{"id":1090,"date":"2026-07-26T11:04:58","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T11:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1090"},"modified":"2026-07-26T11:04:58","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T11:04:58","slug":"padam-padam-separates-the-party-people-from-the-homebodies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1090","title":{"rendered":"\u201cPadam Padam\u201d Separates the Party People from the Homebodies"},"content":{"rendered":"
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You\u2019re reading Songs of Summer<\/strong>, a series on music and memory.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Are there two Americas, too many Americas, not enough? The plaint changes with the day. Identity is a serpentine target on the dance floor\u2014a place where, in its most romantic evocation, how you catch a groove and to what says something about who you like to fuck and how. And if you haven\u2019t danced lately (and, no, weddings don\u2019t count) then oof<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Read more Which Way Should the Democratic Party Go Now?<\/a><\/p>\n

Or maybe you\u2019re straight\u2014the kind of straight person who saw the club and its music as a means to the end we call marriage, coupledom. Some weeks ago, three married people and the pop singer Halsey, engaged since 2024, filmed themselves, for a podcast, having a depressing conversation about partying, during which the two men in the room\u2014producer Benny Blanco and rapper Lil Dicky\u2014confessed that their bygone participation in the activity was never in the interest of fun but in that of finding someone who would end their search for a partner to settle down with.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Last year, Blanco\u2014credited with college-bar bangers such as 3OH!3\u2019s \u201cWant,\u201d Katy Perry\u2019s \u201cTeenage Dream,\u201d Kesha\u2019s \u201cAnimal\u201d-era catalogue, those Gym Class Heroes singles, \u201cNo Sleep\u201d by Wiz Khalifa\u2014married the artist and actress Selena Gomez. Blanco said that she asked him if he missed \u201cthe party life.\u201d As relayed to the pod, Blanco answered in the negative. \u201cThe point of the party is to find you,\u201d he said he told her. \u201cThe party\u2019s over. I won the party.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not all straights agree, but I know my people. I live in the Midwest, a region that spawns homebodies aplenty. It\u2019s that age-old aging-out adage: going out is for the immature and single, twinned conditions that can be escaped, if things go according to plan, before one\u2019s twenties are out. Bemused pity is directed at those whose path deviates.<\/p>\n

Seasonally, the internet bats around derision for party people of a certain age. \u201cThis is not your brat summer, you are 32, start a stretching routine,\u201d the journalist Matthew Zeitlin posted on X a few years ago. It seems almost beyond remark that the author of said summer, Charli XCX, a self-described \u201c365 party girl,\u201d was turning thirty-two that August. On the same internet, a contingent crows about going \u201cgranny mode.\u201d One America breaks off here. The comedian Jaboukie Young-White put it thusly in a recent interview he gave to the performer Ziwe: \u201cI see straight discourse of people being, like, \u2018Imagine being thirty-two in the club.\u2019 And I\u2019m, like, \u2018Baby, we\u2019re at the after afters.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Poems Edgar Allan Poe Wrote While Lost in a Corn Maze<\/a><\/p>\n

Which explains those hits whose seeming ubiquity is only seeming\u2014the solid, danceable pop music that barely penetrates the eardrums of those self-professed thirtysomething old folks. \u201cPadam Padam,\u201d from 2023, is one such hit, performed by Kylie Minogue, an Australian artist with lots of them. I feel a pang when discussion of an artist is led by their being slept on, but it must be said that Minogue, one of the most fabulous showgirls alive, beloved by the world at record-breaking levels, has never entirely caught on among Americans. (\u201cIs it the relentlessly upbeat disco aesthetic that throws us off?\u201d Sasha Frere-Jones asked New Yorker<\/em> readers in 2009. \u201cIs it the costume changes?\u201d)<\/p>\n

But not all Americans. There are grand pockets of this nation where merely knowing of Minogue is not enough, where the 2001 album \u201cFever,\u201d whose nu-disco perfections did stick in the States, is just the shallow end. Minogue\u2019s music \u201chas become a hallmark of the gay club, even in its mass dilution in the 21st century as these spaces (justifiably) opened up to others,\u201d the journalist Joan Summers wrote in Jezebel<\/em>, in 2020. \u201cMinogue understands that she rules over these club floors, and takes care in her position as dance commander to a legion of sweaty homosexuals.\u201d Three summers ago, in 2023, the anthem on offer was \u201cPadam Padam.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As with much catchy and catching dance pop, \u201cPadam Padam\u201d strains a poptimist\u2019s affinity for sourcing meaning from lyrics. The story is (what else?): \u201cI\u201d spot \u201cyou,\u201d eyes meet, a dance begins. Frisson ensues. From there, who knows? \u201cPadam Padam\u201d is about desire and recognizing desire\u2014\u201cI know you wanna take me home\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0\/ and take off all my clothes,\u201d Minogue sings\u2014with no arc past the present situation. Nobody, narratively speaking, even leaves the club. And who\u2019s to say that the \u201cyou\u201d in the opening verse is the same \u201cyou\u201d once the chorus rolls around? It\u2019s pleasure teased and suspended, which is not the same as putting life on hold. The lines, sung in Minogue\u2019s hypnotic, featherlight timbre, are punctuated by the titular neologism \u201cpadam,\u201d a novel onomatopoeia of the heart that gives the track its straight-faced stupidity.<\/p>\n

In the video, Minogue and her troupe, costumed in red, prance, slither, and preen in an abandoned junk yard and other inexplicable locales as the chorus thumps onward. In an interview with the magazine attitude,<\/em> amid the song\u2019s ascent into a Pride mainstay the year it came out, Minogue delighted that it had \u201ctaken on a life of its own.\u201d \u201cPadam\u201d had \u201cbecome a noun, a verb, an adjective.\u201d At moments in the song, Minogue pitches the word down, a cavernous yawn resounding far from the lub-dub of forever. It\u2019s sexy and sounds like fun.\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more What I Imagine Strangers Think About Me When They See Me Reading a Book in Public<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lauren Michele Jackson on the song \u201cPadam Padam,\u201d by Kylie Minogue, which belongs to a category of danceable pop music that barely penetrates the eardrums of thirtysomething folks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1089,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-songs-of-summer"],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cPadam Padam\u201d Separates the Party People from the Homebodies - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1090\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u201cPadam Padam\u201d Separates the Party People from the Homebodies - 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