Kylie Minogue Hopes You Have a Merry ‘Latex Christmas’ With Her Holiday Re-Release

As we rapidly approach the end of 2025, Kylie Minogue is finally slowing down for just long enough to look around.

“Yeah, I am at the tail end of what has been a mahoosive year,” she tells Billboard, as she lets out a much-needed exhale. “I cannot really believe what a ride I’ve been on, and I don’t know how I did it, either.”

For the better part of 2025, Minogue was on the road with the Tension Tour, her biggest global arena trek since 2011’s Aphrodite: Les Folies Tour. The 2025 shows — in celebration of her spotlight-reclaiming albums Tension and Tension II — saw the pop phenom make a triumphant return not only to live stages, but to a level of broad cultural recognition.

Yet even after a career-spanning, globe-trotting tour, Minogue still wasn’t quite ready to settle down. So, over the course of a few studio sessions, the singer crafted Kylie Christmas (Fully Wrapped), the 10th anniversary reissue of her 2015 holiday album. On the latest version of the project, the singer offers four brand-new original holiday offerings, while still managing to keep both the spirit of Christmas and the spirit of Tension in the balance.

As she looks at how the project came together, Minogue is still in a state of disbelief. “It’s something of a Christmas miracle that that we got this done, if I’m being realistic with myself; I went in three different sessions in three gaps of three days each in London, in varying states within a world tour,” she says. “You know, sometimes you don’t want to take your foot off the pedal too much anyway, and this all felt like icing on top of the cake.”

The new tracks see Minogue weaving in sounds and colors she didn’t have the chance to feature on her 2015 album — “Hot in December” brings sharp electropop synths to the table, while “Office Party” gives fans a taste of jazz laced with tongue-in-cheek, HR-compliant innuendos (“I’ve never had a traditional job in an office, so I’m full of wonder about the office parties,” she laughs).

The idea, Minogue explains, was to try and blend her own sonic palette with classic Christmas fare without watering down either sound. “We were in kind of tension headspace, and it felt like too much of a jump to go from the world that I’d been inhabiting for this year to fluffy Christmas music,” she says. “So I was like, ‘What’s a latex Christmas like? How do we do a slight power merge of these two worlds?’”

The track that unlocked that sound is “XMAS,” Minogue’s Amazon original, turbo-pop dance anthem that’s equal parts “YMCA” and “Hot to Go.” Ever since releasing Kylie Christmas a decade ago, Minogue says that she’s had the chorus of her new holiday anthem rattling around her head, and the 10th anniversary of the project finally gave her an opportunity to “exorcise” the melody from her mind. “I just got to the point where I was like, ‘this cannot live in my head for another ten years,’” Minogue says. “Whether it’s good or bad or whatever, I needed it out.”

Working with her longtime guitarist Luke Fitton, Minogue began ironing out the melody of the verses in the late 2010s via voice notes the two would send back and forth. Finally booking a studio time together amid her Tension Tour, the pair worked alongside Richard Stannard and Duck Blackwell to finally bring the song to life in a single session.

“I guess I’m very thankful for that experience now, because [working with] those guys meant I would just say stuff that I might have only thought before,” she says. “But I could say, ‘This is something, this verse has something missing,’ and they’d just get it. It was incredible.”

The timing for Minogue’s re-release feels particularly apt, as holiday music surges back onto the Billboard charts in time for the end of the year. With Christmas music becoming such an integral part of our annual cultural consumption, especially in recent years, Minogue understands the appeal of a familiar cadre of sentimental songs becoming undeniable hits each year: “I mean, it’s dark at 4:00 p.m., so I get wanting a little more light!”

But when it comes to reinterpreting long-standing classics — as she did on her original Kylie Christmas album with tracks like “Santa Baby,” “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” and others — Minogue says the annual holiday resurgence provides a unique test for artists looking to leave their mark on the holiday season.

“How true to the song do you stay, and where’s the wriggle room to make it your own?” she asks. “And it’s the same for artists and musicians and vocalists interpreting classics, whether it’s holiday songs or standards or show tunes; it’s an interesting and healthy challenge you get to attempt.”

While Minogue is never one to shy away from a good challenge, the singer says that with her Tension era neatly wrapped up and her Christmas album finally out, she’s “definitely taking a break” for the first time in a few years.

“It’s nothing spectacularly wild, but I definitely will be taking stock at the end of this year; I have a feeling I’m gonna be an emotional wreck come New Year’s Eve, in a good way,” she says. “But already, I’m starting to think, ‘What comes next?’ Because you know that there’s always going to be a ‘what’s next.’”