by Michael McCarthy
[NOTE: I apologize for this review not having any photos from the show. My cellphone doesn’t have a very good camera so I didn’t take photos last night. Besides, I wanted to fully immerse myself in the show and if you spend half the time taking photos, you’re not enjoying it so much as trying to preserve it. And I’d rather be fully enjoying the moment and embracing it than trying to capture it. Also, I did not want to take other people’s photos from the internet and use them without permission. Finally, I wanted to post this review as soon as possible in hopes of enticing others to go see the remaining shows on the tour so I didn’t want to wait to try to ask people for permission to use their photos. But if anyone was at the show and has some photos they wouldn’t mind me using, please get in touch with me because I would love to add some. You can e-mail me at cinema365@aol.com]
Last night I saw Kylie Minogue in concert for the fourth time.
The first time I saw Kylie in concert was on the Fever tour in 2002. The show was at a large arena called Bercy in Paris, France. And it was one of the best concerts of my life. I had dreamed about seeing Kylie in concert for years but it had been well over 10 years since she’d released anything in the United States and she had never even done a tour of the States back when “The Loco-Motion,” her debut single, was all over the charts in the late 80s. Suffice to say, it seemed like seeing Kylie in concert was going to be one of those bucket list items that I would never get around to doing. Fortunately, I had gone to Paris in 1999 to see Mylene Farmer in concert and in 2001 to see Vanessa Paradis in concert. So I already knew and loved Paris when I heard that Kylie would be playing Bercy. And I had a somewhat decent paying job back then – this was years before I’d end up disabled – so I bought at ticket as soon as they went on sale and planned my trip.
There’s always something special to seeing concerts in a foreign country. Especially when you’re seeing artists you never thought you’d ever be able to see. I call them destination concerts. And they’re kind of magical. So that Kylie Minogue concert I saw in Paris in 2002 will always remain as one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to in my life. But to be totally honest with you, I think I might have enjoyed last night’s show at TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts even more.
Prior to last night, the last time I had seen Kylie in concert was in Boston in 2011 on the tour for her album Aphrodite. That show was at Agganis Arena, a 7200 seat venue. And it was not sold out. I seem to remember looking around the arena and seeing quite a few empty seats. In fact, I think they might have sectioned off a chunk of the arena that they didn’t even sell any tickets for but I could be remembering it wrong. But I was actually surprised that Kylie was touring the U.S. behind that album because it wasn’t a massive hit like Fever. Aphrodite’s lead single, “All the Lovers,” was a pretty big single, yes, but it didn’t come close to reaching the level of popularity that “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” or “Love At First Sight” from Fever had. And she hadn’t even done a headlining tour of the U.S. for Fever. Instead, she participated in the Jingle Ball tour in 2002, Jingle Ball being a series of shows with several artists that one of the major radio corporations here in the U.S. puts on every December. I caught that Jingle Ball show, which was at Tsongas Arena in Lowell, Massachusetts. To my surprise, Kylie said that it was her first concert ever in the U.S. She had performed on late night TV shows and such when she was promoting “The Loco-Motion,” but she had never done a regular concert here. So even though she only played around half an hour at that show – because they have so many artists, most do fairly short sets – it still felt special to be there at her first concert ever in the States. Part of what blew my mind about that was that the show was in Lowell, the city my town borders, the venue being no more than three miles from my house. It felt so trippy that I had gone all the way to Paris to see Kylie in concert that June and now she was doing her first gig in the U.S. in the city just around the corner from my house. But since that show was only around half an hour long, I would have to say that it was my least favorite of the four Kylie concerts I’ve now been to. I loved being there, but you can’t compare a half an hour set to a headlining show, obviously.
I never thought I would ever enjoy a concert as much as that Kylie concert in Paris in 2002. Again, I’m sure that’s partially because I traveled to Paris for it. But if I’m being perfectly honest, I believe I actually had even more fun at last night’s show in Boston.
When I arrived at TD Garden last night, I took my place in line around 6:15 P.M. Doors were supposed to open at 6:30. And yet there couldn’t have been more than 30 people in line. I said that I was surprised that there were so few people there to the guy in line ahead of me and he remarked that the show wasn’t sold out. So I started to fear the worst. Of course, I didn’t think the show was going to be canceled at the last minute, but it would have been a bit of a bummer if the 19,580 capacity arena was half empty or worse. And my fears were not put to rest when Kylie’s opening act, Romy, hit the stage and the venue was still at least half empty. But I guess a lot of people had decided to skip the opening act because by the time Kylie took the stage, the place was packed. If you looked at the upper balcony – the sections numbered in the 300s – you could find small pockets of empty seats, but that was about it. It might not have been sold out, but it seemed to be pretty close to it. That was such a relief. After all, if the venue hadn’t even sold half of its seats, that would’ve been disappointing to Kylie and even if she didn’t let it show, it still would have put a bit of a damper on the fun. So it was wonderful when the place was packed solid when Kylie took to the stage. Also, the second the lights went down before she would appear high above the audience on a swing, virtually everyone in the audience stood up. And we remained standing up throughout the entire show, which proved to be something of a nonstop dance party. In the middle of the show, Kylie performed an acoustic rendition of the song “Say Something” from her 2020 album Disco. And that was the night’s sole slow song. And it was really the only time that any of us stopped dancing our asses off.
Yes, if you looked up at those upper balconies, you could spot some people sitting down during the concert, but those were the only sections where I saw anyone sitting. The entire floor and all of the lower level sections numbered in the 100s had virtually everyone on their feet the entire time she was performing. Even during those brief moments when she vanished from the stage for a quick wardrobe change several times, people simply did not sit down. Nobody wanted the dancing to stop.
Aside from the dancing, most of the crowd was singing along all night, including myself. I’ll admit that there were a couple of new songs from the Tension albums that I didn’t have the verses to memorized yet, but those were the only times when I stopped singing. And I still knew and sang along to the choruses.
The show kicked off with “Lights, Camera, Action” from her new album Tension II. That wasn’t an album that Kylie had intended to make, but the Tension album came out around a year and a half ago so she was doing her U.S. tour a bit later than most artists would tour behind a hit album so I guess she figured that releasing a sequel to the Tension album would be the perfect way to keep her on everybody’s minds and help sell tickets, a formula that certainly seemed to pay off.
The reason Kylie was able to do this U.S. tour is that the first single from Tension, “Padam Padam” became a surprise hit in the U.S. It was a massive hit all around the world but I don’t think anybody ever expected Kylie to have another hit in the States. And yet she did. And, of course, she performed it last night. It was the second to last song of the evening and the first song of the encore. But while the audience certainly ate it up, some other songs that weren’t even released in the United States seemed to get an even bigger reaction from the audience, such a “Spinning Around” from the Light Years album and “Get Out of My Way” from the Aphrodite album.
It’s kind of funny – my top two Kylie albums are Impossible Princess and X. And she didn’t do anything from either of those albums last night. But she did do my favorite songs from many of her other albums so I didn’t really mind it.
I had a floor seat last night. But it turned out that the section I was in, F, was pretty far back from the stage. And that was definitely further back than I thought it was going to be when I bought my ticket. That was slightly disappointing, but obviously not Kylie’s fault. And last night she had two of the largest video screens I ever seen at any concert in my life. You always expect jumbotrons on the sides of the stage at concerts these days, but they’re usually rectangular like a TV and they aren’t normally large enough for you to see the performer from head to toe. But the jumbotrons Kylie had were practically floor to ceiling. So even if I couldn’t quite make out her facial expressions from just looking straight ahead at the stage, you could certainly see her perfectly on those screens. Literally from head to toe most of the time.
In the middle of the show, Kylie took to a second stage that was in the middle of the floor. And it happened to be only around 35 feet from me. So I could see her perfectly without having to look at the screens during that whole section of the show. Speaking of which, during that part of the show she’s been asking people for requests. But she just sings snippets of most of those songs and usually acapella. But last night she did less of that than at other recent shows and instead treated us to a performance of the song “Dancing” from her country-flavored album, Golden. (Admittedly, Golden is the only Kylie album I don’t entirely love, but it’s still a great single and it was nice to hear it live.) While on that second stage, she also performed the acoustic rendition of “Say Something” as well as a fairly long medley of other songs from her Disco album. While she didn’t mention the pandemic, she did mention that the album came out in 2020 and that it felt special to finally be able to perform some of those songs before a live audience. I wasn’t sure how I would react to hearing those songs live because they do remind me of the pandemic because that’s when they were brand new and I was listening to the Disco album constantly. So I can’t really think about those songs without thinking about the pandemic. But after what Kylie said before performing them, it actually ended up making them a highlight of the evening for me. There was something triumphant about the fact that we’d survived the pandemic and now Kylie was back on top and we were finally seeing her live in the United States again.
I’m not going to divulge the entire setlist because some people don’t like spoilers before they go to shows and I wouldn’t want to spoil anything for anyone. But I will say that “Confide In Me” and “Slow” were two of the performances that stood out for me, those being two of my all-time favorite Kylie songs. “Confide In Me” was the lead single from the self-titled album Kylie Minogue, which is regarded as one of Kylie’s two indie albums, the other being Impossible Princess. And “Confide In Me” definitely sounds like an obscure indie pop song, far from being a big dance pop track like most Kylie singles. Also, most Kylie songs have very upbeat lyrics, but “Confide In Me” is very melancholic. Before she performed the song last night, the large video screen behind the stage showed a phone and advertisement for a help line. The video for that song was similar to that – like an ad for help line. And “Confide In Me” was really the only song that Kylie did last night that you might be able to call a depressing song. But it’s not entirely somber. The chorus finds Kylie pleading for our problems to be shared before she urges listens to confide in her. As for “Slow,” the version she performed last night was basically the remix of the song by The Chemical Brothers and I happen to like that remix even a bit more than the album version of the song so it was a delightful surprise when she performed that version last night.
The final song of the show was “Love At First Sight,” another one of my favorite Kylie songs and definitely my favorite song from the Fever album. But even though it’s a song with happy lyrics, for some reason it’s a song that has often made me cry. I don’t know if it’s because it’s so beautiful or if it’s because it just makes me so happy that I find myself crying happy tears or what but it did, in fact, cause me to produce tears last night. But that was kind of the perfect way to end the evening. The entire show had been so joyful, but shedding some cathartic tears at the end essentially brought it to a climax for me.
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If you really want to know the whole setlist, you can find it here on setlist.fm: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/kylie-minogue/2025/td-garden-boston-ma-1b50bdb4.html
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