Kylie Minogue’s ‘Padam, Padam’ tops the charts in 20 years

Australian diva Kylie Minogue is experiencing another rise in popularity. Her song “Padam, Padam” from the album “Tension”, which will be released in September, shows the best results in the charts over the past 10 and even 20 years. Igor Gavrilov talks about a pop singer whose songs have been in tune with the tastes of a generation for the fifth decade.

“There is nowhere for an apple to fall. It’s time for you to pick me up from this club. We don’t need words. Would you like to see what’s under this T-shirt?” No declarations of independence, no “I can buy myself flowers”. Pure exploitation of sex as we remember it from the songs of the last century. “Take me home, let’s get to know each other better.” These words in the new song “Padam, Padam” are sung by Kylie Minogue, whose hit first appeared on the first place in the English charts in 1987, with her puppet-high timbre. It was the song “I Should Be So Lucky” – a real disco of the 80s in all its beauty and simplicity.

And in September 2001, a couple of days before the collapse of the twin towers, Kylie Minogue’s song “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” was released – a reference composition that studies pop music as a cultural phenomenon. It inspired Paul Morley’s book Words and Music: A City-Shaped History of Pop and gave the title to documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis’ hours-long saga of contemporary culture in the age of COVID-19.

With these two songs, the phenomenon of Kylie Minogue is well described, but far from being exhausted. Those who are now about 50 remember how they followed her romance with Jason Donovan (in our country – mainly through posters from the German magazine Bravo). In the 1990s, Kylie Minogue suddenly moved towards trip-hop and new alternative music. Her album “Kylie Minogue” (1994) was produced by the best British DJs of the time, and Michael Hutchence of INXS appeared on the horizon of her personal life. In 1995, Kylie Minogue recorded the great song “Where the Wild Roses Grow” with Nick Cave. On the 1997 album Impossible Princess, released after the death of Princess Diana, songs co-written with the Manic Street Preachers coexisted with experimental disco. On “Light Years” (2000), she finally said goodbye to the alternative and since then has devoted herself to pop music in all its manifestations, from synth-pop (“Fever”, 2001) to country pop (“Golden”, 2018), taking a break to fight breast cancer in the mid-2000s. In each of her decades in the music industry, there were global hits and sold-out world tours. Now, a new milestone.

They say that in the British industry there is even a proverb: “Never write off Kylie.” Any new star should keep a close eye on the release schedule, and if it contains new Minogue material, then it is better to postpone your single or album for a while. “Padam, Padam” was released on May 18 and immediately hit the top ten in England, showing the best result since 2014. Now she is in 9th place. Analysts are predicting a #1 single on Billboard, but even if it doesn’t, Kylie Minogue has already made another historic breakthrough.

The fact is that the song “Padam, Padam” was originally addressed to an adult audience. The radio stations BBC Radio 1 and Capital FM, which dictate fashion on the island, did not even consider it for broadcast. But younger listeners were more receptive to the disco-glamor vibe of “Padam, Padam”. The clip decided a lot. If in “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” it was impossible to take your eyes off the seductive hoodie dress by Phi Doran from Mrs Jones, then in “Padam, Padam” the completely puritanical outfits from Mugler burn the screen with their aggressive purple-red tone.

“Padam-padam” is an onomatopoeia, that’s how the heart beats. You can consider that the costumes of Kylie and her dancers in the video, as well as the furniture and decorations, are generally one big heart. The most meticulous commentators got to the song “Padam, Padam” from the repertoire of Edith Piaf, although Minogue’s hit has nothing in common with it. For a young audience, the fact that in social networks you can imitate the dance moves from the video and create memes around a vivid image is more important.

The success of “Padam, Padam” is sensational, but still finite, this is not a new “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”. It is much more interesting to discuss the length and fruitfulness of Kylie Minogue’s career, the devotion of her fans and her unparalleled hard work. Deprived of the joy of motherhood, she puts all of herself into work and at the same time, being a naturally modest and not at all scandalous girl, she looks advantageous against the background of her senior colleague, the royal Madonna. 55-year-old Kylie releases perfumes and makes wine, but at the same time she honestly admits that she does not understand all the mechanisms that made Padam, Padam a hit. Success came to her in the pre-digital era, and she does not intend to hide it: “Damn me if I want to seem at least a day younger than I really am.”