How pop princess Kylie Minogue still has the UK spinning around

Kylie Minogue’s association with BMG in the UK has seen her fortunes spinning around.

The Golden album from last year debuted at #1, her first chart-topper there since Aphrodite in 2010, her sixth #1, and the fastest-selling vinyl and cassette album in the UK last year.

Hits compilation Step Back In Time: The Definitive Collection became her seventh UK #1 in June.

Coinciding with its release, Minogue had been announced to play the Legends slot on the Pyramid Stage at the Glastonbury festival on the coveted Sunday afternoon slot.

In the last decade it’s been the most-watched on-site and off-site.

BMG had intended to use that appearance to encourage further sales, with the intention to work it right until Christmas.

Alistair Norbury, president of repertoire & marketing at BMG UK, speaking to Music Week, called the festival invite “a perfect opportunity”.

“This is one of our tent pole releases for the year, and the Glastonbury slot couldn’t be a better way to kick off that campaign.

“This is the platform that everyone wants.”

Minogue’s first hits set in seven years covers both BMG’s frontline and catalogue divisions, the latter which has her early “singing budgie” PWL catalogue and the kool-kid Deconstruction catalogue.

It becomes more a definitive hits collection as a JV with Warner Music which controls the Parlophone tracks.

It includes a new track, ‘New York City’, originally recorded for Golden but subsequently left off the album.

BMG went all-out with its packaging.

It is a standard double CD and digital release, as well as a deluxe CD with 32-page casebound book, 2 LP picture disc vinyl, 2 LP limited edition mint green vinyl, 2 LP standard black gatefold vinyl, and a double cassette available in five limited edition colours.

Norbury told Music Week, “While we have licensed in other material, the Parlophone repertoire, this is about catalogue and frontline working together – and publishing, too, because we publish on a lot of material on that album, either via Kylie or co-writers.”

BMG’s extended marketing plans are set to swing into action after Minogue’s Glastonbury performance became the most-watched in the festival’s history.

According to the BBC, she smashed Ed Sheeran’s record of 3.1 million in 2017, with 3.2 million watching the set and 3.9 million tuning in for the final minutes of her performance.

Adele’s Pyramid Stage appearance in 2016 had a viewership of 2 million, with a peak of 3.7 million.

It was truly a homecoming for Minogue, who had to pull out of Glastonbury in 2005 after being diagnosed with breast cancer, and then five years later graced its stage as a guest of the Scissor Sisters.

For her own set last weekend, she brought on Coldplay’s Chris Martin and Nick Cave – which led NME to call it “a true pop spectacle”.

Her A-list celebrity status was confirmed when VIP fixer Karim Gharbi of an international concierge company revealed that the Australian-born commands $1.8 million for a meet and greet.

Collectively, Minogue’s singles have spent over 300 weeks in the UK’s Official Singles Chart Top 40.

She has sold more than 80 million albums worldwide and her catalogue now boasts over half a billion streams globally on Spotify alone.

Last week the 51-year old picked up an award at the GQ Men Of The Year awards in London, following it up with an energetic performance sporting a $54,000 Kolchagov Barba and Preciosa dress made with 100,000 AB Preciosa crystals.