Kylie Minogue too old for raunchy antics?

I looked up "Sexercize" on YouTube, and was offered mostly video tutorials on how to "work up a sweat at the gym, the club or in bed", featuring plenty of bombshells in microscopic exercise gear.

I was actually searching for the music video of Kylie Minogue's latest single off her newly-released 12th studio album Kiss Me Once, which comes four years after her last CD, Aphrodite.

But that should give you an inkling of what to expect from the Australian pop singer's new offering.

In short, the Red Blooded Woman goes wild, writhing on a fitness ball and a gymnastics pommel horse in blood-red stilettos and a Miley Cyrus-inspired leotard.

In between, the sexually-charged, soft porn-ish video is packed with plenty of sweaty, steamy girl-on-girl action.

Thanks a lot Minogue, now I just Can't Get You Out Of My Head, and for all the wrong reasons.

Needless to say, the Parental Advisory caution for the explicit content of this NSFW (Not Safe for Work) clip is certainly well-deserved.

The truth is, this is hardly earth-shattering coming from Minogue, who has had close to zero inhibitions when it comes to seducing the audience in her previous music videos.

But Sexercize is definitely her raunchiest and most controversial attempt to date - with a capital R.

One suspects she's doing it to make up for lost time, to perhaps remain hip and relevant in an industry saturated with hyper-sexual younger rivals like Cyrus, Rihanna and Lady Gaga.

At age 45, following a nearly three-decade career, one would have thought the time has come for Minogue to take it down a notch.

Shouldn't she be, ahem, too old for antics that the likes of Cyrus, RiRi and Gaga are increasingly guilty of?

Maybe the coach of reality TV singing shows like The Voice UK and The Voice Australia has been learning a thing or two from her sizzling label mates Rihanna and Shakira, after she ditched her manager and signed with US rap mogul Jay Z's Roc Nation last year.

FRISKIER IMAGE

The move has had a part to play in her friskier image, opening doors for her to collaborate for the first time with the likes of Pharrell Williams, Enrique Iglesias and Sia Furler (who wrote Sexercize).

It's no coincidence then that Kiss Me Once boasts three tracks with the word "sex" in them - Sexercize, Sexy Love and Les Sex. "We are not obsessed with sex or anything," Minogue told The Sun.

She said she's not even getting any action in real life - she had joked in an interview that "if you're talking about it a lot, you're not actually doing it".

The notoriously unlucky-in-love singer split with her Spanish model-boyfriend Andrés Velencoso last year, after a five-year romance.

Whether or not she's channelling all her pent-up eroticism into her music to make up for her lack of a sex life, the amount of buzz the Sexercize video has generated must be quite satisfying for Minogue.

In just two days, it has garnered more than two million views on YouTube, and substantial Internet backlash from dismayed fans and parenting groups.

Of course, her still-banging body and baffling ability to look even better with age also work in her favour.

I was so driven to distraction that I failed to notice what a terrible song Sexercize is and how mediocre her vocals still are.

Well played, Minogue, well played.

ashikinr@sph.com.sg

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