Kylie Minogue has opened up about her experience with cancer over 20 years ago, saying that it is “still with [her] today”.
The Australian pop icon was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, which forced her to cancel her planned headline performance at Glastonbury that year, as well as some other live tour dates. She was 36 years old at the time.
Minogue, now 57, later revealed in 2008 that she had been “misdiagnosed initially”. In 2023, the singer explained that she was still trying to “process” surviving the disease after undergoing surgery and chemotherapy.
“It’s trauma, and any trauma resides within you,” she said at the time.
Now, in a new interview with BBC News, Minogue has spoken again about the long-lasting impact of her cancer journey.
When reflecting on her first receiving the diagnosis, she explained: “Where do I even start? Shock.”
Mingoue continued: “You’re trying to understand something you’ve never thought about before. It’s a crash course. It’s very deep and extended, and it’s still with me today in many ways.”
The star was speaking to the BBC to promote her “intimate” three-part new Netflix documentary, titled Kylie, which arrives on the streaming platform tomorrow (Wednesday May 20).
“In the end, I just had to take the plunge and really open myself up a little more,” Minogue explained of looking back on some difficult periods of her life in the doc. She said she’d been approached “many times” previously about making a film, but “always said no”.
“If not now, when?” she added.
Minogue is set to release a brand-new single tomorrow, ‘Light Up’, to coincide with the arrival of her Netflix three-parter.
NME last caught up with Minogue late last year, when she spoke about the possibility of new music in 2026.
“I’ve been thinking about it just quietly, in the background,” she told us. “With these guys [who I am working with now], we always talk about ‘Oh, remember this one we started and we really didn’t get to finish it’. That discussion is always in the background, and I will have a micro break over Christmas and come back to it. Making music is my hobby and it’s a happy place for me, so I will.”
She added that the material would likely not follow the dance-pop sound of her last albums ‘Tension’ and ‘Tension II’, telling NME: “I like to stay very non-committal, even in my mind, about where I would go with new music. I don’t actually know how I could describe it.”
After cancelling her bill-topping set at Glastonbury in ’05 due to her cancer diagnosis, Minogue finally made it to Worthy Farm in 2019 for the coveted ‘Legends Slot’ on the Pyramid Stage.
In 2020, she explained that the performance “felt like this massive acknowledgement of me as a performer”, having previously said her Glasto slot wasn’t “good enough”.
Last December saw Minogue make UK chart history as her festive single ‘Xmas’ landed at Christmas Number One.
