Kylie Minogue tells us about Nick Cave and going viral with new ‘Fully Wrapped’ Christmas album
The pop icon tells us all about her hopes for Christmas Number One, plans for new music in 2026, what she'd change if she could go back to the '90s, and how Nick Cave "has her heart for life"
by Liberty Dunworth · NMEKylie Minogue has spoken to NME about the huge response to her new ‘Kylie Christmas (Fully Wrapped)’ album, as well as plans for new music in 2026, and if she would pursue another collaboration with Nick Cave.
The new album – now her 11th Number One in the UK – sees the Aussie pop icon revisit her ‘Kylie Christmas’ record in time for its 10th anniversary. Featuring her own take on classics like ‘Santa Baby’ and ‘It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year’, the 2015 album also featured original tracks, including ‘At Christmas’ and ‘100 Degrees’ featuring sister and fellow pop queen Dannii Minogue.
With the ‘Fully Wrapped’ edition, Kylie has added four brand new songs into the mix, including the club-ready ‘XMAS’, which has already become a hit with fans and sparked a viral dance craze.
Speaking to NME, the ‘Padam Padam’ hitmaker opened up about what it was like to see the huge positive response to the new song from fans, and revealed that she was caught off-guard by the immediate momentum that came with the dance trend.
“It’s been amazing. Like with all songs, once they go out into the world, all you want is for them to go out and have their own life,” she told us. “So now it’s pretty weird and amazing having people doing the ‘XMAS’ [dance on such a wide scale]. I think it’s going to follow me around forever!”
“I saw that a whole village in Devon made a video doing the ‘XMAS’ dance together,” she continued. “It was like [CMAT’s] ‘the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker’ trend, and it made me very emotional. To see straight away that it has connected with people and that it means something to them… It’s amazing.”
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Check out the full interview with Kylie below, where the chart-topping veteran also opened up about plans for new music, thoughts on collaborating with Nick Cave again, the race for Christmas Number One, and how she has evolved as an artist since the ‘90s.
NME: Hi Kylie, congratulations on ‘Fully Wrapped’! What was it like to revisit ‘Kylie Christmas’ 10 years after it first came out?
Kylie Minogue: “Everyone has been working hard [to make the ‘Wrapped’ version special] and there has been no time for rest. But the whole team is in there with so much love and good humour, so my takeaway is that the new songs have given the original tracks a bit of a glow-up. It feels like when you re-do a bit of your house and and hope other things will also shine in that new light. Dare I say, I think it’s worked!”
Did you find it easy to tap back into that same mindset that you had with the original album?
“It all felt a bit easier this time. It’s never straightforward to capture exactly what you have in your mind and make it work, but I remember the first time doing the album, it was such a huge production. We had to choose which originals to cover, we had to do the choruses, the choirs, the brass sections — everything!
“This time around, though, it was just me and three amazing mates. I would hang out with them and just love to be in their company. The whole process was so joyous that none of us wanted to go home after the sessions, we’d have to be like: ‘Oh yeah, but we do have lives and family and children… so it’s probably best if I see you tomorrow’.
“It was easier this time because [‘Fully Wrapped’] is all a bonus. The cake is already there, and if for some reason we couldn’t come up with anything new, we wouldn’t have done it, so it didn’t feel like there was pressure. The only pressure on my side was that I didn’t have much time… but when I listen to the songs now, it feels really good. It felt like Christmas, even if I was in the studio in tears sometimes because I was having really bad migraines!”
It has clearly all paid off as the album has reached Number One. Is part of you itching to get ‘XMAS’ to the singles top spot in time for Christmas too?
“It would be amazing, but I honestly did not think about that when we first went into this promo. I’ve been so focused on everything else, wrapping everything up and all the other mechanics, but now that we’re here… It would be nice. But also I’m cool with it regardless because it’s a very coveted spot and crazy things happen around Christmas, so I don’t think it is that predictable.”
Going into the new year, have you been thinking about doing any more music in 2026?
“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about it just quietly, in the background. With these guys [who I am working with now], we always talk about ‘Oh, remember this one we started and we really didn’t get to finish it’. That discussion is always in the background, and I will have a micro break over Christmas and come back to it. Making music is my hobby and it’s a happy place for me, so I will.”
Will it be music you wrote in the ‘Tension‘ era, or is it the start of a new chapter?
“Everything paves the way for the next thing. Where ‘Tension’ ended up was amazing because it had the mix of the PDA and really modern bangers, but I loved it because it was also balanced with the emotional heart. I like to stay very non-committal, even in my mind, about where I would go with new music. I don’t actually know how I could describe it.”
Speaking of new projects, did you see that Nick Cave had his book The Death Of Bunny Munro made into a new TV series. Naturally, you featured in the book so this show has your music in the soundtrack?
“Yes, but I haven’t seen it yet! Whatever it is, it’ll be wonderful for sure because he has my heart for life.”
It’s been 30 years since you last worked with him, is there any hope of you two joining forces on new music again?
“I don’t know because ‘Where The Wild Roses Grow’ was so beautiful, so iconic, and so unusual. Every part of it was unrepeatable as a moment in time. However, I would be really curious to know what we would do together, for sure!
“If we never did anything else together musically, that’s OK because then we can just [protect that first collaboration]. I care for that song so much and think he does as well, so I’ll always treat it so preciously. But it’d be interesting, wouldn’t it! There’s another thing on my to-do list!”
Around this time last year you revealed that you missed nearly everything from the ‘90s. To flip that on its head, are there things about yourself now that maybe you would have benefited from back then?
“There are definitely positives that have come from experience and from having a different type of voice. I don’t mean my singing voice, but in the way that my opinion comes out now, probably more than it did back then. Having the kit of experience makes a huge difference, and I really wanted that throughout my early years. I only started in ’87, so [the ‘90s were] still quite early years for me.
“I’m so proud that I’ve stood the course and earned that box of experience, but I still want to keep adding to it. During the early ‘90s I was still at Stock, Aitken & Waterman, and by the mid-‘90s I was with Deconstruction [and during that time] there was a change, especially in London, in how everyone was rolling in the music scene. It went from the late ‘80s/early ’90s with rave and house music, to all of a sudden it’s all about Björk and Garbage! I’m [proud] that I somehow managed to flirt with all of that.”
“[But I stand with those past comments] because I have seen some footage recently from the ‘90s at Real World Studios with Steve Anderson, and we weren’t on our phones. We had the whiteboard for writing lists and it felt like there was a youthfulness. That, I miss, and the sense of just throwing everything at it. I’d love to have a bit of that experimental side back.”
‘Kylie Christmas (Fully Wrapped)’ is out now via Amazon Music, and is available here.