Australian Rolling Stone, Sydney, November 1995
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HERE
OUR OWN VIOLENT KYLIE KYLIE MINOGUE IS at home. "London's sunny and I'm feeling really good," she tells us. �My single just entered the charts at number two, so I've got no complaints.� Yep, another day, another song in the Top 2. "Confide In Me" makes it eleven singles to peak there or higher on the UK charts. Do you get what that means? At 26, she has already achieved immortality. We're not talking like Abba or the Knack -- bigger! She's become an undisputed icon of twentieth century popular culture: History will write her in the same sentence as the Beatles, Elvis, Shirley Temple, the Kennedys. She says she's read half of Clive James' book on fame and found it "really interesting�. A few years back, the author bestowed upon her the title of human being of the 1980s -- now, that's real fame. It's still hard to fathom, isn't it. Charlene from Neighbours, hey. That shocking cover of �Locomotion� way back in 1987. Such inauspicious beginnings. Nowadays, photos of her carrying home her shopping make it into newspapers and magazines around the world. Doesn't that drive her crazy? God damn paparazzi! Doesn't she feel like carrying a gun around or something? �You carry a gun in your groceries, do you?" Well no, but . . . �Unfortunately, I�ve had to become accustomed to that,� she says, �which makes me seem pretty paranoid at times, but I think I have reason to be. �In most given cases, I might have a few people around me -- it might be my manager, my assistant, a couple of friends -- but I'll be the one to spot the photographer. It's become an in-built mechanism or something. And I�m thinking, �How come you lot didn't notice anything? This shouldn't be my job.�" Yeah, like, 'What am I paying you for?�" hey Kyles? �For nothing!" Kylie's laughing now. �No, they're really good,� she says. �I have . . .� She pauses momentarily. �Oh, God! I sound American!� She takes on the voice of a West Coast starlet: 'I have great people around me, ya know, they're so supporting and caring." Wow, that was scary, Kyles, you sounded great! We can't see Kyhe Minogue we're talking by phone - but that's probably for the best. Why settle for one image of Kyles when we've got millions rushing through our heads? We've still got our faint recollections of that teenage suburban kid but, over recent years, there's been a new image literally every time we've seen her. She is one of the true products and stars of the video era. In years to come, she'll be the prototype for purely computer-generated stars. Back around �Locomotion�, there was no reason why she shouldn't have disappeared into oblivion with the rest of the Stock, Aitken and Waterman bunnies. But, for some reason, she was always above it all. Maybe it was those green eyes, those great eyebrows, the way she seemed so fragile and innocent in between it all. Then she discovered sex appeal around the time of her role in The Delinquents in 1989. This became the key in breaking free from her creators but it took a bit of getting used to -- like your little sister cracking on to your best-friend or something, She started dating rock stars and forced us to put up with that hybrid accent and over-played coyness. But that also passed. Then the unexpected. The music, which had all but been an incidental aspect of her career, started taking on some of the slickness of the image. Kylie Minogue was suddenly producing brilliant pop: �Better the Devil You Know�, �What Do I Have to Do?�, �Shocked�. And who said you have to perform live to be one of the biggest singers in the world? Not Barbra Streisand. Nor Kylie. This year, Ms Minogue has made only two appearances: One recently at a small club in London called G.A.Y. where she performed six songs, and one earlier this year at the Mardi Gras party in Sydney where she performed a solitary track. She counts the Mardi Gras performance as a career highlight. 'The song which I did,� she says, "which was 'What Do I Have to Do?', is probably fourth on my list of favourites. But the problem was they (the drag queens) had already done the other ones. Apparently there'd been 40 Kylies doing 'Better the Devil You Know.'� Minogue is now back on the international promotion circuit -- she'll be on it until the end of the year -- pushing her fifth album, Kylie Minogue, and a new film, Streetfighter. She says she feels like she's been away from the limelight for a long time and was worried that she'd been forgotten Maybe she took a break from walking past newsstands as well. The album, her first through London's deconstruction label, is typically great pop: Her voice sounds better than ever and all those big names -- Brothers in Rhythm, RuPaul producer Jimmy Harry, Pet Shop Boys -- have helped give the music more texture. The film we're yet to see. But look out for the Streetfighter arcade game which will feature a digital version of Kylie as the character Cammy. Imagine that -- our own violent Kylie to control. The future is now.
