Talk about coincidences: CZM was doing his level best after our last outing for Maroon 5 together to get me to join him for Avril Lavinge and I refused by telling him there were only a handful of female solo artistes I would pay to watch and it would have to be people like Lady Gaga or Kylie Minogue. A couple of weeks later I receive an excited text screaming "OMG KYLIE IS COMING!" and so there I was tonight, banging the free green light-up noisemakers that had been tucked into our seats and screaming "Na na na" along with hundreds of others at the Indoor Stadium.
This was only my third pop concert ever (Mika and Scissor Sisters came before) and I must say that the pop experience in Singapore has been pretty good thus far. Last night's atmosphere was awesome. There were actually people dressed up in the crowd - a few at the front wearing Aphrodite wings on hairbands on their heads, and two crazed dudes dressed as a black and white angel respectively (Looking for an Angel? You betcha - though I was strangely reminded of Good Omens but perhaps that was just me) - and people were actually getting sloshed and up and dancing along to the music. Great crowd - great audience.
And the music was excellent. The great majority of songs came from off the new album, of course, but if you can open a concert with Aphrodite and close it off with Put Your Hands Up (If You Feel Love Tonight): why not? In fact quite a lot of the new songs sounded great played live with their bass lines pumped up: Cupid Boy and Get Outta My Way, in particular, were awesome live dance songs. The old favourites were not neglected either (Can't Get You Out Of My Head, On a Night Like This, Love at First Sight all got their fair share of the concert time); there was even an imaginative near-acoustic remix of Slow that was so different from the original I nearly didn't recognise the song at all.
And oh my, the set. I thought Mika had an elaborate set and tons of gimmicks but Kylie blew all that away (aside: you could see what the high ticket prices went towards paying for). From an Athenian temple backdrop to aerial acrobats, fantastic projected graphics and rising everything (I count at least one Boticelli-inspired Venetian seashell, one Pegasus and one large head of a Greek statue rising out of the top of the stage tonight - not to mention the be-winged men flying up above the stage during Looking for an Angel) - the props just kept coming hard and fast as the tunes themselves. And as for costume changes: phew. I for one can't imagine how she managed as many elaborate costumes as she did. The heels she wore for the opening number, in particular, were killer.
But the best part of the night was really Kylie herself. It's a real treat to watch a true professional at work and Kylie a real pro. Her energy was coming off the stage in waves and she never stopped working either the crowd or her music - even when she was panting away from her prancing and dancing on stage. At one point, she was pouring her heart into singing If You Don't Love Me and cracking up from laughter when she realised that the audience were intent on undermining the song by screaming "We love you, Kylie!" every time she delivered the chorus, but she soldiered on even as her sides were stitching up. A real pro - no doubt about it.
She also knew her crowd - knew that they would want hear some of her really old work, and built short excerpts of them into the show as part of an "audience request" segment (which is how songs like Locomotion and Lucky got their airing). Her ability to connect with her audience was just amazing. She was cute, coy, endearing and enthusiastic all at once - the perfect stage personality. Proof of why, decades on, she's still acknowledged as one of the true queens of pop music. A real diva - no doubt about it.
You go, Kylie. May you go on and on and on.
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