She has reigned as certified Australian pop royalty across five decades, rising from homegrown TV sensation to worldwide chart domination.
As with any storied superstar, however, the dazzling professional highs have inevitably come with some squirming middles and difficult lows. And Kylie Minogue’s career is no exception.
“It was all of that and everything in between,” Minogue tells ABC News Breakfast on the eve of a career-spanning documentary.
Titled simply KYLIE and landing in three parts on Netflix this week, the docuseries delves deep, with Minogue herself opening up her own photos and home movie archives to filmmakers.
“Just saying yes to the entire project and then having to sit through … some of it,” she confesses. “But I think it’s a good representation of everything that’s transpired.”
From recording in the studio to her iconic music videos and performing to epic crowds at arenas and Glastonbury festival, the docuseries features plenty of Minogue’s triumphant milestones.
Continually reinventing herself and producing numerous hits that have made her Australia’s highest-selling female artist, KYLIE aims to celebrate its namesake’s enduring influence and popularity. But it does not shy away from the tougher stuff, either.
Behind the hits
Minogue was the subject of intense scrutiny from the beginning, facing down vicious media headlines dismissing her as “talentless” and “the singing budgie” during her transition from playing “Charlene” on TV series Neighbours to a career in music.
In the trailer, she speaks candidly of her frustrations with the media backlash and feeling “removed” from her body in the wake of being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005.
“We didn’t know if she was ever going to be well again,” her sister, Dannii Minogue, remarks in one clip. “I just wanted to be with my sister … music kept us going.”
Dannii Minogue is far from the only celebrity talking head to appear. Neighbours co-star and collaborator Jason Donovan, Peter Waterman of 80s hit-making songwriting team Stock Aitken Waterman, and fellow Australian music royalty Nick Cave also feature.
Minogue was thrilled to see Cave, her singing partner on 1996’s gothic duet Where The Wild Roses Grow, speak so eloquently about her.
“I just couldn’t believe he nailed it and was so generous, so profound, so Nick.”
She says Cave’s “incredible” influence on her career is “beautifully portrayed in the documentary” as “someone that just saw something else in me that allowed me to have the kind of faith, I guess”.