DANCING (2018)

Kylie’s latest album,

Golden, is a reaffirmation of identity: in her personal life, following her split from her fiance

Joshua Sasse in 2017; musically, with her relocation to Nashville to record the album with softer country tinges instead of hard dancefloor trim; and psychologically, with its addressing of age.

“That’s why there’s the word ‘golden’ on the album,” she says. “I wanted to address it, hence the line in Golden: ‘We’re not young, we’re not old, we’re golden.’”

Nevertheless, she still wanted something for the dancefloor. Dancing provides that and, in a roundabout way, a summary of her career. “To me, it’s like a neat triptych of three stages of life,” she says. “I went to Nashville, arrived on a Sunday, and started work. I put my hands together and looked out at the sky and said: ‘Please, God, just give me one song. Two or three would be just great, but I really need one song!’ Next day I met Steve McEwan, and he said: ‘I don’t want to get you straight in, let’s just have a chat and suss each other out, and he played me just on acoustic guitar the idea of Dancing, and then we fleshed it out through the week. It’s two minutes and 58, and there’s no messing about.”

That seems apposite: three minutes with no messing about has long been the platonic ideal of the pop single and ideal pop singles are what have defined Minogue’s career. After all, you don’t get those 118 weeks in the Top 10 without getting somewhere near perfection. — Guardian News & Media Ltd