THE LIFE OF KYLIE
Aussie star Minogue on being a gay icon and how her new Nashville sound helped her rebound from a breakup
THE gay community’s longtime affection for singer and actress Kylie Minogue is apparently a case of love at first sight, to borrow the title of one of her hit songs. Yet the Melbourne, Australia, native is hard-pressed to say how it feels to be a gay icon.
“I’m asked about it a lot, and don’t really have the answer,” Minogue tells The Post. “I could say it feels great, which it does, but more importantly to me it feels natural,” she continues, adding that gay rights have simply “always been acceptable to me. We are who we are.”
She has appeared at numerous LGBTQ events over the years, including Sydney Mardi Gras in 2012 and, in April, the White Party Palm Springs in California. On Sunday, she’ll attend her first NYC Pride event, headlining the sold-out Pride Island dance party at Pier 97 in Hell’s Kitchen. (She also has a sold-out show at Bowery Ballroom on Monday night.)
Minogue’s three-decade career took off in 1986 with a co-starring role on the long-running Australian soap opera “Neighbours.” Two years later, she recorded a hit cover of the Carole King and Gerry Goffin song “The Loco-Motion.” Since then, she has released a string of dance songs (“Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” “I Should Be So Lucky,” “Spinning Around” and “All the Lovers”) and ballads (“Slow”), even as she landed one acting role after another, both on TV and in such movies as 2001’s “Moulin Rouge!” and the 2015 Dwayne Johnson action film “San Andreas.”
But her popularity came at a price: Minogue says that early on she faced “tall poppy syndrome,” an Australian phrase for public resentment toward someone successful. Luckily, she says, the gay community stood by her. “I think they felt a bit protective of me,” she says. “There’s no judgment — just support.”
She continues to reciprocate that support, celebrating the passage of the marriage-equality law in Australia last year. “What goes around comes around, and the more we can embrace people’s individuality and let them have their rights, the better it becomes for everyone,” she says.
Speaking by phone from her London home, Minogue confesses that she’s “a bit weary” and “struggling to even put a sentence together.” It’s no wonder why: She’d
spent the night before hanging out with and performing for Prince William and others at a cancertreatment fund-raiser at Buckingham Palace. (Minogue is a breastcancer survivor.) She and her bandmates logged only a handful of hours of sleep before heading to a BBC studio at 4:30 a.m. for a live appearance and performance.
Yet she perks up when told she’s included on Wikipedia’s “gay icon” page alongside entertainers such as Bette Davis, RuPaul, Judy Garland, Cher, Ricky Martin and Cyndi Lauper.
“You’re kidding me! Amazing!” Minogue says. “I wonder when that stamp was given? It certainly started a long, long time ago.”
Minogue says she was first made aware of her LGBTQ following around 1990, when she heard about a Sydney gay bar with a “Kylie night,” which involved spinning her tunes as well as performances by Kylie impersonators.
“It pretty much has been a love affair since,” says Minogue, who will perform a 30-minute set at Pride Island.
She says her Sunday show will include some of her big hits, plus songs from her latest album, “Golden,” for which she traded stilettos for cowboy boots and pop for a country sound at the suggestion of a record-label executive. “I’m very curious and love to try anything in the studio that might lead us somewhere,” says Minogue, who spent time in Nashville, Tenn., for inspiration last July.
“Golden” is an especially personal album, written as it was following her February 2017 split, after three years, from fiancé Joshua Sasse, an actor she met on the set of TV’s “Galavant.”
“I wasn’t heartbroken, but I felt a bit broken,” she says.
Sounding off in songs such as “A Lifetime to Repair” (“I let my guard down / The devil’s gone and left me a bruise”) helped her to move on.
“I felt like I’ve really gotta be honest with myself that that relationship wasn’t the right one,” she says, adding, “I mean, actually, maybe in a way it was because I’ve learned more about myself. It’s gotten me to where I am now.” That includes a milestone birthday.
The seemingly ageless Minogue turned 50 on May 28, celebrating with a star-studded bash the night before in London. Among the guests were Guy Pearce, Scissor Sisters alumnus Jake Shears, Rick Astley (who performed his hit “Never Gonna Give You Up”), Spice Girl Mel C, talk-show host Graham Norton and the Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde.
The celebration continued the next day when she posted a party photo on Instagram that showed her in a passionate kiss with rumored new boyfriend Paul Solomons, creative director at British GQ. The photo has been liked by more than 43,000 people and begs the question: Has she found love again?
“Um . . . it was a lovely embrace,” she says, laughing. “I’m just getting settled, getting my feet back on the ground, so I’m not in a hurry to label anything. I’m afraid I’m not giving you a scoop but, I mean, there’s the picture . . . I’m very, very happy with where I’m at.”