“Her connection with the audience, it’s not phoney,” Nick Cave says about his one-time duet partner Kylie Minogue. “It’s very real for her. It is a true form of love.”
If there’s one lesson to be taken away from Netflix’s new KYLIE documentary, it is that Minogue and her audience love each other equally. The outpouring of love and support from fans got Minogue through tough times, and in return Minogue delivered joyous pop to get them through tough times.
Too sentimental? Well, strap in, because no eye is left dry by the end of this endearingly candid, three-part docuseries about Australia’s greatest pop export. Be warned, though, it can also be a difficult watch at times as it digs deep and lands some emotional gut punches.
Although directed by Michael Harte (it’s a follow-up to his directorial debut true crime doc Memories of a Murderer: The Nilsen Tapes), it was experienced producer John Battsek who convinced Minogue to take part. Battsek has a back catalogue of music and sports documentaries that include Beckham, the masterful Wham!, Richard Lowenstein’s Mystify: Michael Hutchence and Searching for Sugar Man, the latter of which is widely considered one of the greatest music documentaries ever made.
Clocking in at just over three hours, Part I of KYLIE explores her early career, starting out as “Dannii Minogue’s sister” in the mid-80s through her time in Neighbours and recording with hit-making UK pop producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman (SAW); Part II covers Minogue’s relationship with INXS singer Michael Hutchence, her break away from SAW through to the backlash she faced at the end of the millennium; Part III captures the triumphs and tragedies from 2000 until now.
Harte’s 20 years’ experience as an editor is on full display throughout. Witness the manic pace of the show’s first half hour as it perfectly captures Minogue’s dizzying rise to fame — heads are left spinning, second views will be required for superfans wanting to go back and freeze every frame. Later, when Minogue is asked what happened after her initial encounter with Hutchence, she lets out the naughtiest, uncontrollable laugh as Harte jump cuts to INXS’s “Need You Tonight”. Chef’s kiss.
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Each episode is rammed full of impressive amounts of behind-the-scenes footage, including Cave meeting Minogue’s mum for the first time, unpublished photo shoots, and even vacation videos.
Minogue, always an engaging storyteller, comes across relaxed and fresh with just a hint of nerves. Her stories are backed up by interviews with key people from her life: both Cave and Waterman appear on camera as do sister Dannii and Neighbours co-star Jason Donovan. These talking heads all deliver, and at no stage does the series ever lag.
KYLIE begins its story with Minogue landing in London in 1987, walking into a recording studio building where she says she was “riddled with self-doubt and anxiety,” overwhelmed by the gold records on the walls belonging to Dead or Alive, Bananarama, and Donna Summer.
From here we witness the various peaks and troughs of a four-decade career. We see that the bigger Minogue got, the harsher the backlashes became. Media reaction was especially harsh, and early on she is plagued with pointed “are you an actor or singer?” questions (almost quaintly old-fashioned by current cultural standards). Next came the endless sexist questions and then the ageist ones.
At every turn we see callous media behaviour on display. While Minogue privately underwent IVF procedures, we see one journalist pestering her with questions about motherhood; at another point we see another journalist casually reclining in a camp chair on her parents’ lawn while the singer is inside recovering from treatment for breast cancer.
It’s heartbreaking to watch sister Dannii and ex-partner Donovan describe how the label of “singing budgie” and incessant media criticism that “she can’t sing” affected the then 19-year-old Minogue. A reflective Minogue looks back at it now as “unpleasant” and “mean.”
Elsewhere the series delves into her relationship with Donovan, her first serious romance. He still struggles to discuss their break-up, at one point declaring, “I don’t think I can say any more to be fucking honest.” There’s also a glimpse of footage — perhaps too intimate — showing the two obviously in the midst of an uncomfortable disagreement.
It’s the opposite of the amazingly candid clips of Minogue with rock star boyfriend Hutchence, letting their hair down as they travel during breaks from their hectic schedules. Minogue describes her two-year romance with Hutchence as “an amazing point in time, and I’ve probably been looking for that ever since and I haven’t got it.”
Tears well up in her eyes when asked how she thinks about Hutchence today, almost two decades since his death. It’s hard not to be moved by this show of unedited emotion.
Her time with Hutchence also led to Minogue experiencing a “lightbulb” moment: watching how his band worked in the studio spurred her on to take more control of her own musical direction.
Her old producer Waterman can barely hide his annoyance discussing Minogue breaking away at that point. His responses are still tinged with bitterness, and there’s a condescending tone when he talks about the inevitability of Minogue “growing up” and doing her own thing.
Minogue’s other major influences are revealed to be photographer Katerina Jebb, whom she met when she fled to France to escape 24/7 media scrutiny, and Cave. While Jebb helped Minogue take control of her image, Cave encouraged her to write her own lyrics and embrace the “joy machine” of pop.
KYLIE is filled with these type of charming revelations, but it also takes time to delve deep into serious topics such as how the tabloid media ground her down (there is footage of a young, frustrated Minogue confronting one such reporter) and then hounded her after her very public breast cancer diagnosis in 2005 (media outlets offered hospital staff money for photos on Minogue).
Minogue discusses her hair loss due to chemotherapy (“least of my worries”) and the pain from the treatment that was so intense she felt “removed from my body.” We witness her push through to return to music because for her, “Life makes sense to me on stage.”
It’s hard to pinpoint KYLIE’s greatest moments, but some of the scenes that make this a must-see music documentary include: Cave admitting Minogue’s audience terrified him; Minogue adorably reading through early discarded lyrics; her describing meeting Kylie drag queens for the first time and remembering that she “felt the least Kylie there”; Cave dropping a c-bomb not long after asking if can swear during the doco; footage of Minogue and Donovan first acting together as brother and sister in the long-forgotten Skyways soap; the Minogue clan reminiscing around a campfire; learning that “I Should Be So Lucky” was knocked together while she waited for a taxi back to the airport; and the clip of Minogue’s first public singing appearance with her sister on Young Talent Time (such big hair).
KYLIE ends with a coda that has made news around the world in the days ahead of its release. As Minogue sits with her long-time songwriting partner Richard Stannard, she reveals that there was a second cancer diagnosis in 2021. She quite rightly kept it from the media and had been waiting for the right time to let the world know. It’s here we learn that the documentary’s opening song “Story”, from her 2023 Tension album, was about that second diagnosis. Minogue took ownership of her struggle and once again created something to uplift her fans.
At three hours, KYLIE could easily be longer. There’s little about key figures in her early career such as manager Terry Blamey or the Australian label executives who first signed her (Amanda Pelman and Michael Gudinski) — perhaps that’s too parochial a story for a global release. Fans would surely delight in a bonus episode of all the unseen film and photos that Minogue seems to have carefully archived away.
As it is, KYLIE is thorough, surprising, and easy to binge in one sitting. It also serves as a worthy reminder as to why Kylie Minogue is a beloved Australian icon. By the end we all understand what Cave sensed in Minogue: the connection with her audience is not phoney.
KYLIE is streaming on Netflix now.
