And the beat goes on…
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[8]
Ian Mathers: It’s kind of simultaneously both the most and least surprising thing in the world that Kylie would have a hit in 2023. Having heard of the title before hearing the song I never would have guessed it was onomatopoeia for a heart beating (and a very not-fun part of my psyche points out to me every time I listen that “Padam” is not how I’d represent what it sounds like they’re singing here in text), but the abstraction suits a song that always feels chilly and in control however horny and passionate the subject matter is. It’s a pretty strict machine Kylie’s driving these days, but she gets a lot of mileage out of it.
[8]
Will Rivitz: Art often requires its context to make sense, but context does not so much justify “Padam Padam” as it does fully stitch it together from thin air. In its moment in time, the song was a two-month fever dream, bare skin and heavy-pour vodka sodas and nitrate fumes united by camp sincerity and knowing winks, “padam” as a statement of purpose and clarity. By itself, the song blows over in a light breeze, an immediately dated EDC mainstage reject immediately forgotten if lightning had not struck. On one hand, “Padam Padam” is so inextricably interwoven with the fever dream of this past summer that the climate it ushered in by necessity makes it essential; on the other hand, this is Kylie frickin’ Minogue we’re talking about, and the standards she’s set for herself demand a song that can stand on its own.
[6]
Peter Ryan: Arguably one of the progenitors of memeability, Kylie has certainly understood it far longer than it’s been a thing. Some memes make better songs than others though, and after a little breather after this summer of Padam I feel like I hear it more clearly — synths that I wish were crisper, a clattering chorus that gets muddled to my ear, and — both in single and extended editions — a bridgeless wonder. “Shivers & cold champagne” is up there for Kylie place-setting, but I prefer this kind of thing from her when there’s a little more to it.
[6]
Josh Winters: As someone who has spent much of the past few years as a hermit, I ended up avoiding “Padam”‘s reign over Pride month quite naturally. I don’t know what it was like for the gays, theys, and babies who weren’t there for the fever she spread with “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” in 2001. To me, this is typical Kylie: a well-traveled wanderer slinking her way into our common ear to get to the heart of our most primal sensibilities. This time, the dart landed on the bullseye, giving her a viral sensation that could work as a FIFA World Cup theme, Eurovision entry, aforementioned Pride anthem, any other opportunity for collective enjoyment you may be thinking of. For those who have reduced “Padam” to Another Basic Bop and were banging their heads against the wall over the summer as to WHY THEY CAN’T ESCAPE THIS SONG… well! You hear it and you know.
[8]
Rachel Saywitz: Did we actually like this song in May, or were we that desperate for a song of the summer pop hit? Regardless, “Padam Padam” is cute, if not entirely forgettable. There’s something kind of “robot sexy vixen” about it, which allows me to excuse bland verses like “And we don’t need to use our words / Wanna see what’s underneath that T-shirt.” The chorus is no doubt the track’s standout; Kylie’s minor third “padam” gives off a false hesitancy that’s commanding in its naiveté, and is even more convincing knowing the woman singing it. I don’t think “Padam Padam” the song will be in our collective consciousness a year from now, but the phrase most definitely will.
[6]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I dismissed the “Padam”-mania of June 2023 as a Commonwealth-country bout of exuberance — but then I remembered I lived in Canada now and felt obligated to check it out. On further examination, this bangs exactly the right amount. It’s not a revelatory, best-of-the-century reinvention of the core principles of dance music, but it’s not just “good for someone who’s been making music since Bob Hawke was in office” either. Most dance pop artists in Kylie’s lineage would kill for a track as well-struck as this. It’s a fascinating exercise in tension and release, a song lifted up from generic dancefloor filler by Kylie’s mastery of the form.
[7]
Vikram Joseph: For a song so evidently catchy and meme-able, “Padam Padam” looks surprisingly threadbare up close. It certainly hints at some of Kylie’s most iconic moments, in particular the motorik future-pop of “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head,” but it doesn’t seem to aspire to the same delirium, instead content to be slinky and understated. It has strong production values and a distinct sense of atmosphere, but the line between being minimal and lightweight is a very fine one — “Padam” is more than serviceable as wallpaper, but as an image in itself is oddly lacking in pleasure.
[6]
Will Adams: For the longest time I thought the line in “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” went “boy, your love is a song I think about.” The concept of the one you’re yearning for being like a song endlessly looping in your head just made sense. What made even more sense is said song materializing as mesmerizing Euro-pop with a wordless la-la-la hook. Realizing what the actual lyric was years after the fact didn’t diminish my love for it, but I wondered if that essence could ever be captured again. In 2023, I got my answer: “Padam Padam” burst into the world, and with just two-syllables, burrowed into our brains forever. The hallmarks of its predecessor were all there, namely, that hypnotic quality that refuses to leave you, asking a very simple question — “padam?” — and boom: you’re experiencing love as a song you think about.
[9]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: The Kylie Minogue songs I love pull you into her current state of mind. In “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” it’s the way she convinces you of her infatuation via sustained melodies–“set me free,” “stay forever and ever” — before it fully materializes in the onomatopoeic hook. Here, I’m left to do the heavy lifting, the song all good and fine for bopping around but with none of the release, nothing resembling palpable sensuality. I don’t want pop songs or dancefloor crushes to be things I have to think about. And even when I am thinking about this track, I’m left even more disappointed: It lacks the chic sophistication of her artsier ’90s works, the extravagant camp of her other Eurovision-y songs, the mesmerizing arrangement of the superior 2023 single “Tension.” Worst of all, it doesn’t even fail in spectacular fashion.
[3]
Jibril Yassin: Easily one of Kylie’s best hooks since the last best one.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: I wrote at length elsewhere about the ruthless efficiency of “Padam Padam,” and how much knowing Ina Wroldsen wrote the song unlocks it. How many pa-da-dams can I take? Apparently a lot!
[8]
Brad Shoup: I like this because it sounds like sex — unlike “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” which sounds like business-class air travel. The synthline warps with anticipation; the pitched-down padams keep things a lil goofy. Lostboy and Wroldsen have so thoroughly written a one-night stand, they’ve even covered the following days’ afterglow.
[8]
Jonathan Bradley: Sure, when Kylie goes out, she wants to go out dancing. I’ve heard her attempt this disco revival any number of times over the past 20 years; it’s not clear why this should be the one that hits. Even as far as heartbeat bops go — the notion that an aortal thump could be a dancefloor beat is not new — “Padam Padam” is particularly anemic.
[4]
Anna Katrina Lockwood: What a breathtakingly perfect pairing of song with performer. Mononymous Australian legend Kylie brings a deftness of hand to the breathy minimalism of “Padam Padam” borne of her decades of experience in her niche. Much like Kylie’s indelible “Can’t Get You Out of my Head,” the meat of “Padam Padam” is a perfectly deployed arpeggiator, building complexity without adding weight. It’s both lighter than air and grounded in the physicality of the bassline, precision calibrated for moving your body. The lyrics are a bit goofy, but this is a woman who made an extended phrase of “la la la” ad nauseum into a vocal riff for the ages, so they work just fine. The only thing I dislike is the sub-three-minute runtime of the single edit–the ending feels abrupt, and wrong to my ears. Heck, I could even go for a longer version than the extended four-minute version–god knows Kylie can handle it.
[9]
Alfred Soto: To argue that Kylie Minogue has spent thirty-five years (!) distilling her essence to this song’s title doggerel would upset no fan. She could try harder, you can also argue: 2020’s “Say Something” was my pandemic winter jam. But if she wanted to get my ass shaking she could not have tried less.
[7]
Nortey Dowuona: This would’ve been ignored back in 2010 when it was actually groundbreaking, and millennials are now nostalgic for the Obama administration (which you really shouldn’t be). When the dynamic drum programming sparks to life during the first chorus, then slides through the second verse, it gets cut off by the 4/4 kick thumping like a racing heartbeat, then slips back down. That couldn’t have happened then, since building to a massive drop was the only idea allowed (until Disclosure came through and crushed the buildings). Maybe it’s actually 2013 nostalgia, but 2013 wasn’t long enough for nostalgia.
[7]
Joshua Lu: When this song first dropped, I was reminded of “Timebomb,” a similarly straightforward bop that felt focus-tested to be played on loop at the WeHo Barry’s Bootcamp, replete with generic lyrics and an anonymous vocal performance from Kylie. “Padam Padam” is elevated, however, by the dark, gloopy slap house instrumental, making each listen feel like a slow descent into a swirling tangle of velvet and strobe lights. The sound suits Kylie remarkably well.
[7]
Dorian Sinclair: I put off listening to this song for ages for the silliest possible reason, which is that I wanted to maintain my delusion that an Edith Piaf cover had inexplicably taken over Gay Twitter. My partners eventually convinced me to listen to the real track though, and while it may not be Piaf, it’s a great, slinky dance number. Give me a moody, sinuous melody over a throbby synth beat, and I’ll get on the floor — Kylie claims another victim.
[8]
Alex Clifton: I can’t actually figure out a way to write an elegant, coherent review for this song because I love it so much, so: THIS SLAPS!!!!!!
[9]
Aaron Bergstrom: The “sad banger” (happy music, sad lyrics) is such a time-honored pop staple that it gets NYT coverage. “Padam Padam” is fascinating because it’s a rare example of the opposite. The lyrics are boilerplate club-night fantasy, but the undercurrent of darkness running through the track is unmistakeable. It’s built on ever-so-slight dissonance, ominous in a way that you ignore at your own peril. Its not quite Kylie’s telltale heart, but she’s the only one who can tell you how this ends.
[7]
Oliver Maier: Classic, clinical Kylie in a contemporary coat of paint. It’s easy enough to imagine someone else singing this, it’s just hard to imagine liking it as much.
[9]
David Moore: This would be the blurb where I’d share my thoughts on “AI vocals,” while stubbornly insisting on calling them something less snappy and more cumbersome like machine learning tools instead. But alas, this is not KylieAI (Grimes is trying that; so far it appears not to be a disaster). Just goes to show that you can get all the unsettling, impersonal, not-quite-there-ness of machine learning with a good old-fashioned celebrity work ethic and a joyless but brutally effective chorus that makes you wonder why this singing disembodied head is asking you to take off its “clothes.”
[7]
Leah Isobel: I was thinking recently about Britney Spears (as I usually am). Specifically, I was thinking about how — despite the comparisons to Madonna that followed her around for the boom years of her career — she was much more of a Kylie Min-analogue. Both women center embodied pleasure and the search of it in their work; both favor specific and brilliant deployments of texture and persona over technical vocal skill; neither seemed to ever go out of her way to court critical favor. (Well, Kylie tried it once.) The difference, though, is that where Britney’s persona is guileless, Kylie knows. Her work is animated by the gap between the innocence that her songs’ lyrics suggest and the omniscient, unearthly confidence that she projects as a vocal presence, a confidence that allows her to literally transcend the limits of the body and sing from the perspective of song itself. Song desires only to transmit itself, to arc across the globe from satellite to satellite, from ear to open ear; this is its purpose, its sole dispensation. From this perspective, all of humanity begins to blur into a shapeless, featureless, consuming mass: when Kylie delivers “You look a little like somebody I know,” the gap between “somebody” and “I” renders the lyric as two separate statements. You look like somebody, anybody. I know. In Kylie’s hands, song flattens; it is not a possibility space, but a negation space, in which people become interchangeable, sellable images. It is the void at the heart of the world, reaching out to grasp. It hears. It knows.
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