Kylie Minogue shimmies in Mugler on trash heaps for her Summer club jam, “Padam Padam”

I wonder how many people clocked that the song title was the onomatopoeic sound of a heart beating prior to hearing the song. And I also wonder if search results and streams for Edith Piaf have gone up a little.

HENNYWAY.

The music video for the lead single from Kylie’s 17th studio album Tension is out. And after having to make music videos under strict COVID protocols on sound stages with skeletal crews and green screens, Kylie said ‘We flying to fucking Los Angeles for this music video’. She really didn’t need to. Nothing about this video screams ‘This only coulda worked in LA’. But Kylie did it because a bitch could. Good for her.

This was a nice looking video. Kylie looks great, and I like that we had a clear colour theme. I did initially wonder if red would be the colour Kylie wears for all of the music videos and promotional performances for Tension. Kinda like how Kylie primarily wore white for all things Fever. But then she pulled up to American Idol and performed “Padam Padam” wearing black. Kylie and her team are usually consistent and intentional with how her looks are themed with her albums, so I do expect there to be some form of through line.

My only gripe with the video for “Padam Padam”, is that I wish we got more of Kylie dancing. Kylie has never been one to give a lot of choreo. But this is one of the most uptempo tracks she’s released in a while, and the choreography we see the dancers doing looked really simple and wouldn’t have required much of Kylie. So it would have been nice to see her do more of it. She danced more for a behind-the-scenes video than she did in the actual video. So I wonder if all of her dancing scenes just got cut. Or maybe she had the same foot injury that Beyoncé had.

A lot of acts who are approaching 40 or are past 40 are in the ‘I’mma stand here and look cute in these custom looks instead of dancing’ phases of their careers, and I ain’t mad it. But seeing Kylie buss a lil’ step woulda been nice.

Kylie Minogue - Padam Padam | Directed by Sophie Muller | © Kylie Minogue / Darenote

“Padam Padam” is a damn good song. Catchy as fuck. One of the strongest lead singles Kylie has released in a LONG time. And one which strongly channels her biggest hit “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”. But the song suffers from the now all-too-common dreaded short runtime. When I clicked on the video and saw 2:49, I said ‘Here we fucking go again’. A 2:49 runtime for a club record is crazy.

Yes, I know short runtimes is because of streaming, and also radio. So, why not just release a radio edit of the song and then a full length version? Why is the shorter version made to be the original version of the song? “Padam Padam” doesn’t just sound short, it sounds incomplete. The song really needed a bridge and then a bigger final run of the chorus. But as it stands “Padam Padam” just ends before it even allows itself to get going. I tried my hand at an extended version. But hopefully the we will get an official album version which will be longer. Failing this, maybe Tension will get an extended mix release as Kylie’s 2020 album Disco did.

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💿 Album reviews: Disco | Kylie Christmas | Kiss Me Once | Aphrodite | Fever