ORLANDO, Fla. — Kylie Minogue brought her upbeat brand of dancefloor pop to Orlando’s Kia Center on Sunday night, with a two-hour performance that demonstrated the qualities that have helped the global superstar maintain a career for nearly four decades: her natural approachability and her chipper optimism.

Perhaps, American readers, you haven’t heard of Kylie Minogue or have only dim memories of a cover of “The Loco-motion” back in the ’80s and a brief resurgence 20 years ago, thanks to the earworm la-la-la chorus of “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head.” She’s never quite hit the mainstream on our fair shores.

But to the rest of the world, the Australian-born singer, 56, is known far and wide simply as Kylie. She has sold more than 80 million records and is the only female artist to land No. 1 albums and a Top 10 single in five consecutive decades (the ’80s through the ’20s) on the U.K. charts. In 2024, Time magazine placed her on its list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

When she received a large cheer Sunday for asking who at the Kia Center was seeing her live for the first time, she gave a warm welcome to the newcomers.

“I also notice some of you who are OG,” she said, using modern parlance for “originals.” “We’ve been on a journey together.”

Count me among those OG’s: I can still recall staying up past my bedtime in my teen years to catch the music-video TV show where I first met Minogue, singing “I Should Be So Lucky.” I didn’t get to hear that nostalgic favorite on Sunday, but I could hardly complain: Minogue reached deep into her back catalog to pick out plenty of other wonders from those early days: A snappy “Shocked,” with a grinning Minogue doing the ’90s rap segment herself; a joyful “What Do I Have to Do,” with its anthemic repetition of “Love you! Love you!” and even a peppy, remixed version of “The Loco-motion.”

“We’re doing deep cuts here,” she joked with the audience at one point.

Songs from her latest albums, “Tension” and “Tension 2,” also were featured, including “Things We Do For Love,” which ended in a goodnatured step-kick dance line with her backing vocalists, and the opening “Lights, Camera, Action” which saw her descend to the stage in a swing.

Minogue’s appeal, though, goes deeper than her catchy hits and flair for fashion. She entertains in the same vein as Dolly Parton — not in musical styles, though Kylie has tried her hand at country and Dolly has dabbled in disco — but with pure likeability.

Like Parton, Minogue feels like someone you could talk to, and she still seems a little surprised — and more than a little grateful — that she achieved fame.

“OK, shivers, goosebumps… thank you so much,” she exclaimed after the first big roar from the crowd.

And she has the knack of, even when singing a sad song, making her listeners feel better. Like the old “Friends” theme song says, she’ll be there for you.

Minogue’s time-machine travels on Sunday took fans back through many of her eras, including a funky salute to her “Disco” album of 2020, with a giant mirrorball lighting up the crowd, and a heartfelt version of pandemic hit “Say Something.”

Dancers clad in black long coats and pointy headdresses — like futuristic coneheads — set an industrial atmosphere for the opening set, before later changing into colorful blow-up costumes and then creating stylish theatrical tableaux on a moving platform during “Can’t Get You Out of My Head.”

A theatrical setting also lifted “Confide in Me,” as Minogue swept across the stage in a long, black cloak through billowing fog while a film-noir style video played behind her, a red pulsing light adding to the tension of the song and scene.

Old favorite “Better the Devil You Know” featured additional chugging bass to propel the barnstormer. A fan was treated to a personal rendition of “Where the Wild Roses Grow.”

A segment of audience choices saw Minogue performing an a cappella snippet of 2020’s “Dance Floor Darling.” She gave herself a charmingly self-deprecating review.

“Fair to middling,” she said with a smile. “I give it a 6 … point 5.”

Opening act Rita Ora called Minogue “one of my biggest supporters.” Like Minogue, she is better known across the pond, where she was first British female solo artist to land 13 Top 10 songs on the U.K. charts. She dedicated “For You” to her duet partner on the original recording of the song, the late One Direction singer Liam Payne. And she effectively got the party started with thumping tracks like “Praising You” and “Lonely Together.”

That party feeling pervaded the evening, with lasers and streamers and multiple confetti drops and costume changes — the usual pop-concert trappings.

“The night’s gone so quickly, and yet I feel like I’ve known you all my life,” Minogue said toward show’s end. For me, and for many others, we have known her — or at least her music — as long as we can remember.

Her final number before two encores, recent global hit “Padam Padam” and crowd favorite “Love at First Sight,” was a transcendent “All the Lovers” from her 2010 “Aphrodite” album. After a personally rough couple of months, or is it years?, I felt a special kind of bliss wash over me during the sweeping chorus: The kind of radiant joy that only a perfect pop moment, in the hands of an expert performer, can deliver.

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