Kylie Minogue at the O2 review: a shot of glitter straight into the veins

Kylie Minogue knows what people want from her concerts. They want fun. They want to dance. And they want to leave feeling appreciated.

Minogue has been in the game for a while now; over three decades, she’s cemented her position as a music icon to be reckoned with, beloved by everybody from tweens to the King. On this, her Tension tour, she understood the brief. And she hit it perfectly, serving up three decades’ worth of hits like some kind of insane speedrun through the history of popular culture.

Essentially, this was Kylie: the Eras tour, and she came prepared, starting with her newer hits (Lights Camera Action, for instance) and segueing straight to the classics.

Barely ten minutes in, she delivered Spinning Around like some sort of glitter injection straight into the veins; the crowd’s energy levels soared into the stratosphere after that and didn’t really come down to earth until the gig had wrapped up.

Part of that was down to the set. Many of her biggest older numbers were given techno-lite remixes that kept the energy sky high and the fans dancing: In Your Eyes, Get Outta My Way, and On a Night Like This were all delivered on full blast.

The end effect was rather like being power-hosed in the face by pop – the perfect antidote to the gloomy weather outside. And it all looked gorgeous: all bright colours, impeccably choreographed backing dancing and minimalist staging.

Throughout it all, she kept up a running banter with the audience. “Oh my gosh,” she squealed at one point, catching sight of a waving sign. “This is your fortieth concert since 1991?”

Such is the love that Minogue inspires among her fans – and she gave it back a hundredfold. Every moment of this screamed fan service, from the roses she handed out to the crowd to serenading one woman with a few lines of her underrated Nick Cave duet Where The Wild Roses Grow (the woman in question looked like she was about to pass out. And that was before the hug).

She even took requests, speedrunning a couple of lyrics from her 1992 hit What Kind of Fool – and, even better, following it up with a seemingly-impromptu rendition of I Should Be So Lucky.

The crowd went mad for that, as they did for all the big hits she pulled out of her bag: so many that it boggled the mind and the memory.

There was a vampy, campy rendition of Confide In Me, which Minogue performed alone on stage in an all-black getup like she was delivering a James Bond theme song. We had the Loco-Motion, of course, which was delivered with the naffness on full blast and Minogue dressed up in an Eighties-style glittery jumpsuit that looked ripped straight from the set of Home and Away.

And, when she broke away from the relentless electronica, there were gems to be found: her country music-esque Dancing, for instance, which was delivered with full Dolly Parton panache, or her bouncy, twanging Things We Do For Love.

After two hours of head-spinning pop music, things closed out with a euphoric Can’t Get You Out of My Head. And fortunately for newer Kylie fans, there was still time for an encore. What better way to close things out with all-singing, all-dancing version of her comeback hit Padam Padam, before throwing things back one last time to her 2001 hit Love At First Sight.

As the confetti rained down, the arena fairly rattled with joy. Four decades into her career, she’s still got it: bow down to the reigning queen of feelgood pop.

The O2 Arena, tonight, and June 2-3; theo2.co.uk