Kylie Minogue has now achieved 10 No.1 albums in the UK, following the chart-topping result for Tension II on Friday (October 25).
Just over a year since the original Tension debuted at the summit, the follow-up made No.1 with opening sales of 35,235 units (17,818 CDs, 8,898 vinyl LPs, 2,162 cassettes, 4,086 downloads and 2,271 sales-equivalent streams), according to the Official Charts Company. The original Tension is heading for gold status with 96,532 sales to date.
Kylie Minogue is the only female artist to have secured UK chart-topping LPs in five consecutive decades, and she is only the third female solo artist to have 10 or more No.1 albums, joining Madonna and Taylor Swift. In addition, she is the third artist not from the UK or USA to achieve the feat, joining ABBA and U2.
The latest No.1 campaign marks the continuation of Minogue’s successful chart-topping partnership with BMG, which launched in 2018 with Golden, and continued with Step Back In Time: The Definitive Collection (2019), Disco (2020), Tension (2023) and now Tension II (2024).
Of course, Tension made a global impact for Kylie Minogue with lead single Padam Padam, which is on almost 168 million streams. The single peaked at No.8 in the UK and has 555,230 chart sales to date.
As the Tension II BMG campaign continues, alongside a huge tour in 2025 for Kylie Minogue, here Anna Derbyshire, senior director - marketing (new recordings), and SVP A&R UK Jamie Nelson reflect on the label’s journey so far with the Australian superstar and the impact of her 10th chart-topper…
BMG has released two Kylie Minogue albums in just over 12 months, has that been a big undertaking?
Jamie Nelson: “Tension has been really successful for Kylie, and with the tour being where it is, and with the success of Padam Padam, Kylie was really keen for the Tension era to continue. She was quite inspired in terms of music, so I think from her perspective it was important to dig further in. She managed to do it, creatively, really successfully. So it felt like the next logical step to get that music out.”
Was Tension II always part of the plan?
JN: “No. I mean, obviously there's always the conversation of repacks, for example. But really it came as much as anything else through the creative process of music – music was just evolving naturally, and she constantly creates. And once we sensed the amount of great music that was there, it felt logical to be able to move that into this next phase.”
Anna Derbyshire: “I think as well, conceptually, it came together quite smoothly. There were initial conversations about a repack, which is what we did on the last record, Disco. As Jamie said, there was so much great music, it was like, how do we make this make sense in the Tension world? And at the time, we all had horoscopes on the brain because of the lyrics on My Oh My, the track with Bebe Rexha and Tove Lo. On that track, Kylie says she’s Gemini, and that's the ‘II’ symbol. So we thought, okay, this is the sibling or the twin record of Tension. So visually and conceptually, it worked beautifully.”
What would you say about the BMG partnership with Kylie Minogue with five No.1s now?
JN: “Yeah, it’s something we're really proud of, because we feel there's been a real shift and that her time at BMG has been beneficial for us all. I think there's been a real evolution of the process of continuing to build and, creatively, she definitely got into a really good space over the last five, six years that we've been working together. We feel really proud of the work we've delivered. As ever, it’s Kylie’s vision in terms of the creative, but I do feel that we've done a great job at the label in terms of really developing the project. To see us deliver what is a fifth successful No.1 album is phenomenal.
“Plus, when you're looking at the numbers from when we started, pre that period of BMG, it was in a very different space commercially. So to see us doing the sort of numbers that we're doing now, it is really exciting. With the tour that's happening next year, 2025, it’s her biggest tour of the last 15 or 20 years. It’s a really important, significant milestone, and one that we’re really proud to have helped her achieve.”
She’s just as voraciously focused on being progressive and delivering exciting new music
Jamie Nelson
And as well as five No.1s with BMG, she also has 10 UK chart-topping albums in total…
JN: “That's pretty amazing. We are always amazed by her incredible longevity, you just don't find artists that have got the ability to stay relevant [like this]. And it's not purely the fanbase. What's really significant is that there's been a brilliant job done from Kylie in terms of being ambitious, to be able to get into markets that we weren't in before, or to look at collaborations in a different way, or to lean into different elements of technology in a way that that she'd hadn't before. I don't see many artists that have got the ability to reimagine and constantly adjust where they are, to make sure that they're connecting with audiences consistently in the way that she does. So that's probably, for me, the most incredible thing.”
The final sales result was below the original Tension, but are you happy with the performance for a companion album?
AD: “It’s a sequel, it's part of the same world. Obviously on Tension I, as we’re now calling it, there was the Padam effect, which was a phenomenon all of its own. So to have such a clear No.1 on the sequel companion piece is fantastic.”
The critical reaction is, if anything, better than Tension. Has this release really consolidated Kylie’s position in this dance/electronic space?
AD: “[The record] is getting critical acclaim from The Times and The Independent etc. Since she was first signed to BMG in 2018, the way in which she's perceived, the status that she has and the respect, actually, I think has grown inordinately.”
What was the A&R approach for this record?
JN: “It was quite a different process this time around, just because she was writing in a different way. She'd had her residency in Las Vegas over the last 12 months, so there wasn't the same amount of intense writing periods. We were being sent quite a lot of exciting ideas from elsewhere, so we were marrying that with her process as well. So it happened in a slightly different way than the normal way. Often, what we're doing is spending an awful lot of time working with one or two key collaborators and doing lots of core Kylie writing. This time there was a bit more additional song searching, plus there were the collaborations, much more in this record than we've done for a while. So there was Orville Peck, Tove Lo, Bebe Rexha and Sia, all these different artists that have joined ranks with Kylie on delivering music. So that was a bit different.
“With the process that we have together, there's always a bar where we try and make sure that we stay as high as possible. She's very obsessive about making sure that we deliver the quality. And it’s borne out when you sit down and look at reviews and look at the feedback from fans. This is not somebody who's dialing it in ever at any point. She’s just as voraciously focused on being progressive and delivering exciting new music.”
How have you seen Kylie develop creatively since the early days when you started working with her?
JN: “I first started working with her in 1999 [at Parlophone], it’s a long time ago. And the process was always the same, which is, first and foremost, the song is God. If the song's not amazing, then it doesn't get cut. A great song from outside will always trump a song that she's written, if she feels it's better, which is a really unusual situation to get in with artists. Normally they tend to hold a preference for songs that are theirs, but she doesn't. She was like that before, she's like that now.
“She'd always write, she's a great writer as well, so she brings a lot to the table there. The only real difference is that, obviously, you come with experience, and vocally she's absolutely on top of her game. She's learned how to make a lot of her recordings, she makes them at home now. She loves obsessing about making sure that everything's nailed with those things, so there's a real quality to the performance stuff that we get back. The general feeling at my end is that she's retained, over the years, her level and her high standards when it comes to delivering great music.”
So she's quite hard-headed, she's almost like her own A&R?
JN: “I think that's exactly how I would explain it. She A&Rs herself in that she's forensic in terms of making sure that we've covered all of the bases. There's nothing lazy in the process whatsoever. It's absolutely very intense, but great fun.”
From Golden and Disco, then what happened with Padam Padam, the US is now her biggest market
Anna Derbyshire
Now that the album's out there in its entirety, are there any tracks that are proving reactive that you might focus on?
JN: “Yeah, we've got one or two ideas at the moment. As ever, at this point, once you drop a record, it's really great getting fans’ reactions, getting data in, looking at all the different aspects of it. It's never purely down to 100% instincts. We're digging into that at the moment and working out what we've got. The beauty of the record is there's just absolute quality throughout it. So we’re not stuck for opportunities to take to radio.”
How did Padam Padam open things up globally for Kylie?
AD: “If you look at the run of dates in the US, it's remarkable, and Padam absolutely helped that. It was a deliberate tactic and strategy to increase her profile and her base in the US. From Golden and Disco, then what happened with Padam, the US is now her biggest market. That would probably surprise a lot of people.”
What’s next for Kylie in terms of more new music?
JN: “Let's be honest, she could do with a break, to some extent, not that she will get much of one. She's off to do the tour for pretty much all of next year. And then we'll regroup, and we'll be looking at whatever's next, I'm sure. And no doubt, whilst she's away, whilst she's touring, I'll be getting the normal WhatsApp messages about another idea!”
Read our Tension cover story with Kylie Minogue here.
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