time ago. But I haven’t sung with him. That would be amazing! It might happen one day.

Spotify: Do you still own the gold hotpants, and where are they?
KM: I don’t own them, no, because I donated pretty much all of my costumes and everything to the Performing Artists Museum in my home town of Melbourne Australia, and you can’t touch anything – probably particularly the gold hotpants – without white gloves on, but it’s good news for all my costumes because they’re in a museum, they’re going to be temperature controlled, and taken care of. I think the story got out of control when they had an exhibition of my clothes that the hot pants were behind bullet-proof glass. I don’t think that’s true, but it was a good story

Spotify: Do you miss having a perm?
KM: Well actually it wasn’t a perm. It was a scrunch dry. Bring back the scrunch dry! There was a lot of mousse involved in those days.

Spotify: Let’s go back to 6th August 1988 if we can, and that was your very first performance in the UK singles chart. These were some of the people in the Top Ten. Who of these people did you meet, and can you tell us anything about them if you did? Firstly… Yazz
KM: Did I meet Yazz? I don’t know if I met Yazz
Spotify: Kim Wilde
KM: Kim Wilde’s sister is one of my backing singers! So that’s one step away!
Spotify: Transvision Vamp
KM: No, but I remember she wished me under a bus in an interview, in Smash Hits or something. Well that bus never came!
Spotify: Debbie Gibson
KM: I don’t think I met Debbie Gibson. I meet so many people passing by that there are a number of people that I’m not sure if I met or didn’t, as it would have been so briefly. I don’t have a picture with Debbie Gibson, so maybe I didn’t meet her. If she says I did I will feel really bad!
Spotify: George Michael
KM: I have met George Michael. He’s great, a very nice. I stayed at his house a long time ago in the South of France, which was very generous.
Spotify: Everything but the Girl
KM: I didn’t meet them but how good was that song?

Spotify: What’s your most treasured possession and why?
KM: The blanket from when I was a baby. It’s still somewhere in my parents’ house. It’s pale yellow and it had a satin trim on it that is probably in tatters now. I loved it, and it’s something I could not replace.

Spotify: What’s your favourite noise?
KM: I can’t recreate it! It’s a pleasurable noise. I would have to say that elusive… I will leave it at that… I am not saying if it’s coming from me or someone else.. But *that* noise.


Photo credit: Richard Young