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Kylie Ann Minogue, OBE (born 28 May 1968) is an Australian pop singer, songwriter, and actress. After beginning her career as a child actress on Australian television, she achieved recognition through her role in the television soap opera Neighbours, before commencing her career as a recording artist in 1987. Her first single, "The Loco-Motion", spent seven weeks at number one on the Australian singles chart and became the highest selling single of the decade. This led to a contract with songwriters and producers Stock, Aitken & Waterman. Her debut album, Kylie (1988), and the single "I Should Be So Lucky", each reached number one in the United Kingdom, and over the next two years, her first thirteen singles reached the British top ten. Her debut film, The Delinquents (1989) was a box-office hit in Australia and the UK despite negative reviews.
Initially presented as a "girl next door", Minogue attempted to convey a more mature style in her music and public image. Her singles were well received, but after four albums her record sales were declining, and she left Stock, Aitken & Waterman in 1992 to establish herself as an independent performer. Her next single, "Confide in Me", reached number one in Australia and was a hit in several European countries in 1994, and a duet with Nick Cave, "Where the Wild Roses Grow", brought Minogue a greater degree of artistic credibility. Drawing inspiration from a range of musical styles and artists, Minogue took creative control over the songwriting for her next album, Impossible Princess (1997)
. It failed to attract strong reviews or sales in the UK, but was successful in Australia.
Minogue returned to prominence in 2000 with the single "Spinning Around" and the dance-oriented album Light Years, and she performed during the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Her music videos showed a more sexually provocative and flirtatious personality and several hit singles followed. "Can't Get You Out of My Head" reached number one in more than 40 countries, and the album Fever (2001) was a hit throughout the world, including the United States, a market in which Minogue had previously received little recognition. Minogue embarked on a concert tour but cancelled it when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005. After surgery and chemotherapy treatment, she resumed her career in 2006 with Showgirl: The Homecoming Tour. Her tenth studio album X was released in 2008 and was followed by the KylieX2008 tour. In 2009, she embarked upon her For You, For Me Tour, her first concert tour of the US.
Although she was dismissed by some critics, especially during the early years of her career, she has achieved worldwide record sales of more than 60 million, and has received notable music awards, including multiple ARIA and Brit Awards and a Grammy Award. She has mounted several successful concert tours and received a Mo Award for "Australian Entertainer of the Year" for her live performances. She was awarded an OBE "for services to music", and an Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2008.
Life and career1968–86: Early life and career beginningsKylie Ann Minogue was born 28 May 1968 in Melbourne, Australia, the first child of Ronald Charles Minogue, an accountant of Irish ancestry[ first = Spencer] and Carol Ann (née Jones), a former dancer from Maesteg, Wales. Her sister, Dannii, is also a pop singer,[ first = David]
The Minogue sisters began their careers as children on Australian television.[ first = Miles] Interested in following a career in music, she made a demo tape for the producers of the weekly music programme Young Talent Time,[ first = Cameron] which featured Dannii as a regular performer. Kylie gave her first television singing performance on the show in 1985 but was not invited to join the cast. Dannii's success overshadowed Kylie's acting achievements,[ first = Aislinn]
Her popularity in Australia was demonstrated when she became the first person to win four Logie Awards in one event, and the youngest recipient of the "Gold Logie" as the country's "Most Popular Television Performer", with the result determined by public vote.
1987–92: Stock, Aitken and Waterman and Kylie
During a Fitzroy Football Club benefit concert with other Neighbours cast members, Minogue performed "I Got You Babe" as a duet with the actor John Waters, and "The Loco-Motion" as an encore, and was subsequently signed to a recording contract with Mushroom Records in 1987. Her first single, "The Loco-Motion", spent seven weeks at number one on the Australian music charts. It sold 200,000 copies,[Brown, Kutner, Warwick, pp. 673-674] The album did not sell strongly in the United States and Canada, although the single, "The Loco-Motion", reached number three on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart,[ url = www.billboard.com/search/?keyword=kylie+minogue&x=0&y=0#/artist/kylie-minogue/chart-history/5213] and number one on the Canadian Singles Chart. "It's No Secret", released only in the U.S., peaked at number 37 in early 1989,
In July 1988, "Got To Be Certain" became Minogue's third consecutive number one single on the Australian music charts, and later in the year she left Neighbours to focus 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."
Her follow-up album Enjoy Yourself (1989) was a success in the United Kingdom, Europe, New Zealand, Asia and Australia, and contained several successful singles, including the British number one "Hand on Your Heart",[Smith, p. 220] and her debut film, The Delinquents, premiered in London. It was poorly received by critics,
Rhythm of Love (1990) presented a more sophisticated and adult style of dance music and also marked the first signs of Minogue's 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. Her relationship with Michael Hutchence was also seen as part of Minogue's departure from her earlier persona; Hutchence was quoted as saying that his hobby was "corrupting Kylie", and that the INXS song Suicide Blonde had been inspired by her. The singles from Rhythm of Love sold well in Europe and Australia and were popular in British nightclubs. Pete Waterman later reflected that "Better the Devil You Know" was a milestone in her career and said 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".
In May 1990, 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".
Her fourth album, ''Let's Get to It (1991), reached number 15 on the British album charts and was the first of her albums to fail to reach the Top 10;[Shuker, p. 164]
A Greatest Hits album was released in 1992. It reached number one in the UK
1993–98: Deconstruction, Kylie Minogue and Impossible Princess Minogue'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 four weeks at number one. She performed a striptease in the video for her next single, "Put Yourself in My Place", inspired by Jane Fonda as Barbarella. This single and her next, "Where Is the Feeling?" each reached the British top 20,[Smith, p. 152] The film was a moderate success, earning USD$70 million in the U.S.,
The 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". They collaborated on "Where the Wild Roses Grow" (1995), a brooding ballad whose lyrics narrated a murder from the points of view of both the murderer (Cave), and his victim (Minogue). The video was inspired by John Everett Millais's painting Ophelia (1851–1852), and showed Minogue as the murdered woman, floating in a pond as a serpent swam over her body. The single received widespread attention in Europe, where it reached the top 10 in several countries, and acclaim in Australia where it reached number two on the singles chart, 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 described it as a "most cathartic moment".[Baker and Minogue, p. 112] She credited Cave 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."[ first = Larry ] By 1997, Minogue was in a relationship with the French photographer Stephane Sednaoui, who encouraged her to develop her creativity. Inspired by a mutual appreciation of Japanese culture, they created a visual combination of "geisha and manga superheroine" for the photographs taken for the album Impossible Princess and the video for "German Bold Italic", Minogue's collaboration with Towa Tei. Minogue drew inspiration from the music of artists such as Shirley Manson and Garbage, Björk, Tricky and U2, and Japanese pop musicians such as Pizzicato Five and Towa Tei.
Impossible Princess featured collaborations with musicians such as James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore of the Manic Street Preachers. Mostly a dance album, its style was not represented by its first single "Some Kind of Bliss", and Minogue countered suggestions 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." Acknowledging that she had attempted to escape the perceptions of her that had developed during her early career, Minogue commented that she was ready to "forget the painful criticism" and "accept the past, embrace it, use it".
Retitled Kylie Minogue in the UK following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, it became the lowest-selling album of her career. At the end of the year a campaign by Virgin Radio stated, "We've done something to improve Kylie's records: we've banned them."
In Australia, Impossible Princess spent 35 weeks on the album chart and peaked at number four, to become her most successful album since Kylie in 1988, and her Intimate and Live tour was extended due to demand.[Baker and Minogue, p. 125] The Victorian Premier, Jeff Kennett, hosted a civic reception for Minogue in Melbourne, and she maintained her high profile in Australia with live performances, including the 1998 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras,[ publisher = Media Jungen] and a Christmas concert in Dili, East Timor in association with the United Nations Peace-Keeping Forces.
1999–2005: Light Years, Fever and Body LanguageBy 2000, when Minogue returned to prominence, she was considered to be have achieved a degree of musical credibility for having maintained her career longer than her critics had expected.[Copley, p. 128] That same year, Birmingham Post noted "[8]nce upon a time, long before anybody had even heard of Britney, Christina, Jessica or Mandy, Australian singer Kylie Minogue ruled the charts as princess of pop. Back in 1988 her first single, I Should Be So Lucky, spent five weeks at number one, making her the most successful female artist in the UK charts with 13 successive Top 10 entries." Her progression from the wholesome "girl-next-door" to a more sophisticated performer with a flirtatious and playful persona attracted new fans to her.[ first = Philip ]
Minogue is regarded as a gay icon, which she encourages with comments such as "I am not a traditional gay icon. There's been no tragedy in my life, only tragic outfits..." and "My gay audience has been with me from the beginning ... they kind of adopted me."
Minogue has been inspired by and compared to Madonna throughout her career, her videos and stage shows drew direct comparisons to works that Madonna has produced before her. Her ex producer, Pete Waterman recalled Minogue during the early years of her success, with the observation, "She was setting her sights on becoming the new Prince or Madonna... What I found amazing was that she was outselling Madonna four to one, but still wanted to be her."[Baker and Minogue, p. 58] Kathy McCabe for The Telegraph notes that Minogue and Madonna follow similar styles in music and fashion,[ first = Kathy] and concludes, "Where they truly diverge on the pop-culture scale is in shock value. Minogue's clips might draw a gasp from some but Madonna's ignite religious and political debate unlike any other artist on the planet... Simply, Madonna is the dark force; Kylie is the light force."[ Minogue has said of Madonna, "Her huge influence on the world, in pop and fashion, meant that I wasn't immune to the trends she created. I admire Madonna greatly but in the begining she made it difficult for artists like me, she had done everything there was to be done...",]
In January 2007 Madame Tussaud's in London unveiled its fourth waxwork of Minogue; only Queen Elizabeth II has had more models created.[ publisher = BBC News] During the same week a bronze cast of her hands was added to Wembley Arena's "Square of Fame".[ publisher = Daily Mail]
In 2009 Minogue admitted that she has used botox injections in an effort to delay the ageing process. She commented that there is less stigma associated with cosmetic procedures than in the past, and that women could choose whether to "take advantage of it".
Discography- Kylie (1988)
- Enjoy Yourself (1989)
- Rhythm of Love (1990)
- ''Let's Get to It (1991)
- Kylie Minogue (1994)
- Impossible Princess (1997)
- Light Years (2000)
- Fever (2001)
- Body Language (2003)
- X (2007)
Filmography
Copyright Citations
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