Mostly recorded at home during lockdown, her 15th studio album also notched up the best opening week for any release so far in 2020 with 55,000 chart sales, the Official Charts Company said.

"That sounds crazy to me. I'm 52 years old," Minogue told Reuters of the five-decade record - an accolade she now shares with Bruce Springsteen - before it was announced.

Disco, in which she revisits her dance music roots, also marks Minogue's eighth UK number one album, taking her one ahead of Cliff Richard, Elton John and George Michael with seven apiece.

Speaking about the power of pop, Minogue said it can be a marker for people's lives.

"A lot of the best pop songs that seem so simple are the trickiest ones to do. There's no distraction. There's no tricks. It's just an amazing song," she said.

After making her name in hit soap opera Neighbours, Minogue burst onto the music scene in the late 1980s working with producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman.

Mike Stock recalled their first meeting in 1987.

As soon as she got behind the microphone "she was a star," he said.

Together they made four albums, with the first two - Kylie (1988) and Enjoy Yourself (1989) - also reaching number one.

"The first album we did was one of the best-selling albums of the whole decade," Stock told Reuters.

"I'm obviously very proud of that. Proud to have worked with Kylie who had lasted in the business - just to survive is an achievement. But she's doing brilliant."

Australian Associated Press