Just two years ago, it would’ve seemed as if the “Loco-Motion” train had passed Kylie Minogue by to ever headline Madison Square Garden.
After all, on her last US tour — way back in 2011 — the Aussie diva “only” played Hammerstein Ballroom, which is not even as big as Radio City Music Hall.
But while heading into her mid-’50s — an age at which most veteran pop stars are on the inevitable decline — the singer reached the unlikeliest of career peaks with “Padam Padam,” which won Minogue a new generation of fans in the US.
Expanding her loyal base in the gay community, the song of summer 2023 song even won Minogue her second Grammy — a show of respect for the bubblegum girl whose biggest hit had been her cover of Little Eva’s “The Loco-Motion” released way back in 1988.
And 37 years after she began her music career, “Padam Padam” finally brought her all the way to Madison Square Garden on Friday night for the first of two shows on her Tension Tour at the Big Apple’s big daddy of arenas.
“This is New York City!” a giddy Minogue exclaimed to rapturous applause that led into “Kylie” chants. “As I’m sure most of you know, it’s my fist time ever on this stage.”
And after years where she didn’t always play New York — or anywhere in North America — because she couldn’t fill arenas like she did in Europe and Australia, she was the hottest ticket in town making her MSG debut at 56.
“This place is packed!” she marveled. “You know what, it’s not only packed with people, it’s packed with love.”
Indeed, Minogue’s fans are known as Lovers — taken from her 2010 single “All the Lovers” — and it was a nonstop lovefest from the time she hit the stage to the “Tension II” track “Lights Camera Action” for her Garden close-up.
And there might have been a little extra sass to “Get Outta My Way” — from Minogue’s best album, 2010’s “Aphrodite” — for finally breaking though to that stage.
By the time she got to “Come Into My World” — her other Grammy-winning track, from 2001’s “Fever” — it was all Minogue’s world. She owned the stage as if she had been playing it forever.
It was one bubbly bop after another until Minogue made her way into the audience to “The Loco-Motion” — enthusiastically performed after all these years — in a train with her dancers.
Making her way to the center stage, she hit the emotional highlight of the night with an acoustic rendition of “Say Something,” from 2020’s “Disco,” that really spoke to the crowd.
The production was a bit minimal for an arena show, and the costumes and choreography were hardly on a Madonna level. And it sometimes felt a little too Vegas-y, almost like it could have been an extension of her 2023-24 residency in Sin City.
But it hardly mattered in the end as Minogue delivered faves such as “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” perhaps her most insistent, insinuating hit; and “All the Lovers,” perhaps her most blissful, beautiful one.
Both of those numbers probably even topped “Padam Padam,” which Minogue saved for an exuberant encore that completed her triumphant moment.
“From the moment I hit that stage, this place has had a special energy,” she said. “I’m so glad to share that with you tonight.”
And then Minogue — who returns to MSG on Saturday night — went twirling into the disco rush of the “Love at First Sight” finale, feeling all the love one last time.
Content shared from nypost.com.