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Kylie Minogue
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Kylie Ann Minogue, OBE ( born 28 May 1968) is an Australian pop singer-songwriter and occasional actress. She rose to prominence in the late 1980s through her role in the Australian television soap opera Neighbours, before commencing her career as a pop artist in 1987.
Signed to a contract by British songwriters and producers Stock, Aitken & Waterman in 1988, she achieved a string of hit records throughout the world. Her popularity waned during the early 1990s, leading her to part company from Stock, Aitken & Waterman in 1992. During the mid to late 90s, Minogue distanced herself from her earlier work and attempted to establish herself as a credible and independent performer and songwriter. Her projects were widely publicised, but her albums failed to attract a substantial audience and resulted in the lowest sales of her career at the time.
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Kylie Ann Minogue, OBE ( born 28 May 1968) is an Australian pop singer-songwriter and occasional actress. She rose to prominence in the late 1980s through her role in the Australian television soap opera Neighbours, before commencing her career as a pop artist in 1987.
Signed to a contract by British songwriters and producers Stock, Aitken & Waterman in 1988, she achieved a string of hit records throughout the world. Her popularity waned during the early 1990s, leading her to part company from Stock, Aitken & Waterman in 1992. During the mid to late 90s, Minogue distanced herself from her earlier work and attempted to establish herself as a credible and independent performer and songwriter. Her projects were widely publicised, but her albums failed to attract a substantial audience and resulted in the lowest sales of her career at the time. She returned to popularity as a pop artist in 2000, and became well-known for her elaborate music videos and expensively mounted stage shows.
In Australia and Europe, Minogue has become one of her generation's most recognisable celebrities and sex symbols. In Australia, after being dismissed early in her career by some critics, she has been widely acclaimed for her many achievements. Minogue returned to performing and recording in the late 2000s after a period of convalescence, and was awarded with an OBE in 2008 for services to music. She has sold in excess of 60 million records.
Childhood and beginnings of a music careerKylie Minogue was born in Melbourne, Australia, the first child of Ron Minogue, an accountant of Irish ancestry, and Carol Jones, a former dancer from Maesteg, Wales. Her sister, Dannii, is also a pop singer, and her brother, Brendan, works as a news cameraman in Australia.
The Minogue sisters began their careers as children on Australian television, and from the age of twelve, Kylie appeared in small roles in soap operas such as The Sullivans and Skyways, before being cast in one of the lead roles in The Henderson Kids. She gave her first singing performance in 1983, on the weekly music programme Young Talent Time which featured Dannii as a regular performer. Dannii's success in this program overshadowed Kylie's acting achievements, until Kylie was cast in the soap opera Neighbours in 1986.
In Neighbours Minogue played the character of Charlene Mitchell, a female garage mechanic. As stated in The Guardian, "Her appeal at first lay in her unapologetic ordinariness... she played an oil-smudged mechanic with no desire to better herself. Charlene was happy to spend her life grappling with the intestines of greasy cars." A story arc that created a romance and eventual marriage between her character and that played by Jason Donovan culminated in a wedding episode in 1987 that attracted a large audience of 20 million viewers.
Her popularity in Australia was demonstrated when she became the first person to win four Logie Awards in one event, including the "Gold Logie" as the country's "Most Popular Television Performer", with the result determined by public vote.
Recording and performing career
Stock, Aitken and Waterman: 1987–1992
During a Fitzroy Football Club benefit concert with other Neighbours cast members, Minogue performed "The Loco-Motion" and was signed to a recording contract with Mushroom Records in 1987.
Released as a single, and retitled "Locomotion", the Australian recording spent seven weeks at number one on the Australian music charts, and was the highest-selling single in Australia for the 1980s. Its success resulted in Minogue traveling to London with Mushroom Records executive Gary Ashley to work with Stock, Aitken & Waterman. They knew little of Minogue and had forgotten that she was arriving; as a result, they wrote "I Should Be So Lucky" while she waited outside the studio. The song reached number one in the UK and Australia and was a hit in many parts of the world. Her debut album Kylie, a collection of dance-oriented pop tunes, entered at number two on the British album charts, and then went to number one and stayed in the British charts for more than a year. It sold over seven million copies worldwide, with most sales occurring in Europe and Asia, and it contained six successful singles. In the United States and Canada, the album did not sell strongly, however the re-recorded version of "The Loco-Motion" reached number three on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, and number one on the Canadian Singles Chart. "It's No Secret", released only in the U.S., peaked at number thirty-seven in early 1989. In Japan, "Turn It Into Love" was a massive number one single, peaked at #1 on the Japanese International Chart, where it stayed for 10 weeks. In late 1988 Minogue left Neighbours to concentrate fully on her music career. Jason Donovan commented "When viewers watched her on screen they no longer saw Charlene the local mechanic, they saw Kylie the pop star."
A duet with Donovan, titled "Especially for You", was a major success in the United Kingdom in early 1989. "Especially for You" was also the first Kylie Minogue single to sell over one million copies in the UK (the second was "Can't Get You Out of My Head"). The critic Kevin Killian wrote that it was "majestically awful... makes the Diana Ross, Lionel Richie "Endless Love" sound like Mahler." She was sometimes referred to as "the Singing Budgie" by her detractors over the coming years. Chris True's comment about the album Kylie for Allmusic suggests that Minogue's appeal transcended the limitations of her music, by noting that "her cuteness makes these rather vapid tracks bearable."
Her follow up album Enjoy Yourself (1989) was a success in the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia and Australia, and contained several successful singles (including the UK number-one "Hand on Your Heart"), but it failed throughout North America, and Minogue was dropped by her American record label Geffen Records. She embarked on her first concert run, the Enjoy Yourself Tour, in the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia and Australia, where Melbourne's The Herald Sun wrote that it was "time to ditch the snobbery and face facts — the kid's a star."
Rhythm of Love (1990) presented a more sophisticated and adult style of dance music from Minogue and also marked the first signs of rebellion against her production team and the "girl-next-door" image. Determined to be accepted by a more mature audience, Minogue took control of her music videos, starting with "Better the Devil You Know", and presented herself as a sexually aware adult.
Pete Waterman reflected that the song was a milestone in her career and that it made her "the hottest, hippest dance act on the scene and nobody could knock it as it was the best dance record around at the time."
The singles from Rhythm of Love sold well in Europe and Australia and were popular in British nightclubs where Minogue started to be regarded as fashionable by the older audience she had targeted. When "Shocked" reached the British Top 10 in 1991, she became the first recording artist to place their first thirteen single releases in the Top 10. In May 1990, 22-year-old Minogue performed her band's arrangement of The Beatles's "Help!" before a crowd of 25,000 at the John Lennon: The Tribute Concert on the banks of the River Mersey in Liverpool. Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon offered Minogue their thanks for her support of The John Lennon Fund, while the media commented positively on her performance. The Sun wrote "The soap star wows the Scousers — Kylie Minogue deserved her applause".
After recording a fourth album, Let's Get to It (1991), Minogue had fulfilled the requirements of her contract and elected not to renew it. She had often expressed the viewpoint that she was stifled by Stock, Aitken and Waterman, and later compared the experience to her time with Neighbours, saying all they wanted her to do was "learn your lines... perform your lines, no time for questions, promote the product".
Deconstruction: 1993–1998Minogue's subsequent signing with Deconstruction Records was highly touted in the music media as the beginning of a new phase in her career, but the eponymous Kylie Minogue (1994) received mixed reviews. It sold well in Europe and Australia (where the single "Confide in Me" spent five weeks at number one.) Subsequent singles, "Put Yourself in My Place" and "Where Is the Feeling?" were top twenty hits in the UK.
Australian artist Nick Cave had been interested in working with Minogue since hearing "Better the Devil You Know", saying it contained "one of pop music's most violent and distressing lyrics" and "when Kylie Minogue sings these words, there is an innocence to her that makes the horror of this chilling lyric all the more compelling". "Where the Wild Roses Grow" (1995), was a brooding ballad whose lyrics narrated a murder from the points of view of both the murderer (Cave), and his victim (Minogue), and its success demonstrated that Minogue could be accepted outside of her established genre as a pop artist. It received widespread attention in Europe, where it reached the top 10 in several countries, and acclaim in Australia where it reached number two, and won ARIA Awards for "Song of the Year" and "Best Pop Release". Following concert appearances with Cave, Minogue recited the lyrics to "I Should Be So Lucky" as poetry in London's Royal Albert Hall "Poetry Jam", at the suggestion of Cave, and later credited him with giving her the confidence to express herself artistically, saying: "He taught me to never veer too far from who I am, but to go further, try different things, and never lose sight of myself at the core. For me, the hard part was unleashing the core of myself and being totally truthful in my music".
Impossible Princess (named after a poetry collection by artist Billy Childish) featured collaborations with musicians such as James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore of the Manic Street Preachers. Largely a dance album, its style was not represented by its first single "Some Kind of Bliss", and Minogue countered questions that she was trying to become an indie artist. She told Music Week, "I have to keep telling people that this isn't an indie-guitar album. I'm not about to pick up a guitar and rock." Billboard magazine described the album as "stunning" and concluded that "it's a golden commercial opportunity for a major [record company] with vision and energy [to release it in the United States]. A sharp ear will detect a kinship between Impossible Princess and Madonna's hugely successful album, Ray of Light". In the UK, Music Week gave a negative assessment, "Kylie's vocals take on a stroppy edge ... but not strong enough to do much".
It became the lowest-selling album of her career in the UK (where it had been hastily retitled Kylie Minogue in the wake of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales), but was her highest-selling album in Australia since her debut album, with sales boosted by a highly successful live tour. In reviewing her show, The Times wrote of her ability to "mask her thin, often nondescript voice with musical diversity and brittle charisma and genuinely great pop songs by any standard", and a live album recorded during her tour, titled Intimate and Live, was successful in Australia.
She maintained her high profile in Australia with live performances, including the 1998 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, the opening of Fox Studios in Sydney in 1999, where she performed Marilyn Monroe's "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend", and a Christmas concert in Dili, East Timor in association with the United Nations Peace-Keeping Forces.
Parlophone and middle career: 1999–2005
Minogue and Deconstruction Records parted company and following a duet with the Pet Shop Boys' on their Nightlife album, she signed with Parlophone in April 1999. Her album Light Years (2000) was strongly influenced by 1970s disco artists, such as Donna Summer and Village People and included several songs written by Guy Chambers and Robbie Williams who imbued their lyrics with humour. New Musical Express wrote: "Kylie's capacity for reinvention is staggering" and summarised the album as "sheer joy" and "what she does best". It generated career-best reviews for Minogue and quickly became a success throughout Asia, Australia and Europe and sold over two million copies worldwide. The single "Spinning Around" became her first UK number-one in ten years, and its accompanying video, which featured Minogue in revealing gold hot pants, received widespread television airplay. The subsequent single releases were hits, including "Kids", a duet with Robbie Williams.
In 2000 Minogue performed a cover version of ABBA's "Dancing Queen" and her single "On a Night like This" at the 2000 Sydney Olympics closing ceremony, an event watched by an estimated 2.1 billion people in 220 countries. Afterwards, she embarked upon a concert tour, On A Night like This Tour, which played to sell-out crowds in Australia and the United Kingdom, where she sold over 200,000 tickets and set an Australian record for a female artist. Her six initial planned shows were increased to twenty-two due to public demand. Minogue was inspired by the style of Broadway shows such as 42nd Street and films such as Anchors Aweigh, South Pacific and the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals of the 1930s. Describing Bette Midler as a "heroine", she also incorporated some of the "camp and burlesque" elements of Midler's live performances. The show directed and choreographed by Luca Tommassini featured elaborate sets such as the deck of an ocean liner, an Art Deco New York City skyline, and the interior of a space ship, and Minogue was praised for her new material and her reinterpretations of some of her greatest successes, turning "I Should Be So Lucky" into a torch song and "Better the Devil You Know" into a 1940s big band number. She won a "Mo Award" for Australian live entertainment as "Performer of the Year". Following the tour she was asked by a Seattle Post-Intelligencer journalist what she thought was her greatest strength, and replied, "That I am an all-rounder. If I was to choose any one element of what I do, I don't know if I would excel at any one of them. But put all of them together, and I know what I'm doing."
In 2001 Parlophone released Fever, which retained some disco elements and combined them with 1980s electropop. Its lead single "Can't Get You out of My Head" became the biggest success of her career and reached number one in over twenty countries. The album's success was equally widespread, selling 6 million copies worldwide, and following extensive airplay by North American radio, Capitol Records released it in the United States in 2002.
The album debuted on the U.S. Billboard 200 albums chart at number three, and the single reached number seven on the Hot 100. Fever peaked at number ten on the Canadian albums chart and the single reached the BDS airplay top three. Following singles "In Your Eyes", "Love at First Sight" and "Come into My World" were substantial successes throughout the world, and Minogue established a presence in the mainstream North American market, achieving particular success on the club scene. In 2003 she received a Grammy Award nomination for "Best Dance Recording" for "Love at First Sight", and the following year won the same award for "Come into My World".
Minogue's former stylist and creative director William Baker explained that the music videos for the Fever album were inspired by science fiction films—specifically those by Stanley Kubrick—and accentuated the electropop elements of the music by using dancers in the style of Kraftwerk. Alan MacDonald, the designer of the 2002 KylieFever tour, brought those elements into the stage show which was based around a framework of seven iconic female images, drawing from Minogue's past incarnations. The show opened with Minogue as a space age vamp, which she described as "Queen of Metropolis with her drones", through to scenes inspired by Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, followed by the various personas of Minogue's career. Minogue said that she was finally able to express herself the way she wanted, and that she had always been "a showgirl at heart".
Her next album, Body Language (2003), was released following an invitation-only concert, titled Money Can't Buy, at the Hammersmith Apollo in London. The event marked the presentation of a new visual style, designed by Minogue and Baker, inspired in part by 1960s icon Brigitte Bardot, about whom Minogue commented: "I just tended to think of BB as, well, she's a sexpot, isn't she? She's one of the greatest pinups. But she was fairly radical in her own way at that time. And we chose to reference the period, which was ... a perfect blend of coquette and rock and roll."
The show attracted mixed reviews, with the main criticisms being that nothing substantially new was presented, and that the new songs did not match the appeal of her previous hits. Despite this, the concert was made into a successful television special that drew high ratings.
The album downplayed the disco style and Minogue said she was inspired by 1980s artists such as Scritti Politti, Human League, Adam and the Ants and Prince, blending their styles with elements of hip hop.
It received some of the most positive reviews of her career with Billboard Magazine writing of "Minogue's knack for picking great songs and producers". All Music described it as "a near perfect pop record... Body Language is what happens when a dance-pop diva takes the high road and focuses on what's important instead of trying to shock herself into continued relevance". Sales of Body Language were lower than anticipated after the success of Fever, though the first single, "Slow", was a UK number-one hit. "Slow" received a Grammy Award nomination in the Best Dance Recording category.
Minogue released her second official greatest hits album in November 2004, entitled Ultimate Kylie, along with her music videos on a DVD compilation of the same title. The album introduced her singles "I Believe in You", co-written with Jake Shears and Babydaddy from the Scissor Sisters, and "Giving You Up". Both songs reached the British top ten, and with a tally of twenty-nine top ten singles, Minogue became the second most successful woman on the British singles charts, behind Madonna. "I Believe in You" reached the U.S. Hot Dance Club Play top three and attained dance and rhythmic radio airplay nationwide. Minogue was nominated for a Grammy Award for the fourth consecutive year when "I Believe in You" was nominated in the category of "Best Dance Recording".
Early in 2005, "Kylie : the Exhibition" opened in Melbourne. The free exhibition featured costumes and photographs spanning Minogue's career and went on to tour Australian capital cities receiving over 300,000 visitors. It was then exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in February 2007.
Minogue released her Ultimate Kylie greatest hits album, and commenced a tour, Showgirl - The Greatest Hits Tour, which was intended to be the most extensive of her career, and anticipated a total audience of more than 700,000. The show was a success in the United Kingdom, however shortly after Minogue arrived in Melbourne to begin the Australian shows, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Return: 2006–presentIn November 2006, Minogue resumed her Showgirl - Homecoming Tour with a performance in Sydney. She had told journalists prior to the concert that she would be highly emotional, and she cried before dedicating the song "Especially for You" to her father, a survivor of prostate cancer. Although her dance routines had been reworked to accommodate her medical condition, and slower costume changes and longer breaks being introduced between sections of the show to conserve her strength, the media reported that Minogue performed energetically, with the Sydney Morning Herald describing the show as an "extravaganza" and "nothing less than a triumph".
The following night, Minogue was joined by Bono, who was in Australia as part of U2's Vertigo tour, for the duet "Kids", but Minogue was forced to cancel a subsequent planned appearance at U2's show, because of exhaustion. During her last two shows, she was joined on stage by sister Dannii Minogue for the duet, their first performance together since the late 1980s. Minogue's shows throughout Australia continued to draw positive reviews, and after spending Christmas with her family, she resumed the European leg of her tour with six sold-out shows in Wembley Arena, before taking her tour to Manchester for a further six shows. On 31 December 2006, she saw in the new year with an extra sell-out show at London's Wembley Arena, where she was supported by ABBA tribute band Bjorn Again.
Minogue released X, her tenth studio album and her first in four years, in November 2007. It was recorded in London, Stockholm and Ibiza, and producers include previous collaborators such as Guy Chambers, Cathy Dennis, and Richard Stannard alongside newcomers such as Bloodshy & Avant, Calvin Harris and EMI hit songwriter Edwin "Lil' Eddie" Serrano. In Australia and the UK, X attracted average sales at first, which were attributed to the Kish Mauve-produced single "2 Hearts", and the album was criticised for its subject matter in light of Minogue's experiences with breast cancer. Minogue said in response, "My conclusion is that if I'd done an album of personal songs it'd be seen as Impossible Princess 2 and be equally critiqued." The album did, however, debut at number four in Britain and number one in Australia in the charts.
For the overarching visual look of X, including the "2 Hearts" music video, Minogue and William Baker developed a combination of the style of Kabuki theatre and the aesthetics originating from London danceclubs including BoomBox. "We always want everything to be slightly larger than life and memorable on the cultural landscape", she said.
Minogue announced she would promote X with a European tour, called KYLIEX2008, which began in Paris in May 2008. The £10 million production (Minogues most expensive to date) will continue throughout Europe with 53 performances in total until August 2008, finishing with a 7 night stay at the The O2 arena (London). No Plans to take the tour outside Europe have been confirmed. It was reported that tickets for the UK event for all the eight shows scheduled sold out in just 30 minutes after opening.
In December 2007, Minogue participated on the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway with a variety of artists, and later performed on The X Factor final with the eventual winner, Leon Jackson, whose mentor was Dannii Minogue.
X was released in April 2008 in the U.S., accompanied by a new version of "All I See" featuring rapper Mims as a bonus track. Despite heavy promotion, including performances on Dancing with the Stars, X was a commercial failure in America, debuting outside the top 100 on the albums chart. Critics blamed the low sales on the choice of the single, "All I See", which has not been tested in Britain where Minogue has had much success. Minogue had called the U.S. market "notoriously difficult" in an interview on Today, saying "You have so many denominations with radio. To know where I fit within that market is sometimes difficult."
It was announced in late December 2007 that Minogue was to be among those honoured in Queen Elizabeth II's 2008 New Years Honours list, with an OBE for services to music. Minogue commented "I am almost as surprised as I am honoured. I feel deeply touched to be acknowledged by the UK, my adopted home, in this way." She received the OBE officially from Prince Charles in July 2008. Shortly after, Minogue was voted and named as the Britain's Best Loved Celebrity by a tabloid newspaper.
Also in 2008, Minogue won best International Female Solo Artist award at the 2008 BRIT Awards, and received the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in May, this being France's highest cultural honour.
Film and television career
In 1989, Minogue starred in The Delinquents, which told the story of a young girl growing up in Australia during the late 1950s. Its release coincided with her popularity in Neighbours, and while both the film and Minogue's performance received poor reviews, it was a commercial success. She appeared as Cammy in the action film Street Fighter (1994), based on the fighting game series of the same name. The film received poor reviews by critics, with The Washington Posts Richard Harrington calling her "the worst actress in the English-speaking world."
Australian film director Baz Luhrmann, cast Minogue in Moulin Rouge! (2001) where she played the part of Absinthe, the Green Fairy, singing a line from The Sound of Music. In 2002, Minogue provided the voice of a young girl named Florence in the animated film The Magic Roundabout, released in 2005. She also sang the title song in the movie and was one of the two starring actors not replaced when the film was released in North America.
In April 2007, News of the World reported that Minogue had been cast as a 'sexy Cyberwoman' in the 2007 Doctor Who Christmas special episode entitled "Voyage of the Damned". This was denied by the show's executive producer, Russell T Davies, in the magazine Ariel, but a statement by Minogue indicated that she would be in the episo | |
