Kylie’s review – this heartwarming, candid encounter with the royal family will bring tears to your eyes | Television

BBeyond the sequins, feathers and gold pants, the stories of the most enduring megastars are often jaw-dropping and unstoppable. Especially when they are women. It’s the same with Kylie: a seller of more than 80m, the singer of two of the greatest singers of all time (I can’t get you out of my head and Padam Padam, obviously), and the subject of many intimate stories, and, finally, about three episodes of Netflix documentary. What starts out as Kylie’s meteoric rise to stardom – the excesses of Pete Waterman, neighborhood movies and bad 1990s sex – ends with a revelation that brings tears to my eyes.

It comes in the last 10 minutes. It’s 2023: a very interesting place in Kylie’s career. Padam Padam, Kylie’s first single from 16, Tension, has just been released. Then the words “One More Thing” flashed across the black screen. Cut to present-day Kylie arriving in the studio, performing Tension with her former band of British songwriters. “There’s a song called Story…” he said to director Michael Harte (also the editor of Netflix’s Beckham), who filmed the documentary over two years. Kylie, known for being secretive, fails. His songwriting partner of more than 25 years, Richard “Biff” Stannard, holds his hand. He begins to cry as he reveals what the story is about: his second diagnosis of cancer, in early 2021.

He said: “I was able to hide it from myself and I got through that year, not like I did before. I’ve been trying to find time to say it. It’s a raw, real moment, that doesn’t have the words that are usually associated with the top pop group. Or, for that matter, the false notes and the little corrections made about them.

The beginning of this terrible story concerns what happened when Kylie was diagnosed with cancer for the first time, in 2005, at the age of 36. There was an increase in mammogram bookings, the so-called “Kylie effect”; as well as the destruction his family is facing, the constant intrusion of the media and his grief at not being able to have children. She talks about stopping chemo to go through IVF. Dannii Minogue, Kylie’s regular speaker, recalls being terrified that her sister “would never recover – would she survive? I was at a loss.” The closeness of the Minogue family comes across strongly, as does their reluctance to be on film. Kylie said: “We’ve never done this before.” “It’s not as scary as I thought.” “I think it’s because we’re in the dark,” her mother says, not looking at the camera.

The first chapter, which begins with Kylie going to London in 1987 to record her first single, is much shorter – and more revealing of the time than the image it creates. Waterman says he did not know who the “small antipodean group who hoped to write history” were. She was kicked off I Should Be Lucky for 40 minutes, according to Kylie. Actually, Waterman says, it took two hours. It was only later that he realized he was on Neighbours, at the time it was a shock. Oh, but apparently he didn’t know that Neinensi was…

Jason Donovan remembers how, when Minogue became famous, he would get into cars and be asked “How’s Kylie?”, and reply: “Fuck, I don’t know, go ask her!” Michael Hutchence, who Kylie left Donovan with, is very important. She remembers the importance of her relationship with a “funny, traditional and kind” father, admitting: “Maybe I’ve been looking for something since then… and I haven’t found it.”

Then came the scandal years, when Kylie was labeled a “singer” and labeled as untalented and careless. “Raunchy”, a buzzword in 90s misogyny, is how he’s been described forever. He explains how those “wilderness years” affected him. Only his gay followers remained, a loyalty he never forgot and continues to return to.

What emerges, less in the sometimes unsettled interviews with Harte and more through old photos, is Kylie’s sunny disposition, her strength and her great struggle to be what she was in her heart – a successful pop star. Nick Cave, who met her in the mid-1990s when he wrote the killer hit When Wild Roses Grow, is diabolically right when he describes Kylie’s unique energy as a “fun machine”. “The meaning of happiness is to be able to rise from suffering,” he says, reflecting on his performance at Glastonbury’s “legends” festival in 2019. “His connection with the audience is not a lie,” he says. It is true love for him. It was Cave who inspired Kylie to abandon her failed indie efforts in the late 1990s and embrace her inner pop spirit. He said: “Now there’s a very good person who says: ‘Where is the pop music?’ “Alright, let’s put on our jetpacks and get back to the dancefloor!” What followed was one of the most popular musical comebacks in pop history. This is my favorite revelation in Kylie: Cave, the dark prince of rock, inspired the princess of pop’s Spinning Around.