It’s just 19 sleeps til Kylie takes to the road for her UK & European Golden Tour. Count me excited! Kylie’s Enjoy Yourself Tour was the first concert I ever went to and I’ve been hooked ever since. I’ve been lucky, lucky, lucky enough to see her on nearly all her UK tours and to be quite honest she set the bar high, with not many, if any, able to compete with her in putting on the perfect pop concert.
Kylie has commented that whereas most acts learn their trade from starting at small pub venues and building up to arenas, her career pretty much started with arenas due to her phenomenally quick rise to chart domination. However, she worked hard and is now considered one of the best performers in the business by fans and critics alike.
Looking back at Kylie on the Go and the Enjoy Yourself Tour now, they certainly aren’t as polished and vocally confident (the former being heavily mimed) but what they show is an artist determined to put on a great show and make her audience happy. Her energy in those early concerts is incredibly infectious.
In 1991, she was growing up as a person and as a performer, and perhaps pushed fans a little too much with her raunchy Madonna-esque outfits, but this was all part of Kylie developing her live persona. It wasn’t until 1998 that she put on a tour again and this time her chart fortunes were at their lowest so Intimate and Live Tour saw her playing in smaller, theatre size venues like Shepherd’s Bush Empire to much smaller crowds. This was Kylie’s pub moment, this was her honing her craft as a live performer. It was also on this tour that she realised that she wasn’t and Indie Princess but a Showgirl who wanted to return to pop music. She released the album Light Years and the On a Night Like This Tour followed as a joyous show crammed full of costumes, dance routines, hits and smiles. It was this tour that hinted at what Kylie was capable of and her ambition for bigger things tourwise.
In 2001 came the juggernaught of an album, Fever, which gave her the budget to put on a truly spectacular tour in 2002 with acrobats, cyborgs and much more. Kylie the performer had well and truly arrived. Many tours have followed and each has brought something new to the previous tours from the water fountains on Aphrodite: Les Folies, to the floor to wall screens of X2008 and the sheer amount of hits and different sections crammed into both Showgirl tours.
Here is a list of five things I definitely want to see on the Golden Tour. It kicks off on Tuesday 18th September in Newcastle, but how many of my wishlist will she fulfil?
1. My name is Kylie
Kylie is a megastar and as such I don’t want to see her just step casually on stage, I want a surprise entrance with a fanfare worthy of her status. Previous tours have seen Kylie backlit by a door of bright white lights (Let’s Get To It), being lowered on to stage on a shiny anchor (On A Night Like This), arriving as a cyborg (Fever), in a giant shell (Aphrodite), on a floating ring of wires high off the floor (X) and the list goes on! Maybe she’ll arrive on horseback for the country-influenced Golden? I can’t wait to find out.
2. Lost without a good serving of Golden
With over 50 top 40 hits to her name, plus a whole host of album tracks and one-off more leftfield collaborations, we certainly don’t envy Kylie having to put together a tracklist for her tour, that satisfy both hardcore fans as well as the more casual fan who has come to hear the hits.
Golden is a sonic twist for Kylie so we’re interested how she represents the album on this tour but one thing we want is to hear as much of it as possible. For Aphrodite Tour she managed to get 10 album tracks included in one form or another, yet for Kiss Me Once Tour it was just five or six (Sexy Love wasn’t performed across the whole tour). We’d love to see at least eight Golden tracks make an appearance on this tour.
I’m particularly looking forward to seeing all those hands up for Raining Glitter (and me still getting the woops in the wrong place!)
3. Especially For Us
Taking on board the above request and the fact that there has to be a good splash of hits to balance the concert for everyone attending, I’d also like to see some Stan moments thrown in. Something Kylie never lets me down on. I’m talking the odd album track from her vast back catalogue (World Still Turns maybe?) or perhaps a rare b-side (BPM?). And yes, I am one of those smug fans singing along when songs like GBI play out on the video screens!
In terms of hits, I’d also like her to vary it up a little. Would love to see Word is Out or Where Is the Feeling for a change and give songs like Wow and Kids a rest this time. She does have some hits that are bigger than others but we don’t need to hear them all so be a bit picky – it’ll only make us appreciate them more on the next tour! That said we’re more than open to a medley or three to help pack in even more songs.
Let’s remind ourselves of the Rave section of the Showgirl tour which features snippets of early tracks It’s No Secret, Over Dreaming and Do You Dare.
4. Wearing Glitter
Kylie always brings flawless asethics to her tours with great backdrops, screens and lasers but of course we all want to know what the lady herself is going to wear. With designers falling over themselves to dress Kylie, we’ve seen her in racy Jean-Paul Gautier, classy Dolce & Gabbanna and sublime Julien MacDonald.  What we’d really like is for lots of different looks, as usual but also for some different hair or wig options please. She’s rocking the ‘just ran my hand through this’ look right now and it works but for on stage more is more please.
5. Sincerely Yours
Kylie is a true professional when it comes to performing and what we’ve been loving about the underplay shows she did earlier this year is her banter. Hopefully, seeing Dolly Parton live has taught her that the chat is as important as putting on a good show. Sometimes it can feel like she’s trying so hard to make the show perfect that she’s almost wearing her showgirl mask and not spending time just to enjoy the crowd. We know how funny and warm she is and it’d be nice to have a few more intimate moments on this tour with some unrehearsed banter.
I have seen Kylie live many times since 1990 and are beside excited to see what she will bring that’s new and fresh on her Golden Tour. Tell us which songs you’d really like to be included on Kylie’s Golden Tour setlist @entfocusmusic.
There are still some tickets left at various venues on the Golden Tour. Visit Kylie.com for more information.
