Kylie Minogue delivered on her promise of “the biggest spectacle” in her hometown at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Saturday.
The pop princess was headlining the AFL Grand Final pre-game entertainment with a high-flying show in front of more than 100,000 fans and millions more watching at home.
The former Neighbours star turned pop icon packed more than three decades of hits into a 20-minute set.
“A homecoming like this? I should be so lucky,” she told the crowd, as the letters K and M lit up in the stadium’s floodlights.
The show opened with a video montage of footage from Minogue’s Melbourne childhood, before she launched into Love at First Sight.
Then followed In Your Eyes, Get Outta My Way, On a Night Like This, All the Lovers and Spinning Around, backed by dancers, fireworks and multiple costume changes.
Kalkadunga songman William Barton joined her for a dramatic, orchestral-backed rendition of 1994’s Confide in Me, and G Flip tuned in on a rock-leaning Padam Padam.
After a fake-out ending on The Loco-Motion, Minogue re-emerged from a giant bedazzled football and soared through the air above the stadium to close on Can’t Get You Out of My Head.
In other football finals news, the planned concert by Tones and I at the rugby league grand final in Sydney next week was cancelled after the singer reportedly refused to guarantee she would sing her 2019 hit Dance Monkey. The League will instead distribute her rumoured AU$1 million (£532,000) fee to support grassroots rugby.
