Kylie at Electric Picnic review: Stilted set rescued by fine finale
Kylie Minogue at Electric Picnic 2024. Picture: Glen Bollard
The official reason for Electric Picnic's earlier-than-usual slot was to suit the availability of a certain headliner. Presumably it was Kylie Minogue, who first took to the stage at an Irish festival almost 30 years ago (Féile 95 in Cork) and was last seen here at the 3Arena in 2018.
Kylie's greatest hits are extensive, stretching back to the late 1980s and including 2023 album Tension, a brilliant collection of dance pop headed by the stunning 'Padam Padam'. That gets a showing near the end of her 90-minute set on Sunday night at Electric Picnic, with ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ following - if you wanted an indicator of Kylie’s hit factory, that’s quite the one-two hit.
“Seems I’ve known you a lifetime,” she sings on ‘On a Night Like This’, telling the crowd during the bridge: “It has been a lifetime, everyone!” There are three costume changes over the headline show - the 56-year-old looks stunning throughout, in knee-high boots, fishnet tights, and a sequin top at the start, a shimmering, red-tassel bodysuit, and finally a glowing gown that makes her look like the pop royalty she is.
However, it’s also a strangely stilted performance. Kylie is one of the biggest names in music - yet points out a couple times over her show how some of her hits came out before a lot of people in the crowd were born; Electric Picnic is very much geared to the younger music fan. We had expected her to have the biggest crowd of the weekend yet the excitement is lacking for the first 40 minutes of the set - are people bored and/or exhausted after a long weekend? Has Peggy Gou taken a big chunk of them over at the Electric Arena?
The laboured nature of the performance is exemplified by the appearance of US DJ the Blessed Madonna, who had played her own sets over the course of the weekend. They have a new collaboration, ‘Edge of Saturday Night’, that Kylie announces as proof she had “one more Ibiza moment in me”.
She stands behind the Blessed Madonna’s decks wheeled out onto stage and nobody really seems to know what to do from there. Later, she takes a request from the crowd and a ropey version of ‘Better the Devil You Know’ follows. Kylie shows off a jumper that a fan has knitted that says ‘I love Kylie’ on one side and ‘I love Neighbours’ on the other.
She says she wants to shout out the fan’s name - but she can’t hear her. She seems to be having some sound issues during the performance and from the audience’s perspective, it’s not helped that banging dance music can be heard from another stage nearby.
The song that salvages the show and gets things going is her debut single, 1987’s ‘The Loco-Motion’.
Maybe Kylie wasn’t helped by having Raye on before her. The UK pop star put on a superb '60s-aping, crowd-winning performance, aided by the Dublin Gospel Choir. It felt like a really well thought-out show that won out any stragglers who hadn’t been paying attention to Raye’s rise. She may not have Kylie’s catalogue, but she has everything else needed for superstardom.
Kylie’s final couple of songs included ‘All The Lovers’, ‘On a Night Like This’, and ‘Love at First Sight’ - any criticisms are quickly forgotten about for that trio of pop perfection.
