Droogs, Electro-Voodoo and Kyborgs: Pastiche, Postmodernism and Kylie Minogue Live (Critical Essay‪)‬

"Do you like what you see?" (Kylie Minogue, 'Spinning Around,' 2000). Given that her career has involved multiple incarnations and personas since its beginning in the late 1980s, it is little surprise that the Australian pop performer Kylie Minogue's concert performances have a distinctly postmodernist character. In a previous article, 'The Seven Ages of Kylie Minogue', I presented a chronologically-structured overview of Minogue's musical and visual performances, from her beginnings as a 'cute' pure pop performer, through her 'Sex' and 'Dance' phases, through to 'Gothic,' Camp,' 'Cyber' and 'Bardot' manifestations. In that article, I linked Minogue with postmodernist practices and cultural theory. This article picks up the Minogue cultural 'story,' and further explores Minogue's connections with postmodernism. However, the difference is that within this article I will focus exclusively upon her live performances, and particularly one case study, the KylieFever2002 tour that was undertaken to promote her 2001 Fever Album. Within this article, I will explore the ways in which that concert displayed a distinctive form of postmodernity in terms of its persistent cultural borrowings, and Minogue's active toying with her performative identity. Hence, I will link postmodernist theorizations of identity with Minogue's performative approach throughout the concert.