Love at first sight as Kylie Minogue kicks off AFL grand final performance at the MCG

Wet weather be damned: Kylie Minogue has taken to the stage at the MCG looking as if she were on the Copacabana beach in Rio, wearing a tank-top and microshirts draped with a long fringe skirt.

She starts with Love At First Sight before launching into a medley of some of her greatest hits.

Minutes earlier G-Flip kicked off the pre-game entertainment with a tight two-song set (opening with The Worst Person Alive).

G-Flip knows how to command a stage, and it’s not just because they play the drums from up on that riser. The St Kilda-born singer and multi-instrumentalist just has tonnes of natural rock-star presence.

I caught a bit of the rehearsal the other day in an empty MCG, and it sounded terrific. There was a breeze blowing, though, and I did fear that those flames in the background might not just set the Bed On Fire, they might pose a risk to the singer’s hair. Not so today; if anything, the warmth might have been welcome.

The AFL has wanted Kylie to play the grand final for years. Asked why she had finally agreed to do it this year, Kylie said this week that it “just felt right”. She added that the late Michael Gudinski, founder of her label Mushroom (the Mushroom Group also owns Frontier), would “literally be doing backflips upstairs” as he watched on in approval (while also barking out a few orders about how she and her team ought to be doing things differently).

Performing today certainly feels like a big moment in a big journey from the girl from Camberwell who has conquered the world’s stages over her 38-year career in pop music.

“It’s led me back to centre stage at home in the most iconic venue for the most iconic game, an Australian game,” she said this week. “There’s just so much about this moment for me that’s hard for me to grasp, so

“I’m kind of in awe and wonder myself at this moment.”

This is not the first time she’s performed at the G, though. In 1998, Minogue was part of the massive lineup of artists on the bill for the Mushroom Records 25th birthday bash, playing a 20-minute set – roughly the same length as today’s show – in front of a crowd of 55,000.

She’s played plenty of other stadiums in her career – last year’s Tension tour saw her do 66 dates around the world, performing to 576,000 people and grossing $US78.4 million (around $110 million) – but with 100,024 tickets allocated for today’s game, this will be the biggest single crowd she’s ever played in front of by some margin.

After rehearsing earlier this week, the scale of it really hit her, she admitted.

“The MCG is gargantuan – and even when it’s empty it has this incredible energy,” she said. “[But] it’s also like a massive hug. It’s such a communal space that it did feel good out there.”