Kylie Minogue is officially our Christmas queen, scoring her first UK festive number 1 single.
The jolly holly crown had eluded Australia’s eternal chart-topper, 57, but with the winning 2025 spot, she’s jetissoned Wham! from their two-year topscore.
The triumphant track is XMAS – pronounced X – M – A – S – which comes with an alphabetised dance sequence to suggest it’s making a play for another gay anthem’s lunch.
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Kylie Christmas, the song was part of the updated, revamped Kylie Christmas (Fully Wrapped). Like its predecessor, the album is a chocolate box assortment of tracks, with some bumper additions.
There are the best bits of the original, including the collaborations of yore with Frank Sinatra and Kylie’s sister Dannii Minogue. Then, there are four newbies thrown in, including the banging romp XMAS.
Kylie celebrated the big news holding her Official Charts gong at golden hour somewhere that definitely isn’t here, presumably with a glass of chilled Kylie bubbly nearby.
When Metro spoke to Kylie ahead of her win, the intense Christmas race wasn’t troubling her. ‘I honestly haven’t been thinking about that,’ she told us. So how did she feel about having to go up against the Christmas queen Mariah Carey? ‘That’s like trying to stop a tidal wave,’ she said, pure sincerity.
‘MC will always be Christmas. But hey, we’ll see. It would make me feel like it’s 1988 again, which would be a lot of fun.’
Elsewhere on the new album, Kylie plays pretend at having a regular 9 to 5 with the cheeky track Office Party, even as she admits: ‘I haven’t had a day job.’ (This is rapidly caveated with the fair addition: ‘I haven’t stopped working all my life.’)
The new tracks offer a soundtrack for when we’re getting snozzled on Baileys over Christmas. But for Kylie, they might also be a gateway to a Glastonbury return.
It was only fitting when living icon Kylie took the legends slot on the Glastonbury stage in 2019, in what was a long-overdue debut at the Somerset festival after she had initially been slated to perform in 2005.
She was treated to a hero’s welcome back then, but she hasn’t ruled out another solid gold set at Worthy Farm – even if there is going to be a fallow year in 2026.
The festival break, which comes around every five years, gives the pastures a bit of respite from being underfoot a horde of wellies.
But if the Eavis family rang about getting something in the diary for 2027? ‘I would say yes. 100 per cent,’ she told us and other press, adding that she isn’t against doing the headline slot of 14 years prior. ‘I’ve done a lot of things upside down and the wrong way around.’
Without prompting, Kylie singled out the 2019 Pyramid Stage as ‘the gig of her life’, explaining: ‘Nothing in my experiences compared to Glastonbury. I think globally, it’s viewed that way.’
Even now, it’s clearly a pinch-me moment. ‘If you mentioned to me 10 years ago that I’d be doing… it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t compute,’ she smiled, a palpable twinkle in the eye.
‘To have an opportunity to really “Buckle the buckle”, as a French ex-boyfriend used to say. I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “I don’t know.”
‘I think he means to complete the circle. I like it, it’s cute. Buckle the buckle. That would be amazing.’
A cursory Google search tells me there aren’t any explicit rules against performing Chrimbo music at the festival…
Are you going to be bumping XMAS this Christmas?
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Yes!
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What about Wham!?
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X - M - A - S
Kylie Christmas (Fully Wrapped) is available to order and listen to now.
A version of this article was originally published on December 1.
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