Kylie Minogue:
Kylie Ann Minogue (born 28 May 1968) is an Australian dance-pop singer-songwriter and occasional actress. Minogue rose to prominence in the mid '80s through her role in the Australian television soap opera Neighbours, before she commenced her career as a pop artist in the late '80s. According to Warner Music Australia, Minogue has sold over 65 million albums and singles worldwide.
Signed to a contract by British songwriters and producers Stock, Aitken & Waterman, she achieved a string of hit records throughout the world. Her popularity began to decline during the early 1990s, leading her to part company from Stock, Aitken & Waterman in 1992. Minogue distanced herself from her earlier work and attempted to establish herself as an 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 to date. She returned to popularity as a dance–pop artist in 2000, and became well-known for her provocative music videos and expensively mounted stage shows.
Minogue has established one of the longest and most successful careers as a performer in contemporary pop music, and in Europe and Australia, she 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 acclaimed for her achievements; she holds the record for the highest ticket sales for an Australian tour by a female performer, and has attained nine number-ones on the ARIA singles chart.
Parlophone: 1999 – present
William Baker has cited the 1940s "Varga Girl" pinups of Alberto Vargas (compare) as an influence, as demonstrated in the music video for "Spinning Around". (2000)
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, which includes the duet "Kids" with Robbie Williams, sold strongly too, but failed reach #1 in any country.
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 3.7 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 planned Melbourne 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 forty countries, and sold more than six million copies worldwide. The album's success was equally widespread, and following extensive airplay by North American radio, Capitol Records released it in the United States in 2002. It attracted favourable comment, with Rolling Stone calling it "campy as a tent full of Boy Scouts and yet easy on the cheese", while Popmatters described it as "a perfect album of gorgeous dance music".Minogue attracted some negative commentary, such as from Launch's Bob Gulla, who wrote: "she'll do virtually anything to get our attention. Not since Pia Zadora have we seen a more vacant talent grab... an astoundingly bland helping of hollow dance pop grooves and nauseating pleas for sex... it's so desperately lightweight it's in imminent danger of disintegrating altogether".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 in the United Kingdom and Australia were good but paled in comparison to "Fever", despite the large success of its first single, "Slow" and in the United States the album made little impression, although the singles became major club hits. In November 2004, "Slow" was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of "Best Dance Recording".
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".
In April 2005, Minogue and her creative director William Baker issued a joint statement announcing the end of their professional relationship, with Minogue commenting that the break had been timed to coincide with the release of the Ultimate Kylie album and the launch of Showgirl - The Greatest Hits Tour. However the split was to be short-lived, with Baker back on board with Kylie by late 2006.The tour was intended to be the most extensive of her career, and anticipated a total audience of more than 700,000.
On 21 May 2007 it was reported that Minogue's next album is to include collaborations with Scissor Sisters and jazz singer Blossom Dearie.
