Kylie Minogue on 'nasty' critics and how she kept every supportive cancer letter

Kylie Minogue loves a puzzle.

Waiting for a concert to begin, she’ll chip away at crosswords, sudoku grids and the New York Times' Spelling Bee to keep her nerves at bay.

Her friend, author Kathy Lette, once claimed the pop star is a fiend at Scrabble, saying: “She knows how to score big and doesn't mess around." (Coincidentally, Kylie’s name is a valid Scrabble word, scoring a respectable 12 points.)

But when she plays Wordle, the daily word-guessing game, she has an unusual strategy: Deliberately getting it wrong.

"It's annoying if you get it in two lines," she says. "I want it to be more of a challenge.

"I like to get down to the pointy end, where everything's at stake."

You could call it a metaphor for her career. Kylie thrives on challenges, and she's faced more than a few over the last 37 years - from spiteful critics and creative mis-fires to a life-changing encounter with breast cancer.

Right now, she's on a high, thanks to her global hit Padam Padam.

Released just in time for Pride month in 2023, the slinky, sinuous club anthem became an unexpected viral smash. Its onomatopoeic title, meant to represent a heartbeat, was quickly adopted as gay slang for anything and everything.

In the UK, Padam Padam gave Kylie her first top 10 hit in more than a decade. In February, she Padam-ed her first Grammy Award in 20 years. In March, she was Padam-ed a "global icon" at the Brit Awards.

One of Kylie's more elaborate stage costumes - from the 2005 Showgirl tour

In the fluctuating market of pop stardom, Kylie's stock has never been higher.

"It's so weird, because I never stop working," she says, "but then there's these peaks.

"I look at it like surfing - not that I’m surfer, but I have caught a wave once in my life, so I understand the principle.

"We're paddling, paddling, paddling, and sometimes you catch a wave. So I really want to ride this one and enjoy the view - because I know how exhausting it is to paddle and miss the wave."

That'll be why Padam Padam’s parent album, Tension, is getting a sequel - an extension, if you please. Thirteen new tracks that dive deeper into the slick electro aesthetics of the original.

"I guess I’m really stretching it out!" Kylie laughs.

In the era of Eras, it's unusual for a pop star to repeat themselves but, in this case, success bred success. After Tension topped the charts, writers from all over the world started pitching their best new material to team Kylie.

"I couldn't say no," she says. "The list kept getting longer and I said, 'Maybe this is a shaping up to be... well, not the next album, because the next album will be a different thing, but a whole lot more than a little bit more'."

Fifty shades of comfortable

The album features collaborations with Sia, The Blessed Madonna, Tove Lo, Diplo and Orville Peck. But the lead single, Lights, Camera, Action, reunites Kylie with Padam Padam's co-writer Ina Wroldsen.

Packed with pulsing beats, it's all about serving the fiercest of fierce looks. Karl Lagerfeld and John Paul Gaultier are namechecked in the lyrics. In the video, Kylie rocks a dress made from crime scene tape.

Does she still get a thrill from pulling the perfect outfit together?

"Um, the thought of fittings makes me go like this," she says, rolling her eyes in mock exasperation.

"But when you find the outfit that works, there’s a real high. Then the next high is getting it all off - face, hair, outfit, shoes, all of it, and getting comfy again.

"I call it the debunk," she says. "I'll slip into a very worn pair of track pants and that one T-shirt that's in favour for six months.

"Fifty shades of comfortable - that’s my buzz."

Backstage on the 2011 Aphrodite: Les Folies Tour, Kylie fashioned her own merchandise into a makeshift turban

When on tour, she's required to change her outfit mid-show seven or eight times a night, navigating her way into corsets and sequins and feathered headdresses as a clock ticks down to the next song.

"It's frantic, it's really stressful," she admits. "I might swear a lot.

"It just takes one thing to go wrong, and you're all freaking out."

She adds: "I did pass by the wardrobe [department] on a gig I did recently, and I said, 'I'm a despicable human being. I'm so sorry.'

"They were like, 'No, what happens in quick change stays in quick change'."

The thought of the singer losing her temper is intriguing.

Of course she flips out sometimes – we all do - but "angry Kylie" is so antithetical to her public persona that it's hard to imagine.

She's one of pop's most poised stars, choosing her words carefully and brushing away personal questions with a practised affability. In conversation, she offers glimpses of intimacy and vulnerability, but typically closes them off with a positive affirmation, neatly steering the discussion back towards her career.

The Foofer valve

The only people who know her true feelings are her family.

"When it's not going well, that's who I turn to - mum, dad, my brother and my sister," she says.

Her younger brother Brendan, a camera operator, has even taught her a technique for shaking off stress, which she calls "the foofer valve".

"When the emotion has got to come out, or you've got to have a big cry or a moan, you let out a noise, tsssssh, like a kettle letting off steam, and you're like, 'Oh, I feel so much better'."

Kylie (foreground) grew up in Melbourne, Australia with her younger siblings Dannii and Brendan

The foofer valve was crucial at the start of Kylie’s pop career.

Early reviews called her music "hackneyed", "lightweight" and "emotionless". After watching her first Australian tour in 1990, the Sydney Morning Herald declared: "It is amazing how successful mediocrity can become."

"It wasn't cool that people were as nasty as they were," she says now, "and it wasn’t some invisible person behind a keyboard.

"These were grown adults who should have known better."

How did she cope?

"To be honest, I don't know what made me keep going," she replies. "But one of the blessings is that I had a job and I had to show up to work.

"There were definitely times when I would have liked to hide in a cave, so it's good if you have that responsibility [of acting]. You have to show up, and then you're distracted by other things."

Critics might not have warmed to her, but the public were always on Kylie's side.

Even during her ill-fated "indie years", fans snapped up experimental and wayward songs like Confide In Me and the Nick Cave duet Where The Wild Roses Grow.

"I'm very proud of the times I swam against the current when it felt like things were going against me," she says. "It's a rewarding feeling."

Besieged by fans and the paparazzi, Kylie pictured outside the Capital Radio studios in London, 1989

Kylie's 1987 wedding to Jason Donovan - as their soap opera characters Scott and Charlene - was watched by 20 million people in the UK

The star says her relationship with INXS frontman Michael Hutchence encouraged her to take bolder creative decisions

The new millennium brought a major reset.

Spinning Around, released in 2000, was a textbook comeback single, and she followed it up with the hypnotically cool Can't Get You Out Of My Head - still the biggest-selling single of her career.

Then, in 2005, on the UK leg of her greatest hits tour, Kylie started experiencing blurred vision on stage.

Putting it down to exhaustion, she soldiered on, especially after a health check gave her the all-clear.

"When they say, 'You don't need to worry', that's what you want to hear, so you believe it," she recalls.

But a second test revealed that Kylie had early-stage breast cancer. Her career was put on hold as she had chemotherapy and a lumpectomy.

The public responded with an outpouring of love that she describes as "really moving".

To this day, she's kept all the letters, drawings and cards that fans sent her.

Fans hand-delivered cards and messages of support to Kylie's home in Melbourne after her cancer diagnosis

"There were envelopes that just said, 'Kylie Minogue, Australia', and the post department bothered to [deliver] them," she says.

"I just felt there was a trail of love and support. It really made such a difference to me."

Kylie got the all-clear in 2006, and she hit the road again almost immediately.

Determination and persistence have been the keys to her longevity, and today it's the search for the next Padam Padam that keeps her motivated.

It all links back to her love of word games. "Music's a bit of a puzzle, too, trying to figure it all out."

The pop star says she's raring to get on the road for her first world tour since 2019

But where Brainteasers are bound by logic, pop music is more like gambling. Luck and timing are just as important as creative choices. And the public is petulant, demanding more of the same, but losing interest if you don't evolve.

Kylie has successfully walked that tightrope for five decades, something that fellow pop icon Madonna acknowledged when she asked her to duet on stage in Los Angeles this March.

"It was kind of mind-blowing," Kylie recalls. "I spoke to her manager and he said, 'M would really like to sing I Will Survive with you'.

"The reasoning for that is she lost her mother to breast cancer, and she knows some of my story. But even more relevant, for her and I, was that we’re women who've survived this industry.

"It's never easy," she adds. "I don't think anyone wants it to be easy, because where's the challenge? But we’re still here, doing what we love."

Pausing to reflect, the singer is momentarily overawed.

"There's so much that's happened that eight-year-old me, or even 20-year-old me, wouldn't have been able to compute," she says.

"You're going to meet Prince one day. He's going to write a song for you. You're going to sing on stage with Madonna.

"I mean, I'm amazed. I'm like, 'Is this even my life?'"

That’s one puzzle where the answer is self-evident.