The Kylie Minogue of It All!
The Princess of Pop’s Uncanny Soundtracking of My 2023 Experience
Picture it: The United States. May 2023. The average temperature for the month is a balmy 62.4F, which belies global warming because it’s 2 degrees higher than average, but it’s still pleasant. Schools are winding down, about to turn students of all ages loose on the rest of us. The foliage is lush and green, birds are happily singing as they fly through the air, darting from tree to tree, and Pride Season (another name for what used to quaintly be called “Summer”) is about to commence.
And then, a confluence of horrific forces land with a big, messy splat in the middle of it all with about as much grace and appeal as a giant pile of toxic waste. A group of noisy christian nationalist MAGA puppets take offense (again), feel victimized (again) and make quite a lot of noise about it (as usual). A giant, nationwide retailer called Target that had been courting queer dollars for decades shows its true fair weather rainbow colors. And the American media machine, which already skews right (no matter what the christian nationalists TYPE IN ALL CAPS on their Truth Social posts), has a field day with sensationalist coverage, making sure to air “both sides” of the “problem,” giving viewers a master class in false equivalence.
The result? What was about to be a wonderful, joyous Pride Season/Summer became a hot, steaming culture war mess. The christian nationalists went on a rampage. Many rampages, as a matter of fact, terrorizing Target’s wage slaves with violence if the Pride merch they were peddling wasn’t removed from their sales floors immediately. Not content to terrorize retail clerks in person at a Target located near you, they took to social media, creating videos of themselves stomping through the aisles of Target stores, ranting, hyperventilating and fighting back tears at the presence of Pride merch, claiming in that uniquely victimized and hysterical tone that only christian nationalists can successfully muster, that Target was selling “tuck-friendly” bathing suits to children (they weren’t), and that all LGBTQ+ American citizens, along with the powers that be at Target who okayed the selling of said Pride merch, were sexual predators who were grooming America’s children to be turned queer and sexually exploited, if not murdered.
I personally also saw several comments left on social media sites and under random news articles claiming that the LGBTQ+ community was planning to add a “P” for “pedophile” to the LGBTQ+ umbrella, and that it was only a matter of time until this happened. I wish I was joking about this but, unfortunately, I’m not. The fact that I saw it in various places leads me to conclude that it was disseminated by some churchy, right-wing hysteria machine and gained some traction on churchy, right-wing media outlets and at churchy, right-wing churches.
So all of a sudden, it was a new May: yes, Pride season was still about to kick in, but the Target Pride merch scandal was fresh and the christian nationalists were rampaging, threatening violence against Target clerks, posting videos of themselves at Target throwing Pride merch on the floor, and fueling the fire of their hatred and disinformation by telling everyone who’d listen that the queers were coming for their kids. Fascist militias (primarily the Proud Boys) then jumped into the fray, threatening to crash Pride festivals to cause mayhem and commit acts of violence against us all summer long, as if that threat was going to make the queers scramble away, terrorized, in all directions.
And can we take just a moment to unpack the Proud Boys? Any group of grown men who choose to refer to themselves as a group of Boys is not only creepy, but ridiculous. The fascist militias in this country take themselves very seriously; they’re so obsessed with how they look in their matching outfits, face coverings and Pit Viper sunglasses, that they seem to have failed to consider who they’re dealing with when they take on the queer community. That’s a topic for another story, however.
And one last thing before we get to Kylie: I realize it’s taken me 7 paragraphs to get there, but context is everything. This just happens to be the climate that queer citizens in the United States were (and still are) living in, so it’s relevant to this story, and it matters.
Smack dab in the middle of this sweaty cultural instant something unexpected happened. Kylie Minogue happened. Or rather, Padam Padam happened. Released on May 18, 2023 as the lead single from her (at the time) upcoming album Tension, Padam Padam quietly snuck up on an unsuspecting and beleaguered queer community. After an initial reaction of scrunching up our collective faces and asking, “Huh? What’s a Padam?” we found ourselves hearing it whether we wanted to or not: on TikTok, on Spotify, perhaps on IHeartRadio’s Pride radio station (U.S. commercial radio was noticeably absent from this party, by its own choice and to its own detriment).
Offering a respite from the cluster mess of christian nationalist mayhem, Padam Padam turned out to be an onomatopoeic title meant to characterize the sound of a human heartbeat, the heart itself being an avatar for love. Padam Padam celebrates the joy you feel during the first rush of romantic attraction, when you’re overcome with the feeling that you and your object of desire are destined to get to know each other on a deeper, more intimate level. Not as a one-off, mind you, but as something more. It’s a song about possibilities, about reveling in the excitement of a brand new emotional and physical connection. It captures the joy of an innocent, natural and purely human experience, that feeling of a beginning…and when you’re at the beginning, anything is possible.
The track was accompanied by a bizarre video featuring a dance ensemble that served up killer moves that became instantly iconic and went viral as a result. This was the perfect gift for the queer community in that moment: something wonderful to focus on, something joyous to embrace, while we were simultaneously coming under a vicious attack by the mouth breathers on the right. Many queers started using the word “padam” to communicate solidarity, which I love, because we are so like that. It’s just one word, and if someone says or writes it to you, you know instantly what it means: that you’re connected with, understood, and supported. I get choked up just thinking about the loveliness of it all. Long story short: Padam Padam helped get us through the bulk of Pride Season by providing us with something joyful to focus on and to share. It was a reason to smile, a reason to shake our hips, a portal to queer unity during a difficult time.
The second single that preceded the Tension album was its title track, and it was a perfect follow up to Padam. The first single’s unexpected success could have overshadowed anything that followed, but Tension is a raw and powerful dance track with a style completely different from the liquid bounce of Padam. Tension is a boast track. The lyrics serve up Kylie boasting about how good she is at what she does, how irresistible she is and how much you want her. They’re boldly sexual without being explicit. The song is structured so that it builds on a loop, never releasing the musical tension that the song structure is creating nor the sexual tension the lyrics are alluding to.
Tension was released in August of 2023 and the title is an apt descriptor of the mood at the time when, despite Padam’s bubble of joy, the stench of christian nationalism and creeping fascism was in the air all summer long. Extremist groups like Moms for Liberty made their move on school boards across the country, harassing educators, school board members, queer kids and their families with the hateful rhetoric and bullying tactics that have come to be synonymous with the capitalist U.S. version of christianity. The song, however, provided joyous, danceable relief, serving its own level of built up and unrelieved tension to be worked out through body moving and dance steps, whether on the floor at the club or at home in our living rooms.
I also invite you to experience this track through the lens of a queer person who is taunting a Proud Boy. A queer person boasting about how good they are at what they do, a queer person who’s cool like sorbet and hot like chile, teasing a deeply closeted, self-hating and sexually frustrated Proud Boy with how awesome and liberating being openly queer is. The alternative to clutching a gun and threatening to shoot your way out of the victimhood you are desperately laying claim to. “Thoughts of me fill up your mind. Every day and every night…it’s the way I make you feel,” Kylie sings. Then she gets down to the erotic undertone and blows it all the way up: “Oh my God, touch me right there, almost there, touch me right there, don’t be shy, boy I don’t bite, you know where, touch me right there.” Because the queer person taunting the Proud Boy, and the Proud Boy being taunted, both know where that touch needs to occur. It’s enough to give anyone the vapors! I’m not exactly trying to say “Proud Boys So Gay.” But they are, right? They’re so gay they’ve even managed to make their guns look gay. I think they take a vow not to masturbate, to shore up their sexual energy or something like that for a reason I’m not privy to, and that’s extra gay. Tension, seen and heard through this lens, is the perfect queer fantasy of taunting them in a way that they can’t really argue with, given their fashion choices and sexual practices. A role reversal that empowers the queer person and subverts the Proud Boy. It’s the only way I can hear the song these days, and I love it.
Finally, in October 2023, Hold On To Now was released as the third single from Tension. A shimmering electronic dance track about bonding with your significant other in the face of isolation and an uncertain future, it’s a beautiful and uplifting anthem that I can’t help but identify with. The song reaches a galloping crescendo midway through the chorus that gives me chills, and the lyrics about sticking together and staying in the moment as we move forward together into a possibly dangerous future hit home. Accompanied by a fantastic lyric video featuring Kylie in Space and backed by psychedelic efx that burst into a light show halfway through each chorus, the song is inspirational and offers hope when you’re wondering just what the hell you’re going to do if the despots take over.
Now that 2023 is winding down I realize that, as eventful and tumultuous as it’s been, we’ve really only been witnessing a dress rehearsal for 2024, the actual election year. I’ll have lots of work to do, making all kinds of noise, writing all kinds of stories about the fight for the soul of the United States, and in real time. Whatever lies ahead, I know that the experience will be tempered by Kylie in my earbuds, singing to me in her digitally enhanced voice over sickening, propulsive dance beats and reminding me to hang in there, keep my chin up and take a break every so often to shake my ass and remember to smile so it isn’t just one big joyless slog the whole time. Fighting the fascists takes work, and Kylie’s gonna help me get there! I wonder if she knows the amazingly positive effect she has on the lives of average queer Joes like me?
