Two Australian icons shared a stage in Brighton, England, on Friday (Aug. 1) as Kylie Minogue joined Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds during the band’s concert at Preston Park to perform their 1995 duet “Where the Wild Roses Grow.”
Minogue appeared midway through the Bad Seeds’ set for the murder-ballad duet, marking the first time the pair had performed the song together live since 2019, when Cave surprised the crowd during Minogue’s legends slot at Glastonbury.
Before that, the two sang it together in 2018 — the last time the Bad Seeds played the song live — as well as in 2013 and on several occasions in the mid-1990s following the release of Murder Ballads.
Minogue reflected on the reunion in an Instagram post after the show. “I’ll forever be your Wild Rose @nickcaveofficial,” she wrote, thanking the Bad Seeds and calling it a “wonderful crowd, wonderful night.” She also credited her white lace dress, complete with wild-rose embellishments, to Susie Cave — Nick Cave’s wife and the designer behind the fashion label The Vampire’s Wife.
Earlier that day, Cave and the Bad Seeds played a surprise rooftop set atop the city’s Resident Music record store, performing four songs. That set included “Train Long-Suffering,” a track from 1985’s The Firstborn Is Dead that had not been performed live in 27 years before the band revived it on their 2026 European tour, along with a cover of T. Rex’s “Cosmic Dancer” that Cave had previously only performed solo.
“Where the Wild Roses Grow” remains one of the most celebrated collaborations in Australian music history. Written by Cave and released as the lead single from the Bad Seeds’ 1996 album Murder Ballads, the duet cast Minogue as the doomed Eliza Day opposite Cave’s murderous narrator — a stark departure from her pop image at the time.
It became Cave’s biggest commercial hit, reaching No. 2 on the ARIA Singles Chart in Australia and No. 11 on the U.K. Singles Chart, and won the 1996 ARIA Award for Song of the Year. The accompanying video, which depicted Minogue lying in a river in a pose evoking Millais’ painting Ophelia, became a fixture on MTV and helped push Murder Ballads to the biggest commercial success of the band’s career.
Minogue, one of the most successful pop artists of her generation, has scored seven entries on the Billboard Hot 100 — including “The Loco-Motion” (No. 3) and “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” (No. 7) — and 11 titles on the Billboard 200, led by 2001’s Fever at No. 3. Her 2023 single “Padam Padam” won the first Grammy for Best Pop Dance Recording. Cave and the Bad Seeds, meanwhile, continue their 2026 European tour in support of their catalogue, one of the most acclaimed in modern alternative rock.
