Especially For You: A Review Of Kylie Minogue At MSG - Boy Culture : Covering Hot Men, Gay Issues, Celebrities, Movies, Music & More

(All images by Matthew Rettenmund)

I've only ever seen Kylie Minogue live once, in 2010, when she brought her arena show to the U.S. and squished it into the Hammerstein Ballroom here in NYC.

That's why I thought it was particularly cute when she said, on Night 2 of her Tension Tour at Madison Square Garden that she had been forced to say she hadn't done a proper NYC show since 2011 the night before, but could now say it had been, “Last night.”

About last night ...

I bought a fantastic front-row seat (end of main catwalk) to see Kylie months ago, and was shocked how quickly it came up. For Kylie, I'm sure “quickly” was the last thing on her mind — it took her 37 years to work her way up to MSG, and shew as emotion talking about it.

I took my place next to a nice guy I'd met at her autograph sesh a few months back (we'd randomly discovered we had side-by-side seats) and spent my time before the show started wondering if Madonna might show up as a guest or viewer. She didn't, but I did see the CockyBoys kings behind me.

I don't see too many large-scale concerts outside of Madonna. Usually, when I do see a woman (Taylor Swift's tour before last), I can't help but compare them to her.

But Kylie is her own thing. She's not trying to compete with Madonna, the show is remarkably spare — like the best Vegas show ever — and she has her own long history to consider when taking in how she has decided to present herself now that she is at an all-new peak Stateside.

The answer is that the Tension Tour is wildly misnamed, even if it is the name of her album. It's a tension-reliever, if anything, a total confection from beginning to end.

The set list is well-known to those who want to know it, but I hadn't really investigated, so I was pleasantly surprised after having heard from hardline Kylie fans overseas that they hated this tour (not really, but they were angry at song choices, cheap costumes and a rushed feeling) to discover she doles out many early-career, mid-career and current tracks.

And I didn't mind the stripped-down vibe. She looked great in all her costumes, and the only costumes that bugged me were colorful blobs that her dancers wore at one point, resembling those flapping creatures outside car dealerships.

Otherwise, it was slick and classy. She has a unique way of singing about sex and lust and keeping it saucy without making it feel dirty, she has great rhythm and she was in excellent voice. It was like a perfect package, one that didn't really leave me longing for anything.

I would have swapped “I Should Be So Lucky for “The Loco-Motion” and I think everyone needs “Your Disco Needs You,” but when I realized she was giving us “Better the Devil You Know” AND “What Do I Have to Do?,” I was over the moon. Those were, far and away, highlights for me.

As for my seats, I could not have been “Closer.” It was a treat to see her at work close-up, to be able to inspect how nimble and joyful she was — undoubtedly more so because she was achieving a lifelong goal of breaking the U.S. (She's even in a cameo on the series The Residence.)