Hey y'all, DJ Louis here just dropping a preview of this week's Pop Panty on All Access episode,

which is about Kylie Minogue's 16th studio album, Tension, which dropped a couple of weeks ago.

Of course, this album was preceded by the smash hit Padam Pan Bam, which became a viral

gay club hit in America, but became a bona fide hit across the world, including being her first

top 10 single in the

UK in over a decade.

So there's a renewed, heightened interest about Kylie and about this album.

So I invited the critic Michael Craig onto the show to discuss tension with me.

And if you like this clip and you want to hear the rest of the episode, you can subscribe

at patreon.com slash pop pantheon or click the link in the show notes of this episode to hear the rest of this

episode plus at least three bonus episodes of the show per month and a ton of other perks.

So without further ado, here is a snippet of my conversation with Michael Craig about Kylie

Minogue's tension.

Kylie has now had with her lead single from this record, Paddam, Paddam, like her actual first, like smash hit in a long time.

And also a song that, in my opinion, just from where I'm sitting, has probably been the Kylie song that has gotten the most attention in this country since can't get you out of my head.

Yeah.

So what did you make of the paddam, padam, padam,opla? I mean, this was a huge moment. Kylie kind of shocked the world, I think, in many ways, by the success of this song. And it's obviously important groundwork for talking about the rest of this record. What did you make of the Padam phenomenon? And, like, what do you think about that song in general. The padam padamic. I think the pedamic.

I mean, the first time I heard it, I was like, this is bonkers.

Like, you know, it's one of those songs like she did with Slow and like, can't get you

off my head where you listen to it and you're like, this doesn't really make a huge amount

of sense. It feels like it's over before you've sort of got into it at first. And then after a while, I was like, actually, how short it is and how sort of economical it is and how little there is to it is like the genius of it. And then obviously, I just think, I mean, gay people, gay men, especially love a sort of inside joke and like a sort of language that they can use. Like it's a phrase that if you don't know it, you're either straight or like you're not worth speaking to or both. And so it became quite quickly. I mean, I remember watching... Honestly, those two things often go hand in hand. I remember seeing this thing on Instagram, like when it was really taking off in America, I get, you know, with TikTok and everything. And it was these two older gay guys being interviewed by like a younger gay guy and they were talking about, and the younger guy had no idea what they were talking about. And it was like they immediately sort of ostracized him and were like, you're going to look like such a fool when this goes online. And they were asking like other people that were walking by and they all knew what it was. And I was like, oh my God, this is like really becoming a thing because we live in a world now where it's, you know, monoculture doesn't really exist and like those water cooler moments don't really exist anymore. But this was like one of those moments where it felt like everyone was

talking about this song. And for someone who's been around for that long, who's, you know,

...