Proving that female pop stars only get better with age (even if Madonna already did that starting as early as 1998), Kylie Minogue is having a very productive year. It started with an underrated summer anthem called “My Oh My” featuring Tove Lo and Bebe Rexha, then continued with a feature on The Blessed Madonna’s “Edge of Saturday Night.” With her latest single of 2024, however, Minogue is officially paving the way for the release of Tension II, her follow-up to 2023’s Tension. Although an “addendum” to the latter, Tension II is sure to have enough additional bops in the vein of “Lights Camera Action” to make the record worth “buying” (tangibly or otherwise). As for the phrase itself, while Lana Del Rey might have been known to repeat it a few times in partial Spanish (“lights, camera, acción”—a phrase originally taken from a demo called “Put Me in A Movie”) during “High By the Beach,” it is Britney Spears who Minogue channels the most in terms of the video’s meta concept, directed by Sophie Muller.
For, just as it is in Spears’ Dave Meyers-directed “Lucky” video from 2000, Minogue is merely playing a character in “Lights Camera Action”—though viewers are initially made to believe that she really is some kind of espionage mastermind as we see her sitting in a “Madame X” type of environment, complete with a map of the world hung up behind her. One that she approaches with her “obey everything I say” pointing stick to indicate to one of her lackeys what she plans on dominating next (by design, presumably, she aims her stick in the direction of her native Australia). So it is that we’re initially lulled into this “world of international intrigue” (complete with the black and white film used for this part of the video) led by Minogue until, at the thirty-five-second mark, she breaks character and yells, “Cut!”
Minogue then appears flustered and dissatisfied with her performance (probably much the same way Taylor Swift does while self-directing her videos) as she demands to reshoot the scene. It’s an instant that immediately recalls the actress version of Spears in “Lucky” breaking her own character after the director shouts, “Cut!” at which time the actress allows herself to go back into diva mode by seething, “Finally! We’ve done it fifty million times.” After this audible irritation, viewers are allowed to see the behind-the-scenes of everything and everyone that goes into making a set such a believable “reality.” The same goes for “Lights Camera Action,” as the camera pans backward away from Minogue and then whips around at the forty-nine-second mark to reveal the innerworkings of the sound stage in color. By this part of the song, too, the rhythm has picked up even more (courtesy of producer Lewis Thompson), augmenting the rapid-fire intensity of the flashing lights of the various cameras, further amplified by the presence of photo umbrellas.
“Lights Camera Action” then majorly serves “Lucky” again in terms of Minogue playing two versions of herself (as opposed to, say, Halsey trying to create an ersatz shot-for-shot remake of the video). In this case, the photographer and the photographed subject. Observer and object. In the next segment, Minogue the Actress/Object appears in a robe and curlers (somewhat reminiscent of a certain Taylor Swift look in “You Need To Calm Down”) as she sits in her director’s chair studying lines. This, too, is in keeping with the style of Spears the Actress’ busy, harried state in between takes during “Lucky.” Minogue takes it one step further by staring at herself in her vanity mirror and practicing her fake cry.
In the next scene, Minogue, all dressed in espionage-ready black again and looking like the “sexy spy” she was playing in the first part of the video, proceeds to walk down a track as massive, industrial-grade fans blow wind behind her. The continued message? All glam is manufactured, everything is artifice. But, unlike Britney in “Lucky” (with such resigned lyrics as, “It’s time for makeup/Perfect smile/It’s you they’re all waitin’ for”), Kylie isn’t sad about that. Indeed, she seems ready to own her fame in a way that Chappell Roan would never “deign” to do. As both star and director of her own career. This much is played up again when the same Minogue we saw walking down the track is also shown behind the camera that’s set up for the tracking shot that will follow her.
Thus, although Minogue might be referring to the dance floor as usual when she sings, “And this place is the space where I let it go” (how very “I know a place where you can get away/It’s called a dance floor”) it is the act of performing itself that she highlights in the video with these lyrics. Elsewhere adding, “And I hate to be waiting, so hold the door/I got shades on my face and I’m looking like Lagerfeld’s in Vogue.” Here, the “in Vogue” part may very well have a double meaning. For while Lagerfeld might literally be “in Vogue,” there was also a time when he was more “in vogue,” before his insufferable qualities were deemed too cancellable by modern standards (though Anna Wintour never got the memo).
No matter to Minogue, apparently, who also makes another Madonna allusion (apart from “vogue”) by name-checking Jean-Paul Gaultier via the lyric, “I look stellar tonight/My armor is by Gaultier/It’s one hell of a ride/Make sure you know you wanna play.” In this moment, Minogue could just as easily be addressing anyone (like the aforementioned Roan) seeking fame at all. Because, if the “Lucky”-esque video is anything to go by, one has to be willing to be pushed and pulled in a million different directions—many of which prompt an inevitable difficulty with deciphering the real from the fake.
To that end, Minogue gleefully acknowledges a kind of willful detachment from “reality” (whatever that means anymore) as she belts out in the chorus, “Here I go/Tuning in, tuning out/All I want is the noise/Turn it up, turn it loud/Till you ain’t got a choice/We’re turning sinful tonight/It’s about to go off/Tell me, can you feel it?”
So it is that she saves one of the most fanfare-laden scenes for last—dressed in a caution tape-inspired dress (with caution tape all around her as part of the set design, naturally) while a mound of glitter falls ostensibly “from the sky” (this also being another very “Lucky” sort of image). Minogue’s pièce de résistance in terms of lending the same kind of meta cachet that Spears does to “Lucky” is finishing the video with a scene of her actress self in a “watching the dailies” type of movie theater as she appraises her performance—the one shown in the very first part of “Lights Camera Action.”
Needless to say, she’s quite pleased with it. Probably far more than the eponymous Lucky was with her own…despite winning an Academy Award. This being, perhaps, the mark of a fundamental difference between overconfidence and insecurity when it comes to how certain celebrities deal with fame.
