![\"Kylie\"](\"\/\/media.wonderlandmagazine.com\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Screen-Shot-2014-02-24-at-17.26.12.jpg\")
<\/a>\n<\/a> <\/b>Things you may or may not know about Kylie Ann Minogue, OBE: London museum Madame Tussauds have cast four different Kylie waxworks in its lifespan (only The Queen has had more); she\u2019s the only female artist to have had number one albums in the UK in the 1980s, the 90s, the 00s and the 10s; her classic 90s anthem \u201cBetter The Devil You Know\u201d is spun at 12.30am on the dot every Saturday night at G-A-Y, and has been since the legendary club opened twenty one years ago; the gold hotpants she wore in the music video for her first and biggest 21st Century hit, \u201cSpinning Around\u201d were found in a bargain bin in an Oxfam, bought for 50p, and are now insured for \u00a31 million.<\/p>\n
But all the prestige and trivia Kylie has whisked up in her decades-long tenure as pop music\u2019s perma grinned Hua Mulan pales in comparison to just how punishingly jet-lagged she is the day Rollacoaster meet her in north west London.\u00a0 She\u2019d just flown back from Sydney to celebrate Australia Day. It\u2019s an advent she could hardly brush to one side because, let\u2019s face it, she basically is<\/em> Australia. Born in Melbourne, she is to the west all it means to be from a corner of the world represented by a handful of prejudice-riddled soap operas: sunny, socially inclusive, criminal record-clean, occasionally salacious and eternally easy on the eye.<\/p>\n This March, she releases her twelfth LP, Kiss Me Once. Thumbing through the eleven-strong list of tracks, an hilarious triptych of sex-related song titles jump to the fore: \u201cSexy Love\u201d, \u201cSexercise\u201d, and Giorgio-esque disco funker \u201cLes Sex\u201d. Is she on some kind of sexual pilgrimage following her sad break-up with model boyfriend Andr\u00e9s Velencoso back in October? She certainly taken a few giant leaps since then, and even at the height of 5\u2019 0\u201d (sorry, Kylie).<\/p>\n The first was signing to Jay-Z\u2019s Roc Nation label last year \u2013 an imprint known for launching the careers of Rita Ora and J. Cole \u2013 after a split from her manager-of-twenty-five-years Terry Blamey. All the separation and loss that proceeded Kylie\u2019s 2010 LP, Aphrodite (Kylie\u2019s breast cancer scare was under a decade ago, too) may have left the weaker willed with the complexion of a fifty-a-day busker, chiming their way through Patti Smith\u2019s Radio Ethiopia on a busted Jag-Stang. \u201cSigning to Roc Nation was an epiphany – not to go with them, but to make a change. I didn\u2019t know where I was going – but my epiphany was a horizon with nothing on it,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t normally have anything near to that kind of clarity- and I don\u2019t know how many you have in your life, but that was definitely one. I met with [Roc\u2019s co-owner] Jay Brown and I happened to be reading a book called [Malcolm Gladwell\u2019s] Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking at the time, which helped me decide in the first 60 seconds that I met him \u2013 \u2018You\u2019re the one, let\u2019s do it\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kylie knows her fans fell in love with her for her music\u2019s bounce and steely optimism (see her flit around a dimly lit villa in head to toe Dior with French actor Cl\u00e9ment\u00a0Sibony, in the video for lead single \u201cInto The Blue\u201d \u2013 a song she co-wrote on her 45th birthday). It\u2019s why Kiss Me Once was never going to be anything but winning and up (and not relive her slightly sombre mid 90s, when she collaborated with the likes of Scratch Acid [the mournful \u201cConfide In Me\u201d from 1994\u2019s eponymous fourth LP], and Nick Cave [the beautiful \u201cWhere The Wild Roses Grow\u201d, from The Bad Seeds\u2019 1995 album Murder Ballads]). It\u2019s also why the album\u2019s brilliant Sia Furler-penned title track is one of the most spirited pop tracks of 2014 so far. Kylie\u2019s Furler partnership is a masterstroke: the music industry quaked slightly when the Adelaidean released her good-upsetting lead single \u201cBreathe Me\u201d back in 2004, and waited at her door for years for more. Keeping a low profile but continuing a solid run of output, Furler wrote songs for the likes of Ke$ha and Rihanna \u2013 but none of which touches \u201cKiss Me Once\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI definitely went into this album with more of a sense of a purpose, of regeneration,\u201d she says, hopping on the studio\u2019s \u00a316,000 burnt umber couch (\u201cI feel like I want to go interiors shopping in the place, or something.\u201d). \u201cBut it\u2019s great because it sounds like me – I feel like me when I sing the songs. Lyrically, it\u2019s where I\u2019m at the moment: the feeling of euphoric pop, but that there is some melancholy in my life, too.\u201d<\/p>\n Elsewhere on the record (named partly because of its risqu\u00e9 ambiguity, and partly because of the intentionally hashtag-friendly acronym, KMO), pop\u2019s fame-making savant Ariel Reichstadt (Florence, Sky Ferreira, Haim) co-produces \u201cIf Only\u201d and Pharrell chips in to pen the sticky \u201cI Was Gonna Cancel\u201d (a Jay Brown hook-up). \u201cPharrell is so in control in the studio, like a scientist in his lab. It\u2019s quite awkward working with new people sometimes, because you don\u2019t know how it will work. You\u2019ve just got to feel it out. But he was amazing.\u201d Last year, there was rumour that the album was to feature silicone-obsessed Tumblr rapper Brooke Candy on a song called \u201cGet It Up Ya\u201d . The final tracklisting says otherwise, but suffice to say the Dalston paving slabs that roof trans\/alt club Vogue Fabrics quaked uncontrollably the day Diesel launched the news on their site.<\/p>\n This new sense of purpose fuelled Kylie\u2019s decision to join fellow celebrity judges at ITV\u2019s popstar recruitment series The Voice \u2013 that, and will.i.am gate crashing a meeting she was in. \u201cI had a meeting in LA with Jay Brown and the producers from The Voice UK and Will surprised everyone by saying he was coming, too. He pretty much bombed my meeting,\u201d she laughs, before opening up about the chat. \u201cThey told me all the stats about how it would boost my record sales and all that, but I\u2019d heard it all before. I said, \u2018That\u2019s great, but my question is to Will \u2013 How has the experience impacted you?\u2019 He said he learnt a lot about himself and how he reacts with his audience, and it\u2019s true. If you\u2019re going to be someone other than yourself every day on the show, you\u2019re going to have to be Meryl Streep; a great actress. You have no option but to be yourself, and it\u2019s kind of liberating. At the end of a 13 hour day, when there\u2019s still all those cameras about, there\u2019s nowhere to hide. You have to let go.\u201d<\/p>\n Did she consider the fun her fellow pop singer sister Dannii was having as a panelist on rival programme The X Factor, ahead of agreeing to join the show? \u201cFun wouldn\u2019t have been the word that comes to mind,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve seen my sister go through it, and she loves it, but I know from watching her over the years, it\u2019s full on.\u201d Ultimately, Kylie\u2019s brand of calculated optimism steered the way. \u201cI was putting my list of pros and cons up. I\u2019ve had a lot of experiences, but I haven\u2019t had an experience like this. What\u2019s the worst that can happen? You make a fool of yourself, but I\u2019ve already done that over and over and over again, anyway. Let\u2019s try it. And actually, it\u2019s been a great experience.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"Screen](\"\/\/media.wonderlandmagazine.com\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Screen-Shot-2014-02-24-at-17.26.51.jpg\")
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