By Jane Rocca
Kylie Minogue: “I think it’s important to be fluid in life.”Credit:Christian Vermaak
Australian pop princess Kylie Minogue has moved back to Melbourne and is enjoying the new year in the embrace of her family while doing long-distant love. She talks to Sunday Life about her career, being in love and a sparkling side hustle.
What made you relocate to Melbourne from London?
I wanted to spend more time with my family. I moved back last year and didn’t make any noise about it. Work will still take me back to Europe and the US, but knowing Australia is my base again is really lovely. We’ve had to do things differently over the last few years, whether it’s making music, marketing my perfume or working on my wine collection [Kylie Minogue Wines]. But I was like, “Why not? Just do it.” Time is precious and it’s
the evolution of me. I’ve also needed to relearn many things about Australia – like the need for Aeroguard. And I forgot how laid-back we can be, too.
How will you make your long-distance relationship with your partner, Paul Solomons, work?
I’m quite used to it. What is difficult is explaining it and I’m hovering around that right now because I don’t have a traditional set-up when it comes to my relationship. I don’t have the white-picket-fence life. We are in a very good space and we cherish that right now. As I get older and into being myself, I don’t know if that other life is for me. We use the term “fluid and pivoting”, and I think it’s important to be fluid in life, too. You don’t need to be put in a box, so to speak.
What does a good relationship look like to you?
At this point in my life a loving relationship is one that allows you to be you. I currently feel very liberated to be myself. Readers will appreciate that as we go through life we change and develop. I definitely know that I have been in relationships where I’ve wanted to turn myself into a version of what I think someone else would like. To reach a point where you are just yourself and encouraged to be the whole version of yourself – that is the thing to be cherished in a relationship.
Was it ever difficult to find love and commitment while building your music career?
What’s been more difficult is the person you choose to be with and how they handle that, not the finding love part. If you’re passionate about your career, you need to find a way to be able to maintain both that and a relationship. I suppose it can present some challenges, but it’s either going to work or it isn’t. You can try to have the best of both worlds.
What does Valentine’s Day mean to you?
I tend to be as romantic as possible whenever I can in my life, and that also applies to times like Christmas and birthdays. I’d say I’m probably a little looser with Valentine’s Day itself. To tie in with the occasion, I have the release of my prosecco rosé, which makes its debut in Australia for Valentine’s Day. So yes, it’s a reason to celebrate.
What memories do you associate with romance and wine?
My very first trips with Michael Hutchence are a standout as some of the most romantic. I was about 22 years old and visiting the south of France and Italy and going to glamorous locations with him. He was an absolute bon vivant. Celebrating with a good bottle certainly marks an occasion as a couple.
What does your single I Should Be So Lucky, which was released 34 years ago, mean to you now, considering the career you’ve had?
It was the first song I released in the UK. I think I have been extremely lucky, yes! [Songwriters Mike] Stock, [Matt] Aitken and [Pete] Waterman had forgotten I was in the UK, and a day before I was due to go back to Australia they hastily wrote I Should Be So Lucky and I recorded it. It was the beginning of my international career.
I have been through many stages with that song – of loving it and being embarrassed by it. I now perform it as a torch song to mix it up.
It was Nick Cave who made me come face to face with it. It was the mid-’90s in London at the Poetry Olympics. Nick was performing at the Royal Albert Hall and he asked me to recite the lyrics deadpan. I tried everything to get out of it. In the end he convinced me. I wore track pants and a T-shirt –
it was so ’90s of me. I’d lopped all my hair off and was dressing like a teenage boy and doing everything I could to change my course, to not be known
for what I had been known for up to that point in my career.
In that moment of reciting, it was like a Spielberg movie unfolding – the me
I was trying to run away from was right in front of me and I couldn’t actually run. I had Nick Cave saying, “You have to do pop, Kylie!” I could go on about I Should Be So Lucky as a marker through my life, and how I now love it and what it means to people. It’s an incredibly sad song disguised as a pop song.
Nick Cave's duet with Kylie Minogue was part of the success of the Murder Ballads album. Credit:Dave Tonge/Getty Images
Will you record with Nick Cave again? Where the Wild Roses Grow blew our minds in 1995.
I adore Nick Cave, his talent and what he means to everyone. He is incredible and every experience I’ve ever had with him has been so genuine. He’s turned out to be pretty important in the canon of things I have experienced in my life. The last thing I did with Nick was a little hologram in his exhibition, Stranger Than Kindness, in Copenhagen in 2020 – it’s a moment of us embracing in a slow dance. Everything with Nick is very otherworldly and beautiful. I would totally do a song again with him, yes.
What is your favourite era of fashion and why?
It’s the early ’90s for me because that’s when I got experimental. There were quite a few beehives and eyeliner flicks in my looks. I did a video for What Do I Have to Do? and I remember telling music director David Hogan it needed to look like I was in Italian Vogue. I was all about the big hair.
Which style icons do you admire?
Kate Moss never puts a foot wrong; I absolutely love her style. I’m also a big fan of the classics, like Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe.
“I tend to be as romantic as possible whenever I can in my life, and that also applies to times like Christmas and birthdays.′Credit:Christian Vermaak
Did you have a celebrity crush when you were growing up?
I was obsessed with Prince – loved his music, his fashion and Purple Rain. I got to meet him in the early ’90s. I literally tried to calm my 14-year-old self down when we met. It was not easy. I went to his home and studio in Minneapolis and was in the car with Prince driving me around, thinking “What has happened to my life?” It was so cool.
If you hosted a dinner party serving your new prosecco rosé, who would be there?
David Bowie, Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe and a really good chef.
What is 2022 all about for you?
I am still going to be on this year. I’ll be in Europe in a few weeks and in the States launching the wine collection in April. That’s a huge deal for us. There’s still a lot of anxiety around travel. Being able to get back to Australia last year was hard going for me, then being able to leave to go back to work in the UK and then come back again. When I say I’ll be here and there I am not making light of how difficult it is. I’m tripled vaccinated and doing what I can, but I am careful and practical about what can be done.
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