Still spinning them around

Kylie Minogue celebrates turning 50 with a new album and her 18th — 18th! — arena tour later this year. But first, an exclusive sit-down with Esquire…

I started young, with no experience in the music industry. But I was very famous. So that was a bit strange.

I remember being on-set for the “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” video and looking at the monitor and we just went [whispers], “God, it’s really good.” To get everything to work in harmony to become something greater than its parts, that takes luck.

My mum revealed that she was doing transcendental meditation when I was born. I thought, “Well, it was 1968, it kinda makes sense.”

When I got the part in Neighbours, there was one phone in the house. I got the call and there was no one at home. I think I celebrated with the dog.

I went to Minneapolis. Prince was suitably normal and weird enough. If he was perfectly normal, that would have been weird.

I’ve not been raised with religion. My faith is in humanity, and people, and believing in a higher realm.

I was in Santiago last year, and this guy says, “I gotta tell you, your song is the first song I ever learned.” I said, “Did you learn it on guitar?” He said, “No. It’s the first song I

learned.” “Oh, the first song you learned the words to?” He answered, “Yeah, it was ‘The Loco-Motion’.” I love hearing these stories.

I don’t know where the clown side of me

came from. A friend calls me an amusement park. He’s like, “Uh-oh, it’s open, every ride’s open, here we go… she’s off.” But when the park is closed, there’s nothing.

I think I’ll be asked less of the age-related

questions with the tone I was asked a few years ago, because of everything that’s happening at the moment. I know they’re asking because of sexism and ageism, as

I’m a woman in this industry, but the more you’re talking to me about it the more you’re perpetuating it. I’m bored of the question.

I look like my mum. I am my mum. I get the movement from my mum, she was a dancer. I don’t get singing from my mum. She can’t hold a note.

On the Fever tour, I came up on a riser in a cyborg suit at the start, and there’s a bloke who has to press the button to release the thigh panels, the chest panels and the face reveal. One night nothing happened and I was trapped. I was thinking, “This would be so Spinal Tap if they just take me back down again.” They had a back-up plan: a dancer came over, in character, and lifted the things and I got to the microphone. People were none the wiser.

I’m sure that my business acumen came from my dad. When we were bought up t’s were crossed, i’s were dotted.

Grease. My brother [Brendan], sister

[Dannii] and I would recreate the routines as kids. I wanted to be Olivia Newton-John, obviously. My sister played Rizzo in an arena tour of Grease the Musical years later and that says it all about the two of us. I’m the blonde one, and she’s the dark, tough one. —

Kylie Minogue’s album Golden is out now. Her UK tour begins on 18 September