An ominous, Poltergeist-like television set, a dimly lit motel room and a Kylie drenched in deep red dancing eerily in an abandoned diner make up the opening shots of Ms. Minogue’s music video for Padam Padam, her comeback single that took the world by storm this summer.
This phantasmagoria of gloom and mystery screams Twin Peaks, David Lynch’s supernatural 90s show about small town murders and malevolent spirits operating in parallel dimensions.
The aforementioned images in Ms. Minogue’s music video, directed by longtime collaborator, Sophie Muller, are indeed all motifs, visual cues and Macguffins drawn directly from Lynch’s television series.
“Kylie Minogue’s new music videos are a phantasmagoria of gloom and mystery that scream Twin Peaks.”
One wouldn’t normally associate a dance-pop summer banger to the darkest television series ever made but there’s a sinister undercurrent to the song that recalls the Slavic synth-pop of Belarusian dark wave band, Molchat Doma and 80s Russian beatnik artist, Viktor Tsoi.
Minogue continues paying homage to Twin Peaks with her new music video for Tension, the follow-up single to Padam that dropped earlier last week, that is also directed by Muller.
Like its predecessor, the new single is an electro-pop stomper with a dark undercurrent thus making it perfect fodder for a Lynchian music video.
We see an everyday Kylie Minogue entering an alternate, red dimension where her evil doppelgänger confronts her to a dance-off.
Similarly, in Twin Peaks, the protagonist Detective Cooper confronts his evil doppelgänger in a demonic, crimson colored realm known as “The Red Room”.
Of course the striking difference between Ms. Minogue’s music videos and Twin Peaks is that her videos are nowhere near as dark as the show pays tribute to. She merely flirts with the horror elements of the show. Kylie Minogue is after all, Australia’s forever sweetheart.
Perhaps the most tantalizing Twin Peaks reference in Tension are shots of Kylie wearing a simple, one colored dress dancing by herself under strobe lights entranced by the music playing.
Diehard fans of Twin Peaks are familiar with “Audrey’s Dance”, a surreal, recurring scene in the show wherein the character Audrey wearing a simple, one colored dress – you guessed it – dances by herself in a bar entranced by the music playing.
Audrey’s Dance, Twin Peaks
Like her sovereign Madonna, Minogue reinvents herself with every album era. As such, we’ve had Bubblegum Kylie, Disco Kylie, Indie Kylie, Country Kylie and now – Lynchian Kylie?
We should be so lucky.
