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Music / Kylie Minogue

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Hey there, Little Red Riding Hood, you sure are looking good!

"Am I intimidated by Kylie joining The Voice? Of course I'm intimidated. In Australia, Kylie Minogue is Elvis Presley and The Beatles all rolled up into one sexy package. Who wouldn't be intimidated by that?"
—Joel Madden

In the league of pop singers, a certain Australian comes second only to Madonna.

Kylie Ann Minogue AO OBE (born 28 May 1968 in Melbourne, Australia) is a singer-songwriter and actress who stands as the highest-selling female Australian artist of all time, with over 80 million records sold worldwide (and 10 Australian number-one singlesnote ).

Minogue first gained recognition as an actor for her role in Neighbours as Wrench Wench Charlene Mitchell. (Her character, of course, married Jason Donovan's character.) In between her many hits and her many music videos (where she often doesn't wear very much), she has continued to act every so often. Films she has appeared in include Street Fighter (but we won't mention that), Moulin Rouge!, Holy Motors, and San Andreas.

She gained prominence as a recording artist in the late 1980s; around this time, she was one of the leading lights of the Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW) hit factory in the UK, along with Jason Donovan and Rick Astley. SAW were responsible for producing early number-one singles such as "I Should Be So Lucky" and "The Locomotion", with minimal input from Minogue herself.

The late 1990s saw Minogue make a generally unsuccessful attempt to take her music in a Darker and Edgier direction, which included a collaboration with Nick Cave on his album Murder Ballads (where they sang the duet "Where the Wild Roses Grow"), and her 1997 album Impossible Princess (which was renamed Kylie Minogue in the UK, as it had been released just after the death of Princess Diana). However, she hit platinum come the Turn of the Millennium with 2000's "Spinning Around" and "Can't Get You Out of My Head", which topped the charts worldwide. The latter song in particular became her second top 10 hit in the US following "The Locomotion" a decade and a half earlier, and is considered one of the greatest dance/pop songs of the 2000s.

Her sister, Dannii Minogue, has had a very similar career, although never reaching the same peaks.

Minogue had surgery for breast cancer in 2005, interrupting her Showgirl: The Greatest Hits Tour, but has since made a full recovery. In 2014, she did double duty for The Voice, joining both the UK and Australian versions of the show as a coach.

Discography

Albums

Special Releases

Concert Tours

  • Disco In Dream / The Hitman Roadshow (1989)
  • Enjoy Yourself Tour (1990)
  • Rhythm of Love Tour (1991)
  • Let's Get to It Tour (1991)
  • Intimate and Live (1998)
  • On a Night Like This (2001)
  • KylieFever2002 (2002)
  • Showgirl: The Greatest Hits Tour (2005) * 
  • Showgirl: The Homecoming Tour (2006)
  • KylieX2008 (2008-2009)
  • For You, For Me (2009)
  • Aphrodite: Les Folies Tour (2011)
  • Anti Tour (2012)
  • Kiss Me Once Tour (2014)
  • Golden Tour (2018-2019)

Live Albums

  • Intimate and Live (1998)
  • Showgirl (2005)
  • Showgirl Homecoming Live (2007)
  • Kylie: Live in New York (2009)
  • Aphrodite Les Folies: Live In London (2011)
  • Kiss Me Once Live At the SSE Hydro (2015)
  • Golden Live in Concert (2019)
  • Infinite Disco (2021)

Selected filmography:

I just can't get these tropes outta my head:

  • '80s Hair: She had big '80s curls as Charlene on Neighbours, which continued through her career until they fell out of style.
  • 555: The number in the video for "Confide in Me" is 1-555-CONFIDE.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: In her music video for "Giving You Up" Kylie is a roughly twelve foot tall giantess. However rather attacking or eating anyone she just struts around town, dances a bit, and flirts with a few guys she towers over.
  • Album Title Drop - Done twice:
    • From 'Dreams' on Impossible Princess
      These are the dreams of an impossible princess
    • From 'Slow' on Body Language
      Read my body language
  • All Women Love Shoes: Her Instagram and Twitter accounts had a regular hashtag #shoeoftheday, which is whatever designer heels she was wearing that day. (Since she's barely over 5 feet tall, she naturally leans towards heels.)
  • Arc Words: Sex = "Sexy Love", "Sexercise", "Les Sex" in Kiss Me Once.
  • Artistic License – Space: The chorus of “Supernova” claims that Jupiter and Mars are from another galaxy.
  • A Wild Rapper Appears!: The DNA Mix of "Shocked" features a rap bridge by Jazzy P., and in a meta sense her collaboration with Taio Cruz for "Higher" also qualifies.
  • Badass Boast: Combined with Singer Name Drop in "Tension""
    "Call me Kylie-lie-lie"
    "Don't imita-ta-tate"
  • Bathtub Scene: The video for "I Should Be So Lucky" has one.
  • Bilingual Bonus:
    • "Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi"
    • "Confide In Me (French Version)"
    • "Your Disco Needs You" has a spoken bridge in four different language versions - French, Japanese, Spanish and German.
  • Bottle Episode: "Come Into My World" (well, the video is, at least in terms of single-location episodes).
  • Break-Up Song: “It’s No Secret”, “I’ll Still Be Loving You”, “Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi”, “Hand On Your Heart”, “Tell Tale Signs”, “I’m Over Dreaming Over You”, “Tears On My Pillow”, “The World Still Turns”, “Word Is Out”, “If You Were With Me Now”, “What Kind Of Fool (Heard All That Before)”, “Put Yourself In My Place”, “Where Has The Love Gone”, “Through The Years”, “So Now Goodbye”, “Dancefloor”, “Baby”, “Promises”, “Obsession”, “Someday”, “Get Outta My Way”, and “Illusion.”
  • Camp: Her career and live shows are built on this. The music video for "Your Disco Needs You" is especially campy.
  • Christmas Songs: Kylie Christmas, featuring covers and original songs, including a duet with her sister Dannii.
  • Chronically Killed Actor: A big chunk of her guest roles have her die in various ways, most notably in Doctor Who, where her character commits a Heroic Sacrifice, she's the murder victim in "Where The Wild Roses Grow", she's Driven to Suicide in Holy Motors, and she's an earthquake casualty in San Andreas.
    • Averted with her character in Kath & Kim, who suffers a marriage breakdown after barely a few hours instead.
  • Coattail-Riding Relative: Her sister Dannii managed to get herself a singing career mainly by just being Kylie's sister.
  • Cover Version: "Under the Influence Of Love", "Copacabana", "The Locomotion", "Tears on My Pillow", "Dancing Queen", "Santa Baby", "The Crying Game", "Physical", "Should I Stay or Should I Go", "Give Me Just a Little More Time", "Celebration", "Where Is the Feeling?", "There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart)," and "If You Don't Love Me."
  • The Cutie: Her image during her Neighbours stint and early solo career positioned her as the cute and wholesome Girl Next Door who was always smiling and prim. One review of her first American tour noted that despite being one of the world's biggest and sexiest pop divas, she still maintained The Cutie attitude.
  • Corrupt the Cutie: After she met and started dating Michael Hutchence, he would always joke that his favorite hobby was "corrupting her" as her image gradually became Hotter and Sexier as noted below. In a positive twist, this didn't hurt their images or popularity in the least and they even remained friends after breaking up.
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • Her sixth album Impossible Princess was considered a lot darker than previous albums. It was even noted for its more aggressive vocal style. However, the album did poorly in sales, and it would take a few years for Kylie to fully return to prominence. Impossible Princess is now regarded as a favorite within the fanbase.
    • Visually this started with "Better The Devil You Know" but "Where The Wild Roses Grow" turned it up to 11. Inverted with Light Years.
    • Averted with X, where Kylie wanted to avoid going down the personal route and get back to business of light fluffy dance pop. Though the subsequent tour saw her riding out atop a giant metallic skull to "Like A Drug" before dancing with death during "Slow."
    • The unreleased "Singing In My Sleep"
  • A Day in the Limelight: The setlist(s) of her 2012 Anti-Tour were dedicated solely to lesser-known Kylie tracks that only her diehard fans would know, like b-sides, singles that have been largely forgotten, and unreleased tracks.
  • Death by Cameo: In the slasher film Cut, where she plays a bitchy Prima Donna Director who has her tongue cut out.
  • Dominatrix: In a behind the scenes doc for the "Giving You Up" video, Kylie Minogue's giantess character is described as being a bit of a dominatrix or having a dominatrix vibe, especially when interacting with the nervous guy at the bar.
  • Even the Girls Want Her: When Kylie changes into a dress in the video for "Red Blooded Woman," the woman in the front seat adjusts her rear mirror to get a better look.
    • Even The Gays Want Her: The mere rumor that she was going to be on Doctor Who had all the crew buying new shirts and smartening themselves up.
      Russell T Davies: They all think they're going to marry her. Even the gays. Especially the gays.
  • Everything's Better with Sparkles: It's not a Kylie tour or music video if there isn't glitter, sequins, or feathers involved. Hell, one of her perfumes is named "Pink Sparkle" and pretty much everything in her Kylie at Home range is sparkly.
    • Her 2018 music video for Dancing features several different costumes; they all are extremely sparkly dresses.
  • Fairy Sexy: As the Green Fairy in Moulin Rouge!.
  • Fanservice:
    • You've seen the picture for this article, right? Well, have you seen a Kylie video? In one, she channels a certain Jane Fonda movie.
    • She did an advert for Agent Provocateur lingerie, to be shown in theatres. If that isn't enough, it was actually banned from theatres. For those interested, the advert featured Kylie stripping to her lingerie, and riding a mechanical bull for around a minute. The advert ends with Kylie crouching in front of the camera and challenging all the men in the audience to stand up.
  • Fascinating Eyebrow: She has a naturally crooked right eyebrow but it's become more obvious later in her career, and she has admitted to have sampled Botox in the past.
  • The Fashionista: She's become a popular muse for big name fashion designers as well as upcoming fashion designers and published a lookbook about her personal style. Her costumes on her Aphrodite tour were exclusively designed for her by Dolce and Gabbana.
  • Fun Size: Describes herself as a "Little Shetland pony" trotting along. The producers on The Voice UK actually had to retrofit her chair with steps because she's so short that she had trouble getting out of it.
  • Former Child Star: Of Neighbours.
  • Genre Mashup: The albums "Impossible Princess", "Kylie Minogue", "X" and "Body Language" have extremely mixed elements of different types of sounds. Her hit single "Confide In Me" is particularly conflicted with Baroque, Classical, R&B and Pop elements all used.
  • Giant Woman: In Giving You Up Kylie is a twelve foot tall giantess in tight leather who struts around a city at night and flirts with a nervous, normal sized man in a nightclub.
  • Gratuitous Disco Sequence: "Step Back In Time" and then pretty much all of Light Years.
  • Gratuitous French:
    • The Aphrodite: Les Folies Tour, but only in Europe and Australia. She renamed it into Aphrodite: Live for the American, Asia, and South African legs due to scaling the stage down for venue size.
    • "Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi" which went by "I Still Love You" in Australia and the US
  • Hidden Depths: She's actually quite a well schooled piano player when she was younger, and she composed "No More Rain" and the greater Impossible Princess album on the piano.
  • Hotter and Sexier: Kylie was very innocent in the beginning of her career. It wasn't until she started dating INXS frontman Michael Hutchence and released her third album Rhythm Of Love that she became more sexually aware and mature.
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl:
    • Kylie was comically shorter◊ than her ex-boyfriend, Andres Velencoso (A visual aide◊, notice those boots have heels on them).
    • Not just him, but anyone she stands next to (she is only 5'2", after all.) Her Doctor Who character actually pulls up a box to stand on so she could give the Doctor a goodbye kiss.
    • While they're not dating, she intercepted and became friends with Joe Manganiello (she's promoting her album, he's promoting Magic Mike.) She's 5'2", he's 6'5", and the producers of The Soup had trouble fitting them in frame together.◊ (He's sticking his gut out as part of a joke.)
  • Hymn to Music: "No More Rain", "Stars", "Speakerphone", "Better Then Today", and many many others.
  • Intercourse with You: Her later albums has a lot of this.
    • "Give It To Me" and "Nu-Di-Ty" throw all subtlety out the window...
    • "Say Hey" from Impossible Princess which takes place in over the phone while in the bath. Listen closely and you can hear the splashing sound effects.
    • It seems like the overall concept of Kiss Me Once is about this, especially since the staging and visuals for the album places a lot of emphasis on the body.
  • Literal Split Personality: The music video for "Did It Again" involves Sexy Kylie, Cute Kylie, Indie Kylie and Dance Kylie fighting with one another.
  • Love Nostalgia Song: “I’ll Still Be Loving You”, “Never Too Late”, “Better The Devil You Know”, “If You Were With Me Now”, “No World Without You”, “Put Yourself In My Place”, “Disco Down”, and “Soul On Fire.”
  • Lyrical Dissonance: Her old SAW days are quite heartbreaking if you listen to the lyrics, some of her newer stuff has shades of this too.
  • Male Gaze: Most infamously, the tiny gold shorts from the "Spinning Around" video. Justin Timberlake even took the opportunity to see for himself when the two performed together at the BRIT awards.
  • Moe Anthropomorphism: As a guest in Towa Tei's "German Bold Italic" - Kylie as a... font?
  • Navel-Deep Neckline: Her white costume from the music video for "Can't Get You Out Of My Hread" includes a neckline that ends below her navel. Apparently there was a lot of double-sided tape and very careful editing involved.
  • New Sound Album: Her albums tend to shift in sound alongside trends in the musical landscape.
    • The first two albums (Kylie and Enjoy Yourself) were simple freestyle/dance-pop albums.
    • Rhythm of Love and Let's Get To It still had the freestyle sound, but incorporated more new jack swing into it.
    • Kylie Minogue was a fusion of R&B, jazz and house. It also marked her first foray into experimenting with her style and sound.
    • Impossible Princess (Minogue's first release on an indie label) was a combo of trip-hop, alt-rock, drum & bass, and Eastern sounds.
    • Light Years (widely considered her pop comeback) was a disco album.
    • Fever (one of her highest-selling albums) was more of a house and synthpop album.
    • Body Language was an R&B/funk/lounge album.
    • X and Aphrodite have been modern edgy electropop albums, either aimed a variety/complexity (X) or cohesion/vision (Aphrodite).
    • Kiss Me Once garnered Spiritual Successor comparisons to Body Language and X.
    • Golden was mainly a country pop album with dance pop elements. It helps the fact that a majority of the album was recorded in Nashville and country music is very popular in her native country.
    • Disco was naturally, another disco album.
  • Non-Appearing Title: Kylie, Kylie Minogue and Kylie Christmas but also X.
    • X is Zig-Zagged here: there is no track named "X", but, the original name of the album was supposed to be "Magnetic Electric", which does exist as a song on X — but only a bonus track.
    • As for the songs, she has very few of these, namely "Enjoy Yourself", "Difficult By Design" and "B.P.M."
  • Obsession Song: “I Should Be So Lucky”, “My Secret Heart”, “What Do I Have To Do”, “I Am The One For You”, “Right Here, Right Now”, “No World Without You”, “Automatic Love”, “Say Hey”, “Drunk”, “Love Takes Over Me”, “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”, “In Your Eyes”, “Your Love (Even has the line ‘you’re my obsession’ right in it!)”, “Tightrope”
  • Odd Friendship: With Nick Cave, ever since their collaboration on "Where The Wild Roses Grow".
  • The Oner: "Come Into My World", directed by Michel Gondry in his signature visual style. It's possibly the only video of her that lacks Fanservice.
  • Pimped-Out Dress: Her tours will feature her wearing one during a slower segment of the show. They're usually covered in feathers or sequins. The one she wore on her Aphrodite tours was so glittery that she looked like a disco ball in stilettos.
  • Rearrange the Song:
    • She has done this a lot, remaking various songs into ballads, jazz, and electronica. Her 2012 compilation album The Abbey Road Sessions contains her grand hits in orchestral form.
    • "Every Day's Like Christmas" received a remix by ex-collaborators Stock Aitken Waterman for its single release, acting as a throwback to her early Eurobeat material.
  • Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: "Padam Padam" is used to express the sound her lover's heart is making as they flirt and get together.
  • "Sesame Street" Cred: She's an honorary Wiggle.
  • Self-Titled Album: First and Fifth were self titled and sixth was self titled in the UK and Europe.
  • Soprano and Gravel: Her duet with Nick Cave on his album Murder Ballads, where they sang the duet "Where The Wild Roses Grow".
  • Shout-Out: In her song "Step Back In Time"
    Remember the old days
    Remember the O'Jays
    Walkin' in rhythm
    Life was for livin'
    • In Kids there is mention of The Chairmen Of The Board, who she covered with Give Me Just A Little More Time
    • Act 7 on her Showgirl: Homecoming tour has her dancers dressed very similar to the Cybermen. It's appropriately named "Dance of the Cybermen"
  • Showgirl Skirt: For her "Showgirl" and "Showgirl Homecoming" tours.
  • Take That!: What Kind Of Fool is rumoured to be about her SAW days. Rumoured.
    • Illusion and Obsession both mention the fact she's a celebrity and her worry that a man would want her for her fame instead of herself.
    • ''Ruffle My Feathers'' is generally seen as being about her cancer is actually about all the criticism she has faced over the years
    • The performance of Slow / Free from the X tour was however about fighting and overcoming her illness
  • Three Minutes of Writhing: Especially "Slow" and "Sexercize".
    • "Slow" also Gender Flips the trope in the conventional sense - Kylie, wearing a form-fitting navy dress, is actually the most covered up person in the video with all the men present wearing nothing but Speedos.
  • Truck Driver's Gear Change: "Your Disco Needs You" subverts this trope - the song goes up in the lead up to the final chorus, but then drops back down to the original key during "Cure a lonely heart".
  • Unusual Euphemism: The opening chant of "Step Back In Time" is "I wanna funk", but repeat it fast enough, it sounds suspiciously like "I wanna fuck". Additionally, at one point the vocals spell out "funk" but start to stutter right after "F-U" which ends up sounding like "eff you".
  • Your Costume Needs Work: She once went to a drag queen night at a gay bar after seeing another band live and was outshined by the drag queens.
    I turned up to a drag queen night years ago in Melbourne. I’d gone to see another band, with a totally different feel — a grungy, hippie kind of band — so I was dressed for that. And then I ended up at this gay bar, and they were having a Kylie night, and of course I got dragged on stage. I felt the least Kylie out of anyone. I’d been out-Kylied by, like, four queens.
I'm Spinning Around

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