Focus • Kylie Summer 2019 #5 - GLASTONBURY theguardian.com by Laura Snapes
all as silly – she adds a Chic-style “Choo-choo, beep beep” breakdown to The Locomotion – as it is sexy. During Slow, revamped as a bassy, throbbing club track fit for the festival’s queer haven NYC DownThe “legends” slot at Glastonbury is always a fount low, she interpolates the lascivious riff from Bowie’s of audience goodwill. By mid-afternoon on Sunday, fashion and grinds against the microphone in a manwhen morale is low, songs you know as intimately as ner that raises the already significant temperature. your parents’ phone number, played by icons who Nick Cave comes on for Where the Wild Roses Grow, are very often older than your parents, offer a parti- and they share a similarly potent, intimate embrace. cularly welcome kind of comfort. But with Kylie, it’s The showmanship, the incredible run of hits – it is different. She was supposed to play Glastonbury in absolutely phenomenal. So much so that the crowd 2005, she reminds us, back when she was a regular keep bursting into chants of “Kylie! Kylie!” and brinicon, perhaps not yet a living legend. But then, she ging her to tears. Never mind the legends slot; next says, “circumstances” struck: she was diagnosed with stop, headliner. breast cancer and had to watch from her bed in Australia, moved by the sight of some bands covering telegraph.co.uk her songs in tribute. by Neil McCormick She cries as she tells this story, but doesn’t mention cancer explicitly – an omission that reflects how incongruous this dark moment was in her world. Kylie was about lightness, about transcending time’s limitations. Stock Aitken Waterman pop stars weren’t built to last, let alone evolve beautifully through decades’ worth of shifts in the fabric of pop and experience second, third, fourth heydays. That this was under threat in 2005 didn’t compute, to the degree that it felt like a national crisis in her adoptive home land.
Was there ever any doubt? Kylie Minogue absolutely delighted the Glastonbury festival with a set of streamlined pop as effervescent as her winning persona, as cheering as her gap toothed smiled. We should be so lucky … and indeed we were. She did the Locomotion, gamely trilling “Choo Choo” as her dancers made a train across the stage. She slow danced with fellow Australian Nick Cave during a campfire singalong of murder ballad Wild Rose. Coldplay’s Chris Martin backed her on acoustic guitar for Can’t Get You Out of My Head before Kylie’s band picked up the beat of a modern dance classic. She Thank god, she survived, and made it to Glaston- spun in circles for Spinning Around. bury 14 years after her initial appointment and to a The festival crowd came out en masse for the vetehero’s welcome. One of the artists who covered her ran pop queen, with barely an inch of space up the at the festival in 2005 was Coldplay, and she brings hillside to do much more than twitch your shoulders Chris Martin on to perform with her. Worryingly, he’s to her cheesy disco beats. It vied with Liam Gallagher carrying an acoustic guitar, another thing that fran- for the biggest crowd of the festival. kly has no place in Kylie’s gloriously ritzy world. They The sun beat down, flags were flying, and voices proceed to perform Can’t Get You Out of My Head – were raised in splendid singalong, la-la-las rising with one of the 21st century’s most futuristic pop songs near hymnal glory into a perfectly blue sky. – in a stripped-back style. While tantamount to for- Kylie herself was - momentarily at least - reduced to saking her official gay icon status, the goodwill and tears, stumbling through a speech about “our story, charm of the moment carries them through. this 30 years together.” Pop is supposed to be a fickle business but somehow this charming, hard-working Fortunately, the rest of the set is solid gold una- Aussie immigrant has maintained a key position in dulterated Kylie: that peerless mix of total sincerity British pop life for over three decades. Her lovely, and fierce camp that she’s been serving up for more spirited Glastonbury set reminded us all why. than 30 years. Dancers in pastel trousers waggle 7fttall letters spelling out her name during I Should Be patriote australien Nick Cave au cours d’une ballade So Lucky, then she brings out a man dressed as Klaus Nomi, the German-via-New York performance artist who died of aids in 1983, and they dance tenderly on Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi and Hand on Your Heart. It’s