For You, for Me

For You, For Me
North American tour by Kylie Minogue
Associated album	X
Start date	30 September 2009 (2009-09-30)
End date	13 October 2009 (2009-10-13)
Legs	1
Shows	9
Box office	US $3.10 million ($3.41 million in 2015 dollars)[1]
Kylie Minogue concert chronology
X Tour (2008–09) For You, for Me (2009) Aphrodite: Les Folies Tour (2011)

For You, for Me^[2] (promoted as KylieUSA2009) was the eleventh concert tour by Australian singer Kylie Minogue. This was Minogue's first concert tour in North America. The concert has received very favorable reviews from music critics. Despite previous criticism of touring this territory by Minogue and her management, the tour grossed over three million dollars. It was the follow on tour aiding her tenth studio album, and promoting her previous world tour, which didn't tour in North America.

Background

In 2002, there was speculation Minogue would bring her Fever tour to the U.S. and Canada, after the success of Fever and its singles in those territories. It was originally believed Minogue did not want to scale down the show for smaller venues but later revealed she was swayed by her management to not perform in the U.S. and Canada. However, Minogue did tour the U.S. with Jingle Ball, an annual concert festival produced on by KIIS-FM, visiting Boston, Anaheim, Houston, Miami, Philadelphia, New York City, and Seattle.^[3][4]

The tour was officially announced via Billboard on 6 May 2009. Minogue stated, "I’ve wanted to tour in America and Canada for years now and know that fans have been waiting a long time for this. I’m thrilled that the opportunity has finally arrived."^[5] Bill Silva (CEO of Bill Silva Presents) stated, "Kylie has such a successful career outside of North America that it has taken quite a while to find a window in her schedule for the U.S. and Canada. Her amazing fans in North America will be well rewarded for their patience when they experience her show and its entire spectacle."^[6] Minogue promoted the tour on the fourth hour of the Today Show in New York stating that she's always wanted to tour the US, but it was a constant battle with her manager. During an interview with BlackBook Magazine Minogue spoke about her fanbase in North America: "The fans in America aren’t great in number, but they’re great in spirit. And they’ve been so patient. I think I really shocked them when I said I was touring, because they’ve become accepting of the fact that it was never going to happen. But I meant it, all the years I spent saying I would love to tour the States" and what they should expect from the tour: "I decided not to go somewhere I’ve never been before, direction-wise, because American audiences haven’t seen my live shows for the most part. So we decided—and I guess it works well in these financial times—to bring with us a “best of” my different tours". Jean Paul Gaultier created some of the outfits for the show.^[7]

Minogue later commented on the tour, stating, "It was a micro-tour, but I’ve got to tell you it was so rewarding [...] It was a mission from the heart… It was like… setting my wallet on fire because basically it just made no financial sense to do it, but I just reached a point where I thought, ‘That’s it! I just wanna!’ I got a lot of reward from it. Right back to the heart, so it was amazing."^[8]

Setlist

Act 1

1. "Overture" (contains elements of "Over the Rainbow", "Somewhere" and "The Sound of Music")
2. "Light Years"
3. "Speakerphone"
4. "Come into My World"
5. "In Your Eyes"

Act 2

6. "Shocked" (Album and DNA Remix) (contains excerpts from: "Do You Dare?", "It's No Secret", "Give Me Just a Little More Time", "Keep on Pumpin' It" and "What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)")
7. "What Do I Have to Do?" (contains elements of the Keep On Pumpin' mix and excerpts from "I'm Over Dreaming (Over You)".)
8. "Spinning Around" (contains excerpts from and elements of "Finally", "Fascinated", "The Real Slim Shady", "Buffalo Gals", "Ride On Time" and "Such a Good Feeling")
9. "Better than Today"

Act 3

10. "Like a Drug"
11. "Can't Get You Out of My Head" ("Greg Kurstin Mix" along with excerpts from "Boombox" and elements of Blue Monday)
12. "Slow"
13. "2 Hearts"

Act 4

14. "Red Blooded Woman" (contains excerpts from "Where the Wild Roses Grow")
15. "Heart Beat Rock" (contains elements of "Red Blooded Woman", "Wow", " "Nu-di-ty" and "Slow", along with excerpts from "Mickey") (Dance Interlude) ^[9]
16. "Wow"

Act 5

17. "White Diamond Theme (AKA Rainbow Prequel)" (contains excerpts from various films including: "The Wizard of Oz", "Casablanca", "A Streetcar Named Desire", Sunset Boulevard, "All About Eve", "Beyond the Forest" and "Mommie Dearest", as well as quotes from Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn and Jayne Mansfield) (Video Interlude)
18. "White Diamond" (Ballad version)
19. "Confide in Me"
20. "I Believe in You" (Ballad version)

Act 6

21. "Burning Up" (contains excerpts from "Vogue")
22. "The Loco-Motion"
23. "On a Night Like This"
24. "Kids"
25. "In My Arms"

Encore

26. "Better the Devil You Know"
27. "The One"
28. "Love at First Sight" (Ruff and Jam US Mix)

^{[10][11][12][13]}

Notes

• The tour programme lists "On a Night Like This" as part of the setlist, right between "The Loco-Motion" and "Kids", but it was not performed at any of the shows.
• "Got to Be Certain" was performed a cappella on the 3 October show in Las Vegas, as the audience requested it. She also sang the first few bars of "I Gotta Feeling" by The Black Eyed Peas.
• A torch version of "I Should Be So Lucky" was performed in place of "The One" on the 4 October show at the Hollywood Bowl. The winning entry of the "Speakerphone" fan-created music video contest was shown before the concert started.^[14]
• "Your Disco Needs You" was performed a cappella on the 7 October show in Chicago, because the audience requested for it while other technical difficulties were being sorted out. It was also performed with the band and backing track on the 9 October show in Toronto during the encore before "Love at First Sight", and received much fan applause during the spoken French lyrics. It was performed a cappella again in place of "The One" during the 12 October show in New York City.
• A torch version of "I Should Be So Lucky", similar to the one done on her Intimate and Live Tour and on the 4 October show in Los Angeles, was performed during the encore section in New York City on 13 October, the final show of the tour.

Tour dates

List of concerts, showing date, city, country, venue, tickets sold, amount of available tickets and gross revenue

Date	City	Country	Venue	Attendance	Revenue
North America[15]
30 September 2009	Oakland	United States	Fox Theatre	5,280 / 5,592	$401,709
1 October 2009
3 October 2009	Las Vegas		Pearl Concert Theater	2,394 / 2,394	$222,265
4 October 2009	Los Angeles		Hollywood Bowl	8,108 / 8,504	$749,957
7 October 2009	Chicago		UIC Pavilion	4,021 / 4,021	$299,536
9 October 2009	Toronto	Canada	Air Canada Centre	7,679 / 7,837	$568,604
11 October 2009	New York City	United States	Hammerstein Ballroom	9,650 / 10,100	$853,150
12 October 2009
13 October 2009
TOTAL				37,132 / 38,448 (96.58%)	$3,095,221

Cancellations and rescheduled shows

7 October 2009	Chicago, Illinois	Congress Theater	This concert was moved to the UIC Pavilion

Critical response

For the most part, the tour received rave reviews. After being "stunned by the glitz and glamour of Kylie’s tour and the power it had to pull in celebs when she performed at the Palms", Vegas promoters even offered Minogue a complete residence for a show in the city.^[16]

• San Francisco Chronicle critic Aidin Vaziri gave the concert in Oakland a positive review: "It's impossible to describe the full spectacle of the Kylie experience - part Vegas extravaganza, part sci-fi adventure, all flesh. There were golden tigers, confetti showers, diamante-studded football players, digital explosions and Trojan warriors with elaborate plumes on their heads. Well, why not? [...] The fact that she fit it all into a relatively intimate venue was a marvel unto itself. The show seemed to have been designed to be visible from the moon, with large-scale video projections broadcasting studio montages of celluloid Kylie mouthing the words to the songs the real-life version was singing below. The stage swarmed with musicians, dancers and the occasional army of robots. Meanwhile, her wardrobe department seemed intent on making Lady Gaga wave a white flag. [...] Apart from a pair of middling ballads that served as a reminder that her relatively thin voice works best served with a generous heaping of bass, there were no major opening-night missteps. Rather, it was one thrill after another, especially for the fans who had waited so long for this moment."^[17]

• Rolling Stone critic Barry Walters also gave the concert in Oakland a positive review: "Minogue doesn’t possess vocal power, but, like Diana Ross, her precise yet joyous phrasing sets her apart from lesser, more self-conscious upstarts. [...] As made overt during a medley of Minogue’s Burning Up and Madonna’s Vogue, much of Minogue’s show picked up where Madge left off at her Blonde Ambition peak, a task attempted but not quite fulfilled by countless well-funded sirens. [...] The difference is that Minogue radiates a bliss that can’t be bought. Even in the midst of painstaking choreography, her sense of ecstasy is utterly of the moment." In some criticism of the audio effects, Walters noted, "...throughout a set that mixed tracks from her last three albums, import singles and unreleased material, her band and blankets of reverb often overwhelmed Minogue’s pop-perfect sighs. Several songs early in the evening were rendered almost unrecognizable." Walters praised Minogue's stage presence: "When necessary, Minogue can toss her tiny frame around with the agility of a professional dancer. Yet more remarkable was her poise: She made no unnecessary or ungainly movements, and at times seemed to be traveling at a speed slightly slower than gravity would ordinarily allow. At 41, she is infinitely more sexy than she was in her 20s. Her grace is improbable, yet all the more compelling for its mystery." Referencing an unexpected wave of bouncing Mylar pillows sent by fans towards the stage during her performance of "Wow", to which she responded by twirling one she grabbed "as if she’d just been handed a tremendous present", Walters said, "It takes a special kind of star to accommodate and make the most of an unplanned special effect, and Minogue is effortlessly, exactly that".^[12]

• Los Angeles Times critic Mikael Wood gave the concert a positive review: "What kind of show was Kylie Minogue's Sunday night debut at the Hollywood Bowl? The kind in which the dancers outnumbered the musicians, the backup vocalists had several costume changes and the headliner took the stage astride an enormous bejeweled skull as a small battalion of futuristic robots twirled beneath her. [...] Unlike Madonna or Lady Gaga, Minogue doesn't really trade in imperturbable cool or calculating power plays. Her act is a kinder, gentler spin on dance-pop divadom, and though Sunday's concert stop -- midway through her first-ever North American tour -- offered no shortage of self-aggrandizing spectacle, the effect was more welcoming than it was intimidating. Riding that sparkly cranium as it lowered from the ceiling, Minogue introduced herself not as a dictator or a goddess, but as a flight attendant on Air Kylie, here to serve our needs with style and speed. That she certainly did, zooming through nearly two dozen songs in just under two hours to the very vocal delight of her fans [...] Minogue managed Sunday to give her carefully calibrated arena-pop moves an uncommon degree of human warmth, whether she was stomping around the stage in thigh-high leather boots or cavorting with several slices of gym-rat beefcake in a simulated shower scene." Wood's only criticism of the show involved her "tedious ballad sequence inspired by Sunset Boulevard that found her adopting an Old Hollywood hauteur, which seemed at odds with the lovable character she'd spent the previous 90 minutes sketching out." Wood then finished with praise, noting that "...this is a woman who knows how to read a room [...] nobody appeared to be having anything approaching a bad time."^[18]

• Variety critic Andrew Barker gave the concert a mixed review: "Her Hollywood Bowl performance did little to explain why her brand of cosmopolitan dance pop has mostly foundered Stateside, nor will it finally sell her to American agnostics, but it nonetheless represented an impressively maximalist display of showmanship that satisfied her rabid, long-neglected fans. [...] Free of the irony and contrived confrontation of a Madonna performance or the Olympian ambition of a Beyonce, Minogue's show was charmingly unprepossessing in its aim to provide a surplus of spectacle. [...] To describe the rest of Minogue's material is to confront a series of contradictions: Her music is relentlessly superficial yet never middlebrow, stylistically heterogeneous but not exactly diverse, sexy but rarely sexual." On her vocals, he said, "Her voice tends toward tinniness and lacks depth, yet she's obviously proficient and can hit some very big notes when required -- and unlike many of her backing-track-assisted contemporaries, Minogue's vocals seemed to be entirely live." He criticized some segments of the show, saying "An aggressively energetic cabaret-style take on "Wow" late in the show finally crossed the line into cruise-ship chintziness, and the preceding setpiece, in which Minogue sang atop a pommel horse while half-naked male dancers in sequin-studded football shoulder pads cavorted quasi-pornographically around her, was uncomfortably bizarre," but praised the end of the show: "All the same, In My Arms and Love at First Sight, which closed the main set and the show, respectively, were irresistible. Both songs may be little more than empty calories, but they also represent the giddy apex of millennial dance pop, and the enthusiasm with which Minogue and the Bowl crowd belted them out suggests that the rest of America may not know what it's missing."^[19]

• Billboard critic Keith Caulfield gave the concert a glowing review: "Kylie Minogue knows how to make an entrance. For her first ever Los Angeles show at the Hollywood Bowl, the pop diva descended from the venue's famed arches standing triumphantly atop a giant metallic human skull. And that was just the beginning of the eye-popping, hits-filled run through Minogue's career that was replete with numerous costume changes, massive digital screens, dazzling laser displays and a hard working fog machine. [...] At her Bowl show, Minogue reached back far into her catalog, offering up her very first single, The Loco-Motion, as a sultry cabaret number while she also wowed the crowd with a dancetastic rendition of Can't Get You Out Of My Head. Let's be clear—this wasn't a lip-syncing showcase. Minogue sang live and was in fine voice throughout her set. [...] She has repurposed some of the best moments from her previous globe-trotting outings for her first U.S. tour—thus giving American concertgoers a taste of what they've missed all these years."^[13]

• Time Out (Chicago) critic John Dugan gave the concert a glowing review: "There was only one constant last night at the UIC Pavilion, a smiling petite blond with a gold microphone—and lasers. Otherwise, everything about Kylie Minogue’s first live show in Chicago changed completely about every 15 minutes—the dancers’ costumes, the lighting and bold graphics flashing on the vertical scrims, the Aussie diva’s wardrobe, the style of music—the whole theatrical scenario. In one two-hour show we got Barbarella-style sci-fi airline hostess (“Come into my World”), Stephen Sprouse-inspired ’80s acid-house flashback (“Shocked”), buff guys showering in a gym/bathhouse while Kylie sings on a pommel horse (“Red Blooded Woman”), cheerleaders with marching-band horns (“Wow”), military chic (“Like a Drug”), Hollywood starlet on chaise lounge flanked by rococo gold hounds (“White Diamond”), New Orleans brothel with Kylie in lingerie (a reworking of “Locomotion”) and occasional “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore” and video wall interludes—the whole night opened with echoes of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” [...] The 41-year-old bounced back from breast cancer surgery and chemo to tour more than 21 countries last year—and has honed her vox, stage show, banter and occasional dancing and punched things up with live horns, [...] finally ending with a confetti shower and “Love At First Sight.” For most of us, it was literally first sight—and Kylie, as small as she is, made it count." ^[20]

• Time Out (New York) critic Sophie Harris gave the concert a glowing review: "The show was as razzle-dazzle a spectacle as you could feasibly put on at Hammerstein Ballroom [...] The show most impressed in its less-hysterical moments. Confide in Me had Minogue supine on a chaise longue backdropped by a ravishing sepia image of NYC. A grown woman now, she looked elegant and relaxed in vintage mode; similarly, her voice really soars into the high notes in these moodier numbers. I Believe in You was lovely; beginning restrained and then blossoming into a string-strung, shimmering climax (complete with a shower of rose petals). [...] Key to Minogue’s charm is that she really seems to enjoy what she does."^[21]

• The New York Times critic Ben Ratliff gave the concert in New York City a mixed review: "The tenor of the show was household-name; the fact of the show was cult-artist. This made the concert — efficient, clobbering, expensive, generous, drenched in film and costumes and dancing — close to an alternate reality. [...] It’s a long story, how she has remained apart from the American post-disco line, but it boils down to Europop’s absolute foreignness: there is no Bronx in it. Ms. Minogue has studied Madonna for years, but maybe this country needs only one blonde, stadium-filling, high-camp, digital-burlesque artist at a time and Lady Gaga — who draws from both Madonna and Ms. Minogue — has dibs on that spot. Ms. Minogue’s voice never definitively dropped, like Madonna’s; she’s still comfortable in helium range. And while Madonna dealt in transgression nearly from the start, Ms. Minogue naturally circumvents the dark parts of desire. Between songs on Tuesday she was edgeless, posing no threat or subtext. She does enjoy-your-life music, no heavy message. [...] She had a live band, for what it’s worth — drums, bass, guitar and keyboards — though it all sounded like being inside a giant synthesizer. But her dancers, male and female, were invaluable. [...] Ms. Minogue is effective in complex static poses, at one with her garments; [...] But she was physical too, dancing as well as she could on high heels and walking more than once on the outstretched limbs of her dancers. [...] The concert was a stadium show intelligently compressed for 3,500 people, and that was why it worked."^[22]

• Entertainment Weekly critic Adam Markovitz gave the concert a glowing review: "Last night’s show at NYC’s Hammerstein Ballroom was a two-hour post-disco fantasia of strobe, bass, and glitter—an all-out spectacle worthy of her American fans’ pent-up adoration. Barreling through her sizable songbook, Kylie stepped into a cast of personae—a wind-up space princess, a stomping glam rocker, a pouting screen siren—each with its own over-the-top costume and set decor. Seven jumbo screens pulsed background images for each number. Hits old, new, and soon-to-be whipped the audience into a sustained frenzy, while rose petals and confetti showered the stage at key moments." He praised her vocals and personality on stage, noting that "...this was no exercise in Spears-ian auto-pilot pop. The size of the venue demanded audience interaction, and Kylie happily chatted with the crowd throughout, taking requests for songs and dance moves from audience members who had queued up as early as 2am that morning to be front and center for the show. She lavished attention on her band, including a three piece horn section and two unfeasibly gorgeous backup singers. Fan-favorite ballads like Confide in Me and a stripped-down I Believe in You became a showcase for her voice, a surprisingly solid soprano that usually gets glazed under thick layers of processing on her recordings. [...] The crowd roared their approval, a warm NYC welcome twenty years in the making. It would be a shame to make them wait that long again."^[23]

Broadcasts and recordings

In December 2009, Billboard magazine announced Minogue would release a live recording of her performance at the Hammerstein Ballroom. It contains all songs performed with the exception of "Better than Today", recorded for Minogue's next studio album. The album was released in digital format, only available to online digital media stores, on 14 December 2009.^[24]

Footage from the tour is included on the Special Edition DVD of Kylie Minogue's album, Aphrodite. It features the "White Diamond Theme", "White Diamond", "Confide in Me", and "I Believe in You".

On 3 May 2011, to celebrate the arrival of the "Aphrodite Live" leg of Kylie's Aphrodite World Tour to the United States, a digital EP was released. Besides including three songs performed by Kylie at the BBC's Live Lounge, it also featured two songs live from her 2009 concert at the Hammerstein Ballroom: "Confide in Me" and "Better Than Today", the latter being the only song not included in the "Kylie: Live in New York" album.

Personnel

• Director: William Baker^[25]
• Stage designer: Alan MacDonald^[25]
• Lighting designer: Nick Whitehouse^[25]
• Video director: Tom Colbourne^[25]
• Laser and effects designer: Lorenzo Cornacchia^[25]
• Musical directors : Steve Anderson^[25] & Sarah deCourcy

Band

• Band Director & Keyboards – Sarah deCourcy
• Backing vocals – Roxanne Wilde, Lucita Jules
• Bass – Jenni Tarma
• Drums (electric and acoustic) – Matthew Racher
• Guitar – Adrian Eccleston
• Producer, mixed and programmed by Steve Anderson
• Recorded by Gary Bradshaw
• Saxophone – Graeme Blevins
• Trombone – Barnaby Dickinson
• Trumpet – Graeme Flowers

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to For You, For Me Tour.

Kylie Minogue Albums Singles Videography Tours Filmography Awards and nominations Products Studio albums Kylie Enjoy Yourself Rhythm of Love Let's Get to It Kylie Minogue Impossible Princess Light Years Fever Body Language X Aphrodite Kiss Me Once Compilation albums The Kylie Collection Greatest Hits Hits+ Confide in Me Greatest Hits: 87–97 Greatest Hits: 87–99 Artist Collection Ultimate Kylie Confide in Me: The Irresistible Kylie Hits The Best of Kylie Minogue The Abbey Road Sessions Box sets Kylie: The Albums 2000–2010 Remix albums Kylie's Remixes Kylie's Remixes: Vol. 2 Kylie's Non-Stop History 50+1 Mixes Impossible Remixes Greatest Remix Hits 1 Greatest Remix Hits 2 Greatest Remix Hits 3 Greatest Remix Hits 4 Boombox Video albums The Videos The Kylie Collection The Videos 2 On the Go: Live in Japan Let's Get To... The Videos Live! Greatest Hits The Kylie Tapes: 94–98 Intimate and Live Live in Sydney Fever 2002 Body Language Live Greatest Hits: 87–97 Greatest Hits: 87–99 Artist Collection Ultimate Kylie Showgirl White Diamond KylieX2008 Hits Aphrodite Les Folies: Live In London The Best of Kylie Minogue Kiss Me Once Live At The SSE Hydro Live albums Intimate and Live KylieFever2002 Showgirl Showgirl: Homecoming Live Live in New York Aphrodite Les Folies: Live In London Kiss Me Once Live at the SSE Hydro Extended plays Money Can't Buy Darling Pink Sparkle A Kylie Christmas Concert tours Disco in Dream Enjoy Yourself Tour Rhythm of Love Tour Let's Get to It Tour Intimate and Live On a Night Like This Fever Tour Showgirl: The Greatest Hits Tour Showgirl: The Homecoming Tour X Tour For You, for Me Aphrodite: Les Folies Tour Anti Tour Kiss Me Once Tour Television and film specials White Diamond The Kylie Show Aphrodite Les Folies: Live in London Kiss Me Once Live At The SSE Hydro Notable acting roles Charlene Robinson Astrid Peth Books Kylie: La La La The Showgirl Princess K Kylie / Fashion Perfumes Darling Sexy Darling Pink Sparkle Related articles Dannii Minogue Stock Aitken Waterman Brothers in Rhythm William Baker Steve Anderson The Voice UK (3) The Voice Australia (3) Book Category Portal WikiProject