Kylie Minogue has released her new single ‘Lights Camera Action’ today (September 27), off her upcoming album ‘Tension II’. The pop icon spoke with NME in Singapore ahead of her headline performance at the country’s F1 Grand Prix, giving us the lowdown on the record – including a song she described as the “distant cousin” of Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’ – and the ‘Tension’ world tour.
‘Tension II’, which is set for release on October 18, will be the sequel to Minogue’s critically acclaimed 2023 album ‘Tension’, which spawned the viral hit ‘Padam Padam’. She told NME that the upcoming record is “kind of a hybrid” between a deluxe edition and a new album, one that “was never intended to be another volume of work”.
“You have an album and then there’s songs that didn’t make it or songs that have come in afterwards,” she said, partly referring to her 2024 collaborations with Sia, Orville Peck, The Blessed Madonna, Tove Lo and Bebe Rexha. Minogue soon found herself with “more and more songs”, eventually ending up with “enough” for a fully fledged sequel.
Headlining ‘Tension II’ is Minogue’s latest single, ‘Lights Camera Action’, which she characterised as having “that similar kind of hypnotic quality” as ‘Padam Padam’. “The kind of call-to-action of ‘lights, camera, action, that’s it’ [of the chorus] just felt a bit catchphrase-y,” she explained. “I just thought it was cool.”
The tracks on ‘Tension II’ are, overall, “a fun group of friends”, the pop star said. When asked about songs she’d like to highlight, Minogue singled out ‘Taboo’, describing it as “if Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’ had a kind of a distant cousin”.
The singer also spotlighted the song ‘Shoulda Left Ya’, which she called the “counterpart” to ‘Tension’ fan favourite ‘Story’. “That’s probably the most kind of oddball, like it kind of lives in its own world,” she said, calling it “a little more melancholy” than the rest of the record.
Minogue, however, teased that the album after ‘Tension II’ will be a “fresh start” for her. It’s one that might see the singer move in the direction of her much-maligned 1997 record ‘Impossible Princess’, which saw a commercial resurgence earlier this decade when it was released on vinyl for the first time in 2022.
“I feel like it’ll be time for something – maybe not as singular as [‘Impossible Princess’] – but to bring some of that back in,” Minogue told NME, revealing that she “already had a few songwriting days in the studio with my closest [collaborators] for whatever’s to come”.
“I’m not sure how much of [what I’m working on] is because [of] where my output has been of late. We’ve been pretty solid on ‘What’s the hit, what’s the hit, what’s the hit’,” she said. “So, it’s some of that slightly meatier kind of the other stuff that I’m really drawn to.”
Minogue’s renewed attraction towards the more experimental phase of her music in the ’90s – ‘Impossible Princess’, but also 1994’s ‘Kylie Minogue’ – may also manifest in her upcoming world tour, which will see the pop icon performing across the UK, her native Australia and Asia next year, with more dates to be announced.
“I actually feel like bringing some of that back into the ‘Tension’ tour,” she said, before recalling an older gig when she did a “stupid long version” of her 1994 hit ‘Confide in Me’. “I’ve only mentioned this today because it’s just recently I saw it, like days ago… but [that performance] was a journey and I would love to bring some of that to the tour.”
“So, you’ve got ‘smash, smash, bop, bop, bish, bop, bash’, but there’s a bit of stuff that has some of that ’90s kind of slight, experimental side to it,” Minogue teased. While the ‘Tension’ tour will be “a celebration” of the two albums it’s named after, the singer also hinted that it “might be a bit” of 2020’s ‘Disco’ as well, as she “didn’t get to tour” that record.
Asked for her thoughts on the current pop landscape, Minogue gave a shout out to rising star Chappell Roan (“She’s just absolutely smashed us and wowed the world”) and reflected on the current resurgence of country music within pop.
Minogue of course dipped her toes in the genre with the 2018 album ‘Golden’. “That was just my moment,” she said. “I think it’s just going to go around and around and around, and it just depends on who’s doing it.”
“I absolutely loved it,” Minogue concluded. “I loved going to Nashville. I loved being able to explore songwriting from a real storytelling perspective.”
Kylie Minogue’s new single ‘Lights Camera Action’ is out now on Spotify, Apple Music and more. Her new album ‘Tension II’ will be released on October 18.