5 Thoughts I Had While Watching Kylie Minogue’s New “Tension” Video

1. Vegas Kylie will be amazing.

On some level, all music videos are advertorials. Artists deploy these splashy pieces of art that double as marketing to get us to buy a single or an album or, in the case of Minogue, a ticket to her upcoming Vegas residency, which begins in November at the Venetian. And, you know what, if this is what we’re going to get, then I’d be willing to, wallet willing, take the plunge.

All the signs of great stealth advertising are there: the video takes place in a Vegas-coded desert, and at one point, Minogue dresses up in a flashy getup that looks like she pilfered it from Drag Race queen Kahanna Montrese’s closet. If she can pull this kind of visual off in a (clearly shoestring budget) video, then I’m excited to see what she can do on stage.

2. The best videos feature an artist playing several versions of themselves.

In the video, we get several iterations of Minogue, including one that is clearly meant to be Kylie, another is a video vixen on a big screen, another is a henchman pulling the levers to make the show happen and yet another is the aforementioned Vegas girl.

This motif happens to be one that always underwrites a great music video: Take, for instance, Jennifer Lopez’s “Get Right,” in which she plays several different women in the same bar. Or, Britney’s “Toxic,” where she dons various spy personae. Mariah’s “Heartbreaker,” Taylor’s “You Belong With Me,” Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend.” The list goes on and on. And it now includes “Tension.”

3. Kylie Minogue should star in a reboot of the Golden Girls.

I know, I know. We don’t need to reboot the Golden Girls. But, as a longtime fan of the show, I can’t stop thinking about how Blanche, Dorothy, and Rose are supposed to be in their early and mid-50s, aka the same age as Kylie Minogue, who just turned 55 earlier this year. Does Minogue look like the vision of 50-year-old sexuality portrayed in the infamous Norman Lear sitcom? Given that Kylie already has an acting resume — Street Fighter is a camp *classique* — why not make a move into sitcoms and totally redefine what it means to be in your 50s and looking for a good lay.

4. Kylie Minogue needs to be held up as the GOAT she is.

Recently, a tweet featuring a 2016 speech of Madonna’s went viral again. In the clip, she discusses how so many of her peers are gone, while she still stands. Some of the legends she mentions include Prince, Michael Jackson, and Whitney Houston. When it comes to living music legends, Kylie Minogue is right there alongside Madonna. Remember, Minogue released her debut album, Kylie, in 1988, just five years after Madonna’s eponymous first LP. Now, I know plenty of older gay men who are quick to give Minogue her flowers, and I include myself among them. But given Kylie’s lack of stateside presence during the 1990s, she is too often left out of GOAT conversations, and “Tension” is a reminder that she is still a master of her craft. She’s still making dance floor-worthy bops and she gives music video face at Britney Spears-levels.

5. Kylie is able to capture 2000s sounds more authentically than anyone else right now.

“Tension” is a great 2023 song, but it also echoes with the pulse of the 2000s dancefloor. When I hear it, I hear Cascada, I hear Amber, I hear something old repackaged as new with sleek production. It’s no secret that, as Gen Z rises to cultural prominence, they’ve inaugurated a sort of Y2K renaissance, with several artists working overtime to recapture the particular boops and beeps of music in the aughts. Who better to school the children in how to do it than someone who was at the forefront of the dancefloor in the new millennium?

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