It’s an oppressively hot August afternoon in Ibiza, and Kylie and The Blessed Madonna have convened at the hotel Pikes to shoot the music video for their song of the summer, Edge of Saturday Night. It was at Pikes that Freddie Mercury celebrated his debaucherous 41st birthday, Wham! shot their music video for Club Tropicana, and where the hotel’s founder Tony Pikes (dubbed the Hugh Hefner of Ibiza) allegedly hosted oodles of cocaine-fuelled orgies with his once-lover Grace Jones. Gathering here feels like a fitting continuation from the night before when the duo were at DC10’s Circoloco, where Kylie had been headbanging on the DJ booth while The Blessed Madonna played a pounding set with a bass so rich that my vape seemed to start smoking itself. “We actually met for the first time … yesterday,” confesses The Blessed Madonna. It’s a fact that proves hard to believe while they giggle and volley like lifelong friends.
Before The Blessed Madonna released her hedonistic Dua Lipa remix album Club Future Nostalia in 2020, introducing her to a gigantic new audience of pop music fans, the DJ, producer and label owner had been tearing up dancefloors around the world for little over 20 years. Real name Marea Stamper, she was born in Kentucky, began attending illegal raves in the burgeoning in the Midwest music scene at the age of 14, before later earning acclaim behind the decks in the Chicago club scene, with her soulful blend of house, disco, techno, funk, and acid house. Now, she’s found an equally radical, wide-roving accomplice.
Since the mid-80s when Kylie clambered through a window and into our hearts when she starred as Charlene Robinson in the soap opera Neighbours, the Aussie phenomenon has remained a glowing fixture in culture with a longevity rivalled by few, eschewing the inherent obsolescence of ‘pop’ with an untamable appeal. In 2020, she became the first female artist to top the UK album chart in five consecutive decades with her 15th album of glitterball beats Disco, and her anthemic most recent album, Tension, released last year, became her ninth number one album. Each achievement is a testament to the singer’s fabulous and ever-evolving versatility, successfully transitioning from glossy pop idol in the 80s to an acclaimed dance music artist, twinkling with that mesmerisingly campy image and heart-swelling persona that’s caused legions of girls and gays to jump to their feet and screech “mother!” in her sold-out arena tours.
Taking a quick break in between filming, the newly acquianted dancefloor disciples sit down with AnOther to discuss pushing themselves to the edge, and their new track, The Edge of Saturday Night, the first single from The Blessed Madonna’s upcoming debut album, Godspeed.
Kylie: The last 24 hours have been very … interesting.
The Blessed Madonna: We‘ve caused a little trouble. Just today we’ve been in … situations. We’ve been in bed. And possibly a shoe. It’s a standard day in the office – this is the same old, same old. But we’re not done with [the music video] yet. We will be causing trouble here for the rest of the evening.
K: The music video is just going to depict fun, and I think that’s important. It’s got some kind of madness and abandon.
TBM: Abandon? I love that. It’s nice to just let it happen. As DJs, everybody wants to know what you love about dance music. I actually think what’s more important most of the time is what you hate about it – I don‘t think that’s a problem at all – and I hate all the dumb confetti cannon [clichés]. I hate all that stuff. It’s silly, and it’s pretentious. What I love about dance music, and making images with it, is when you just let it happen.
K: It’s not timed. I just like to lose myself. I’m going to be a Gemini and contradict myself, but I like to lose myself, find myself, feel stuff, park the things that are in your brain, or sort things in your brain. I’m thinking back to something like Trainspotting when you felt that you were in a life-altering moment, and it was the music that was doing something for you. We’re old enough to know dance music from different from different eras.
TBM: And on your best nights ever, nobody sat there and made an itinerary.
K: Most of them you weren’t going out in the first place. I’ve gone out through gritted teeth on those nights, and then, next thing, who’s the last person standing? Me.
TBM: Yeah, it ends up with me in a basement listening to Jeff Mills with one other person.
K: Me, I’m probably that one person – now that we know each other.
TBM: Yeah, we met here for the first time yesterday [at Pikes]! Remotely, because that’s the world we live in now. But we first spoke on the phone.
K: I almost cold-called you, but I sent a text that said, ‘Hey, can you speak?’ Luckily, you were available.
TBM: I would have picked up the phone. If you had called and I was at the gynaecologist, I would have picked up the phone. I would’ve been like, ‘Excuse me, doctor?’
K: Now it’s become a project that’s been happening for a long time, and obviously you’ve got your own history with the track, which is long in and of itself. And for me, doing the vocals, doing them again, reinterpreting them, it’s been quite a long time process. It’s like I’ve had a pen pal.
TBM: I know right? When someone works on a record that you’ve done and they clearly get it, it’s like you already know them. That part of it, for me, didn’t feel funny at all.
K: I had zero anxiety.
TBM: No anxiety whatsoever. And then you meet somebody and you just love them. It isn’t always like that. The nice thing about Miss Kylie Minogue is that she’s as lovely as you want her to be. And last night [when you were] standing up on the booth at Circloloco just throwing that hair around, girl. You gave the children what they wanted! You are such a star.
“The good stuff comes when you throw yourself out just a little too deep … That, for me, has been everything and has given me a life that I did not dare to dream of” – The Blessed Madonna
K: You’ve hinted at the track a few times at different gigs, but that was my first time hearing it – with you! – in a club. It gives you chills. Well, I got up, and then I thought, it’s probably time to get down now. I got through unscathed. But [losing yourself] isn’t just about the dancing, you can feel moved without doing all of that. Although I kind of just jump around these days.
TBM: I’m a speaker person. In the Midwest rave scene, we had these massive sound systems, a wall of sound, and people would come up close to it. I still can feel what it felt like to just put your hands on it.
K: Like you’re at the altar.
TBM: Right? Just letting it move through your body. I didn’t know who I was before dance music. I was a kid who was bullied out of high school, and I started throwing raves when I was like 16. It defined who I was going to become, and all the ways that I would see the world. It’s where I met my husband and all my closest friends, and even [influenced] writing records later on in life. It’s about letting people in.
K: It sounds like your cosmos.
TBM: Yeah it does. But I don’t plan when I play.
K: You don’t? You read the room, or is it what you want to put into the room?
TBM: A little bit of both. So I have whatever the audio version of a photographic memory is. I can remember almost every song that I’ve ever put into a hard drive. Last night when we were at the club, my friend was singing this Milton Hamilton song, We Have All the Time, so I thought, I should play that for him tonight because he’ll be really happy. I was sitting there in the booth going, ‘OK, the song is in this folder, and it’s halfway down’. I was seeing the alphabet in my head …
K: Am I sat next to Keanu Reeves? This is very The Matrix.
TBM: On the other hand, I don’t know my social security. I don’t know my husband’s phone number. It’s just the one thing. I don’t plan anything. I try to read the room, but it’s a little bit of what they want versus what they need.
I think [Edge of Saturday Night] very perfectly nails that like the idea of being in transition, where time stops mattering. My album is called Godspeed, which is a word that can mark a beginning or an ending, and I think the album is kind of doing both of those things constantly. It came at a retrospective, introspective point in my life, where I was trying to grapple with what it means to live a life in dance music, what it means to lose people, and the way that time is so tenuous. It’s so fragile. I think a lot of the album is about edges and transitions.
K: ‘The edge’ as well – you can be really scared to go there, because what’s next? But that’s where we find out that magic happens, or the shit hits the fan. Pushing to the edge with the push and pull of music and the tension and release – I think the concept goes so far beyond.
TBM: The good stuff comes when you throw yourself out just a little too deep. When you say you can do something and you don’t know if you can do it, when something feels a little scary. That, for me, has been everything and has given me a life that I did not dare to dream of before Covid.
This song came about when I was playing in the Panorama Bar in Berghain. When [the night] ends on Monday morning, typically they push people down from Panorama Bar into Berghain, then they push people out the door. It was a leap day – February 29 – and there was a certain magic to it. It had gotten to the point where I would have been stopping, and I had already played for six hours, already doing the closing marathon, but they came upstairs and said ‘Theoretically, how long could you play?’ I was so sick, I had world-class bronchitis, but I was at the stage in DJing where I could never say no. I was out of my fucking mind. So, I of course said, ‘I will play until you tell me to stop!’ When they’re getting ready to shut down a room, they open the blinds so people know that it’s daylight, so when I said yes, they shut the blinds, and once they close, it is fucking night. I ended up playing for about ten hours.
“I didn’t know who I was before dance music. It defined who I was going to become, and all the ways that I would see the world” – The Blessed Madonna
K: What a night. You were probably delirious!
TBM: You don’t know this part of the story, Kylie … I’m also a really bouncy DJ and when I was done, I thought that something felt wrong on the back of my butt. I went into this little employee bathroom and I hopped up on the mop sink, looked at my butt in the mirror, and my jeans had taken the whole backside of my ass off. It was terrible. They had this hose – because it’s a mop sink – and I just sprayed the hose over my back. I was waiting for everybody to leave so that I could just be alone to come out. For as many times as someone has promised to tear me a new asshole, I think I’d done it for myself. But that was the inspiration for the song: “Start again, shut the blinds”.
K: I had not heard of that bit of the story, but it’s brought so much more meaning to the song now.
TBM: I’m gonna take you to Panorama Bar. I love you. I just love you.
K: You’re on the edge of all these releases, and it’s kind of amazing to be aware of that shift that’s happening. To have an album about to be released that you’ve lived is so hugely exciting. I mean, I always get as nervous as can be before every album release. As an outsider, I just feel so excited for you. And when I’m on it as well!
TBM: Thank you. It’s a lot of love.
The Edge of Saturday Night by The Blessed Madonna & Kylie is out now. The Blessed Madonna’s debut album, Godspeed, is out on 11 October 2024.
