Kylie Minogue’s “Tension,” Er, Comes Across Like a Vibrator-Related Self-Love Anthem

Likely wanting to ramp up the special effects and overall “high-concept” nature of her latest video so as to at least visually one-up “Padam Padam” (since it’s all but impossible to do that sonically), Kylie Minogue brings us her second single from Tension…called none other than “Tension.” Although Minogue could just as easily be talking to/about a man in the song, it sounds, more often than not, as though she’s directing her own hand. As it wields a vibrator.

Almost as if to confirm that theory, Sophie Muller (who also directed “Padam Padam,” in addition to many other of Minogue’s videos) features a lot of different Minogues pointing at and nearly touching each other (delayed gratification makes for a more intense “release,” after all). These suggestive maneuvers transpire after an “original” Minogue enters something like a “pleasure dome” (except it’s square-shaped) bedecked with a blue neon line of light outlining its rooftop. An element of Little Red Riding Hood then quickly takes hold as we fully perceive the ensemble Minogue is wearing while she walks toward the light of the door beckoning to her from her place in the darkness of night. And that look is decidedly, let’s say, “Madeline-chic” (it’s the chapeau, really)—with more than a dash of Red Riding Hood at play. 

As she enters deeper into the “abyss,” a platinum blonde Control Room Kylie watches her on the screen before Muller quickly cuts to a TV Transmission Kylie, flickering in and out like so many static-y airwaves with her flaming red hair and shimmering silver dress. Confidently assuring, “I’m a star, babe-babe-babe/Do this all day-day-day/Cool like sorbet-bet-bet/​​Bet you can’t wait-wait-wait/Hands up on me-me-me/Hot like chilay-lay-lay.” Clearly titillated by all the food analogies, Madeline Kylie gets hot (like chili) enough under the collar to remove her scarf from her neck as Control Room Kylie keeps fiddling with her knobs (no innuendo intended). We then see Madeline Kylie sitting in front of a mirror removing her hat and tousling her hair as she coos, “Every day and every night/It’s the way I make you feel/Baby, there ain’t nothing better/And I could do this forever with you.” The fact that she’s gazing at herself in the mirror when she says this only adds to the notion that this is a self-love anthem…and one with more than occasional “vibratory” undertones.

Pointing at herself as Muller flashes to the three different versions of Kylie we’ve seen thus far, she then chirps the pre-chorus, “All night, touch me right there (doo-doo-doo-doo)/Touch me right there (doo-doo-doo-doo)/Touch me right there/Baby, break the tension.” By now, TV Transmission Kylie has busted out of the screen she was confined by and proceeds to dance salaciously as Control Room Kylie presses and adjusts her joystick with especial sexual flair. The 70s-esque motel room (sort of in the spirit of the Pink Motel from the “Padam Padam” video) that Madeline Kylie has been feelin’ herself in suddenly erupts into dance floor status, complete with the type of disco lights that Minogue so loves as the chorus urges, “Oh, my God, touch me right there/Almost there, touch me right there/Don’t be shy, boy, I don’t bite/You know where, touch me right, ta-ta.”

Taking us back to the hallway where Madeline Kylie first went down the rabbit hole, so to speak, now Control Room Kylie appears there too, demanding, “Call me Kylie-lie-lie/Don’t imita-ta-tate/Cool like sorbet-bet-bet (cool like sorbet-bet-bet)/I’m your esca-a-ape/I’m your vacay-ay-ay/Hot like chilay-lay-lay.” And, by the way, all this talk of sorbets and chili feels like nothing more than a recipe for having a terrible time in the bathroom. Surely something less diarrheaic could have been used to rhyme with sorbet. Even if she had said, “Hot like gravay-vay-vay” (a.k.a. “gravy”). Oh well. 

It appears none of the Kylies have concerns about bowel movements on their mind as they dispense with mirror-based narcissism altogether and decide to sit at a table across from each other and repeat the mantra, “Every day and every night/It’s the way I make you feel/Baby, there ain’t nothing better/And I could do this forever with you.” Then, as if to prove how much they love themselves (and, probably more to the point, touching themselves…you know, to release tension), the two seem to use the power of that self-love to conjure an entirely new Kylie. This one billable as Showgirl Kylie (a nod, no doubt, to her 2005 Showgirl: The Greatest Hits Tour). Appearing in miniature with her bright yellow feather boa, feather headdress and coordinating sequined leotard, she then gets swapped out in favor of TV Transmission Kylie before Muller briefly goes back to mini Showgirl Kylie kicking her legs up in delight on the table. A flash to the control room then shows more switch flipping, complete with a red button that reads: “Touch Here.”

It’s at this point that Minogue harkens us back to a lyric she used in 2007’s “The One,” during which she uses the simile, “Close to touch/Like Michelangelo”—this being an obvious allusion to The Creation of Adam. And in the video for “Tension,” she mimics that same pose of God reaching out to touch his finger to Adam’s, with TV Transmission Kylie in the God role and Madeline Kylie in the Adam role. All the while, Control Room Kylie keeps furiously pressing, pushing and switching her buttons before an array of more Kylie facsimiles appear to dance in silhouette next to TV Transmission Kylie. Then the facsimiles of mini Showgirl Kylie appear, too…just before everything gets buckwild and all the different Kylies seem to coexist in the same room within this “house of fantasies.” One in which Kylie can love on herself literally all she wants and apparently make no subtle allusion about touching herself “right there” to get her…satisfaction. It all smacks of The Divinyls’ “I Touch Myself,” as a matter of fact. And yes, it seems as though when Kylie thinks about “you” (read: herself), she does touch herself. Exclusively in this remote square-shaped building that leads somewhere much deeper. 

Walking out of the structure at the end of the video, Madeline Kylie no longer has her hat on (hat snatched instead of wig, one supposes), and her body flickers in and out with shimmery static flair that emulates TV Transmission Kylie. Clearly, she absorbed some of the orgasmic good energy from her other selves in there. After all, who knows how to please a woman better than, well, herself?