June 8, 2026 • 48 mins
Pop princess, gay icon, global enigma. We unpack how Kyle Minogue, soap star with “manufactured” hits, became the ultimate symbol of joy for generations of fans. For Pride Month, celebrate the singer embraced by queer communities long before the mainstream caught up. From chart bangers to queer club anthems, Kylie turned criticism into cultural staying power.
Additional archive: Can’t Get You Out of My Head, Parlaphone, 2001
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Before we get going here, some real talk.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
The BBC has been sitting on decades of tape, and
Emmanuel and I are just two guys trying to make
sure the good stuff doesn't get buried.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
The way you can help us do that. Leave a review.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Don't have to be a long one, just a few
lines about how the show is changing your thinking.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
And think about who in your.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Life has a strong opinion about David Attenborough or Muhammad
Ali or Meg Ryan or anyone else We've covered for
them this episode. Because you know, I'm saying whatever they
think they know, they probably don't know the whole story.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
It's kind of the point. Okay, let's get started.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
From BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries. This is Big Lives.
I'm a Manuel Joe Chi, I'm Kai right, and on
this show, what we do is we take a single
cultural icon and we break down their life and impact
using the BBC's are guy and today. The person that
I'm talking about Kai is Kylie Minogue.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
I don't know a thing about her, so this is
gonna be an excellent education for me.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
There was such a the the amount contained in that
sigh you just took before you responded to be fix Volumes.
I know you don't know a thing about it, but
when you think of Kylie Minogue, what comes to mind,
like anything.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
My boyfriend dancing on a speaker in London because.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
He has had a massive relationship to Kylie Minogue, which
traces back to being in London clubs as a twig.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Okay, okay, okay, okay. Honestly, that that makes sense because
and I have to say, even though my relationship is
not necessarily dancing to Kylie Minogue in London clubs as
a twink, it's not totally dis similar my relationship, do it.
I remember being a kid living in the UK in
(02:13):
like ninety nine, two thousand and just anywhere you went,
you'd have these absolute bangers that actually put out stuff
like this definitely a totally songs like this one can't
(02:38):
get you out of my head, just like Pop personified
and in my brain. Actually as a kid, what I
associate that song with is like, actually a bunch of
older girls in my school throwing glitter on me at
a school like that. Okay, That's what I am asso
saying with. But you have identified a gap here, But
I want to get into so kind of an Ogue,
(03:01):
massive Australian singer pop superstar, mostly at least in my lifetime,
in the nineties and the two thousands, massive when I
was a kid. But it's interesting because I moved to
the US age twelve, and I remember so clearly having
a conversation with somebody where we were talking about music,
(03:22):
and I remember realizing, oh, nobody, at least in Toledo, Ohio,
where I moved to, seemed to know who Kindlie Minogue
it was. And I was like, oh, a lot of
America might not know who Kylie Minogue is. A few
years ago, I was having a conversation about Kylie Minogue
(03:43):
for like the upteenth time, and someone asked me just
a really basic level question. I had gotten into a
routine where I would say, oh, my gosh, you don't
know Kyli Minogue is so typical, and I would play
Can't Give It out of My Head or one of
these other songs of hers, right, But this person was like, Okay,
so I get that she's created this cool dance music
and it's great, But besides that, I've looked online and
(04:05):
it seems like she's so huge, maybe even bordering on iconic.
Why is that.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Like, why is she so iconic?
Speaker 1 (04:13):
What was the person's question, Yeah, outside of just the music,
and I realized, I don't know. And so that has
been rumbling in my head a while now, along with
one other fact, which is I've lived in New York
now about ten years, and I have finally found a
(04:35):
lot of people who also know Kylie Minogue who are American,
and I think what I've just realized, which I thought
you were in earlier, which is like, oh, but people
in America who really love Kylie Minogue, they're gay.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
I say, I'm guessing. I'm guessing that these are your
homosexual friends.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Definitely, like Luke flashed to just me, apparently she's been
a gay icon this whole time. Recently, I was diving
into that a little bit, educating myself, and I came
across this old article from forever ago where this other singer,
this guy Rufe Reinwright, lists a bunch of his personal
gay icons, and it was interesting. You've got like Judy Garland,
(05:17):
Stevie Nicks, Madonna, just the usual kind of suspects, and
then there's like a little bit about Kylie Minogue and
and here's what it says, I love Kylie. She's the
anti Madonna. Self knowledge is truly a beautiful thing, and
Kylie knows herself inside out. She is what she is,
(05:37):
and there is no attempt to make quasi intellectual statements
to substantiate it. She is the gay shorthand for joy.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Wow, the amount of Madonna's shade in that's a visit.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
The thing. I kept coming back to the bit about
the anti Madonna and reading that, I was like, I
don't know what that means in my life. I don't
know that I naturally put Kylie Minogue in a definitely
not a musical category, totally different to Madonna. She's a
pop singer, loves dancing tunes. Obviously, now I know that
she's beloved by gay people. I don't know. I was
(06:14):
just sort of what's the difference. So I went into
the BBC archives basically just to try and understand how
exactly Kylie built her career, how she became a gay icon,
and what that says about the whole generation of female
pop stars and their relationship to probably their most important
fans and.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Maybe a whole generation of gay band too, because I
actually don't know how she's not an icon to me
because I think I'm too old or I was too
old by the time she became an icon, and I
don't know how she became one either.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
So this is going to be great exactly.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
That's what we're going to get into today. Why do
people love Kylie Minogue so much in the UK and
Australia and she just never really quite hit the same
sort of ubiquitousness here in America. And that's what we'll
get into after the break.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
You need to spend so much time in the States
to cover and to get yourself known that I couldn't
spend a year, you know, Carly Kaylee Minuje Monaghue. Oh
you're Australian, right, And I frankly I'd rather put pins
in my eyes.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
For a year. Welcome back to Big Lives. They were
talking about Kylie Minogue, who kai you know nothing about?
Speaker 2 (07:47):
So I know the box, but I don't know her
as a person.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Okay, So just to get you some basic facts. So
Kylie was born in Australia in Melbourne in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I didn't know she was that all, not that that's all.
It's just much older than I thought she was.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
No, Honestly, guy, I share that I feel like when
I actually looked her up, I realized, Oh, this person
has had a much longer career than I. I realized, like,
I've only ever known her in the context of my life,
which was sort of like late nineties, early two thousands.
Her fame is what I remember then, but no, she
had a career that really started in a big way
(08:22):
in the eighties. And I just got to say right now,
like the moment I started digging into her history via
the BBC archives, I at this moment where I just
felt so stupid, and oh no, I felt stupid because
I just had completely missed this fact about her that
explained so much, which is kind of Mino's career as
(08:45):
a public person in Australia begins with this TV program
that is an institution. It was an institution in my
life as a child. Every day at like five or
six o'clock, I was watching this show and I am ashamed,
and I mean it's sincerely to say that I have
(09:06):
not thought about this TV show in many year is
And literally the moment I looked at it, I was transported.
I'm just gonna play this for you. No, everybody needs
good name, just a friendly way each mom. Okay, does
(09:28):
that song mean anything to you at all? It doesn't.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Should I be ashamed of myself too?
Speaker 1 (09:33):
No? No, no, no no, because this is wherever cultural
divide begins. So that is the theme song to an
Australian soap called Neighbors. And like it's funny because I
feel like soaps here in the US they're relegated to
sort of midday television. Your grandma or your mom or
(09:57):
someone else who's watching you when you're homesick from school.
That's what you're watching. That is not what Neighbors was.
As a kid, Neighbors was like tea time television.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Even the fact that there's a such thing as tea
time telling are more cultural divide.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
But yeah, like where my parents got home from work,
that's what was on the television. And it was a phenomenon.
Like the reason why it's called Neighbors is because it's
a show just about the goings on in this one
neighborhood on this one street right called Ramsey Street in Melbourne,
and you have all these different characters in different families
and this show, I don't know how to describe it.
It was a soap and it was dramatic, but it
(10:34):
wasn't like Days of Our Lives where it's dramatic in like,
oh my gosh, so and so is cheating on so
and so and so and so. It was kind of
slice of life in this very wholesome, wonderful way. But
more importantly for our purposes, it was the incubator for
so so so many Australian stars. Like basically, if you
are famous and you are Australian and we know about
(10:56):
you outside of Australia, there's eighty percent chance you had
some role on this show. So Heath Leedsure, Margot Robbie Hemsworth, Brothers,
that guy appears like pretty much every Australian actor has
even been on Neighbors all this other biggest radium, so
Home and Away, Like that's the sort of institution this was.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Really and they all come on like later early evening
for us.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Yeah, well for us in the UK, that's the time.
I have no idea what time illustrated, but yeah, I
remember on the BBC you'd have children's programming after school
what they used to call CBBC on this main channel,
BBC one, and then you would have this little break
before the news and that was neighbors slot. It was
(11:39):
literally the transition from like kids programming to the beginning
of adult programming, so it was kind of adult but
kind of good for everybody to watch. And I watched
that every.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Day, which is pop now that you say it.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
M H and Kyie. She was a main character from
the beginning and really it's breakout staff from the beginning
in nineteen eighty six, basically like a year the show launched.
She played this character named Charlene who was this tomboyish
wanna be, which is interesting because I don't know, do
(12:12):
you know what kind of even know looks like at all?
Speaker 3 (12:15):
I'm ashamed to say, I don't think I could. I
don't think I could point her out.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
No, Okay, so kind of is a very very pretteete
white woman. It's the eighties at this point, so she
definitely has that curly hair perm but she has this blonde,
curly hair perm down to her shoulders kind of deal.
And what she does have in space, even though she's
(12:38):
pretty sure, is it's very perky personality, which definitely goes
with both I think the attitudes and the vibe of
the show right which is that it is enables us
to sort of like kind of happy show and you
can even just hear from the theme song. But also
(12:59):
that was what my image and stereotype of your beach
kissed Australian last Ones or something like.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
It was just that like perky and pretty and bubbly.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
And totally totally but also not afraid to get stuck in,
but also a mechanic, someone who's down to earth.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Kind of the Australian stereotape, right like you're a good
time also you're not too good for whatever, you know.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, definitely, definitely, And she gave an interview in the
only two thousands of her just talking about that time
on Neighbors and what the significance of a program was
because Neighbors was, you know, of its time in Australia
and it was a surprise even to her and to
other cast members that it ended up becoming such a
big hit that it became in the UK.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
I think the reason that the British like it so
much is, for one thing, it's normally sunny. Most days
we shot outside it was raining or overcast, but it
does come across as being bright and cheerful, and you know,
it's an ideal sort of world, and we're not in
an ideal world, so I guess it's like a fantasy
for them. When they get home five point forty five
(14:07):
or whatever time it's on, they switch off. I don't
even have to think to watch Neighbors. Everything is spilt
out for them. It's like giving it to them on
a silver pleasure, So they just like go off into
another world for half an hour and get lost in
this pretend land.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
I would say when the show first launched, especially in
the late eighties, it was appointment television, like we are
watching to see what happens on Neighbors tonight, and Kylie
was like a massive part of that. And through that
role she becomes cemented both in Australia and like in
the UK as this girl next door kind of type.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Was she a child star?
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Not really. I mean she had started acting as like
a kid, but by this point she's like firmly adult.
She's in her like late thians or early twenties.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
That.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
But the thing I want you to think about as
well is this show Neighbors. It's almost as if the
producers and everybody involved realized the power of this show
to sort of make it across Oceans from Australi. You
came to become big. This is really the first of
its kind in that way, and so the stars in
it start thinking a little bigger. And at this point,
(15:19):
I feel like, I want you to think about Neighbors
not just as a soap, not just as a friend's equivalent,
but almost the singular equivalent of the Disney Channel star machine.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
That's what I was starting to think about as you talk.
That's kind of why I asked about was she a
child stir because it sounds like, yeah, the Disney Channel
stars got it.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, it's like you have acting. And then literally the
way the show sort of handled her favor at that
time was obviously she was playing this role, but then
she and some of her friends in the show end
up forming a band and they're making music within the
world of the show, and you can kind of see
where this is going, right, And so what she does
(16:02):
is she puts out a song in the late eighties,
her first real like big solo career sort of launch.
And what that song is this cover of like a
nineteen sixties song. But I actually, in going through the archive,
didn't know about like, I've definitely heard this song of
Virginian Times, which is locomotion. Yeah, the lotion. No, she
(16:28):
did this big cover of it in the eighties that
actually was like a global hit, but not that many
people know who sung it at all.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
I didn't know that was I know the song you
talked about. I didn't know that was Kylie Blow.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yeah, I mean she didn't. There's an original one that's
really old, right.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
No, I remember the cover version and I didn't know
that was Kylie Minogue.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Yeah, that is that is her, and nobody knows her
in part because it's not like the song has amazing
vocal stylings, right, But what it is is it's catchy
and it's interesting and I feel like right there from
the beginning, you see, I think in some ways the
power of Kylie Minogue, right, but also I think the
(17:07):
the anonymity of her in this where you were just like, oh,
it's just a bop, that's what you remember. You don't
remember anything else about it. But what that does do
for her if it allows her to have a bonafides
to start a solo career and sort of team up
with producers in the UK who all belonged to this
production company called stock Aitken and Waterman, who at the
(17:29):
time were like big, big, big hit makers and producers.
I'm just going to play you a little bit from
the interview where Kylie talks about coming to sort of
meet with them in London for the first time.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
As the story goes, apparently Pete Waterman had forgotten to
tell Matt and Mike that there's this Ozzie girl, Charlene
from Neighbors. She's waiting in the studio. We need a song,
and one of them said she should be so lucky.
And apparently that's how they wrote the song in thirty
to ten minutes. Certainly they didn't have long. I remember
(18:03):
being so nervous, maybe almost to the point of crying nervous.
And then we got on a plane and went home,
and neither Terry, my manager, or I.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
We couldn't tell.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
We didn't know have have we got a song?
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Have we got the song?
Speaker 2 (18:18):
I turned out we did have the.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Song, And so basually she's talking about the recording of
the song with all these producers and I'm gonna play
you that song. Okay, Okay, I'm just kidding. I'm just
I was like, no, I'm sorry, Okay, I know, I'm sorry.
(18:39):
Apologized for Rick rolling you in a year twenty twenty
six of Our Lord. But here's the thing, her early
songs sounded very similar to that, and it sounded similar
to that because that production factory that she just joined,
they had created Rick Astley, they had created that song,
and all of those songs that this production team put
(19:01):
out sounded very very similar to each other. And the
reason I played never Going to Give You Up specifically
is because any early days of Kyli Nex's career of them,
there was actually a conspiracy theory that she and Rick
were the same person.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
What yes, like kind of like a Janet and Michael thing.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
More than that, the conspiracy theory was that they were
the same person, just pitched up or down, which I'm
reading it about this. Learning about this, I was like,
no way, but I'm just gonna take you on the journey.
I went on for a second, if you indulge me. Wow, Okay,
So I'm going to play you the actual song that
(19:42):
Kylie first recorded, which is this song called I Should
Be So Lucky, which is a big hit for her.
I'm just going to play you this so you can
hear it. Right. You had about driving Baseline, that's very
similar to Rick Astley song You've got repetitive lyrics and
(20:03):
I should say the song is not much more complex
than that, right, but it is about you know, you
could almost see like the dance moves in the video.
Now I'm just going to play you another version of
that same song you just heard that's pitched down.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Oh my god. Right, that's the same track but just.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
The same just pitched down slightly.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
It does sound exactly like Rick, it really does.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
You can totally understand why this conspiracy theory existing.
Speaker 5 (20:38):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Well, it's also suggests she's so manufactured.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
It's like the implication here exactly. That is the implication.
And people are not totally into that, especially because I
mean wrong, this is a person, right that they have
sort of seen through the beginnings of what will be
a major star machine for kind of anybody famous in Australia. Right,
(21:04):
She's got the Neighbors launching pad, she's got cross Commonwealth
of you I guess with the UK, and now she's popping.
She's done a cover of a famous song to launch
it and now she's into this new phase. It's interesting
because a lot of her early tape in the BBC
archive is her basically having to defend herself and her
(21:28):
producers against those accusations. There's so much of these early
interviews that are her saying, I'm not an industry.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Plant, but what was the song?
Speaker 1 (21:37):
A hit? A decent hit. It wasn't like a mega hit,
but it was one of those. It seems like the
sort of one hit, one day earworm that comes and goes,
is the way it was at that time. I'm going
to pay you a clip of her talking about just
what it was like to work with those producers and
kind of defending her work with those producers, which is
she's basically saying, listen, I get the criticism, but we're
(22:00):
making bangers.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
I get an awful lot of undu criticism simply because
they're successful. They're not magic. They don't touch something and
it just works. They are where they are because of
experience and being professional and being talented, and the pressure
that they're under to keep coming up with hit songs
is I don't even know how many hit songs they've written,
but for people trying to write one, that can be difficult.
(22:24):
So I really respect and admire them if that's what
they're good at doing, and I'm good at singing and
projecting an image. Well, we should stick to our own
areas and that's why we're having so much success.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
It's kind of weird that she has to defend working
with like hit makers.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, but listen the criticism. It's interesting. I think we
live in the era now where music criticism. I don't
know if it's nicer or if I just don't hear
the critics from Rolling Stone who hate things, you know
what I mean. But some of the things people said
about her back then were pretty harsh. I mean, at
(23:05):
that time, there was a radio DJ thet BBC who
literally decided, instead of having Kylie on his show, interviewed
a cardboard cutout of her because he was just like,
that's how much personality she has, That's how much people
were questioning her. So I guess she felt like she
(23:25):
had to do. It's like, but what's interesting is in
these same interviews where she is having to defend how
manufactured she is, and you can just hear in her
voice one I think both a rebuttal to that fact
that she's a cipher with no personality and is not
really a person, and also her beginning to get a
(23:47):
very solid worldview about herself, which is just I'm gonna
be who I am and kind of be that. Well,
I'm going to play you this from an interview that
she do in two thousand.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
People don't give you credit for being for being what's
what I'm looking for? For being not like the opposite
to artie commercial. Yeah, we don't give you credit for
being commercial. But I'm sure there's a lot of people
out there that are all art for art's sake, that
(24:18):
would kill to be played on the radio, also have
fans writing to them or to have a number one hit.
And then on the other hand, there's people that say
there art for art's sake and yet will appear on
the cover of smash hits. So that's contradictory in itself.
But you have to have a talent to have worldwide appeal,
I mean a mass appeal, I should say, and there's
(24:40):
nothing to be ashamed of. And people try to put
you down and say, oh, well, you're just manufactured, you're
a puppet. And if I was, if I was a
manufactured product, I wouldn't still be here. I wouldn't be
able to sit in this room now talking, you know,
without someone hand up my back, moving my mouth for me.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
You know, there's something you her voice in some of
these interviews that ways he stumbles over the sorts of
things where you're just like, this does not feel polished
in some ways, you know what I mean. But there
is a sincerity there, you know what I.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Mean, There is absolutely a sincerity there.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
She can't come up with the word commercial, you know,
but in the process of being like, so I'm commercial,
Like you don't want to be like you ain't trying
to make money and be popular too, you know.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Right, it feels like she's just she's just honest. And
here's the thing. She's got her critics, but as we
alluded to the beginning of this, she has her fans too.
And that's what we're going to get interview after the break,
which is basically how Kylie's audience finds her. Welcome back
(25:51):
to Big Lines. Today, we're talking about Kylie Minogue and
where we left off Kai, we were talking about Kylie
kind of being a bit of a target in the
late eighties, right.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
She's plastic and manufactured.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Right, plastic and manufactured, And I feel like a bit
reason a lot of that conversation was happening was because
there was something else kind of in the e for
app this time, we're now really what at least I
considered to be peak Madonna.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
There are several peak Madonna periods, I have to say,
but like, but yeah, if we're in the late eighties,
that is one of them.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
The late eighty exactly exactly, and you know, Kylie is
doing a sort of dancey pop where basically the whole
point is just the good time you're having. Right as
you can hear in these interviews, there's no artistic statement.
She's out here literally just defending bops for commercial sake, right, locomotion,
(26:51):
locomotion exactly. And meanwhile, across the ocean in America there
is this woman, Madonna, global pop sensation who is making
bangers short, but I think is making bangers that are
having such a big cultural impact as more than just
bangus and all around the world. I feel like I
(27:14):
have this image in my brain in the late eighties
and early nineties before I was born, which is just
everybody is just vibing to Madonna, and one of the
songs that they're vibing to, especially in nineteen ninety is
Vogue Yes, And He's this thing where I'm not gonna
say here I tell you about Vogue, but I want
(27:36):
you to tell me about it, Like, what was that like?
Speaker 3 (27:39):
So Madonna throughout the eighties, it's not just the music
people are vibing to her.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
People are also.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Arguing about her constantly because she is a provocateur throughout
the eighties, you know, I mean, and she's constantly doing
this thing where she's selling sex but not selling sex,
and you know, asserting her right to be sexy in public,
you know, and then she's really rubbing up against black
queer culture a lot, you know, which is what Vogue is,
(28:10):
which feels like in the late eighties, and intentional provocation.
So she's constantly provoking with things that are kind of
sexy and illicit. And I can see why that would compare.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Someone like Kylie Minoguan.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
The way you're describing her would be ungenerously compared to
Madonna in that time. Part of the argument over Madonna
was like, is she like putting all this on? She's
deliberately provocative, and she's like as folks as strike a post.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Right, exactly striking a pose, wearing it as a costume
for shock value. Around the same time, Kylie is sort
of getting flak for being kind of a knockoff Madonna,
but she herself is undergoing. Kylie's undergoing her own sort
of shift, right. She's at this point been a couple
years out of the like sort of Disney Channel machine
(29:02):
that is Neighbors Right. The eighties are becoming the nineties.
She has continued her acting career. She started in a
couple of movies, and she's trying to share the character
that she played on Neighbors Right. That's sort of a
happy girl, lucky, sunny, innocent little girl basically, And so
she's working on new music that leans more into her
(29:25):
sex in US. She comes out with a song called
Better the Devil You know that I just say is
a bop, but the music video is way more suggestive.
Gone are sort of the curly PERMEI lot. This is
someone who you're just like, Oh, this is a this
is whoever I grew up with Kylie being. And at
(29:46):
the same time, Kylie notices this thing happening in Sydney
in Australia, and I'm just going to play you an
interview she gave about it not too long ago, actually
about this moment.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
I think it was nineteen ninety nineteen ninety and I
was in Sydney and there's a very famous gay bar
on Ox Street in Sydney and they were doing a
Kylie Knight this night, which I'd never heard of and
never been to. I remember being in the car with
(30:20):
whoever it was, but no, my manager at the time
was in there. I said we should go, and he
said no, like that's just just me too much organizational,
we didn't have time or whatever. But that in that moment,
I thought, oh my god, what is that? And I
heard that there were people dressed as me and it
sounded like a good time.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
So people dressed as me, obviously is what she's describing
was a drag show of Kylie.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
By this point, they're already doing Kylie dragged exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
By this point, they were already doing Kylie drag. And
what's happened is, even amongst all of the criticism, right
and they manufactured there's a group of people who have
loved Kylie's music from the beginning, and that is the
gay community in places like Sydney or in London York.
And so it's this thing where she's not really taking
(31:13):
from Greg Gold as much as it is that queer
culture is sort of taking her music and giving meaning
to it.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Honestly, it's interesting when I don't know anything about that
time at Sydney and the queer community and so forth.
But like the idea that she was a manufactured star
would be attractive in a drag setting, right, Like, that's
part of the point is the artifice.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Well, and I could totally.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
See why if there had been this whole debate about
this woman who makes great music, is she too manufactured?
It makes total sense that what follows is that drag
queens start doing her numbers. And that's part of what
you're doing with drag, you know, is commenting on artifice
and performance and you know what is real and what
is it? You know.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
But she makes an interesting choice here, which is throughout
the nineties queer wise, Kinie's sort of pop career is
a little bit on an off. She takes some really
interesting creative diversions, so she ends up doing more indie projects.
She exaborates with artists like Nick Cave. Even though she's
(32:20):
seen as this big manufacturer pop star, she kind of
takes these steps to move away from that a little bit.
And yet there were one sort of venue where she
was very happy to revisit like the music she was
singing in the eighties and the early nineties, and what
that is is queer space. Is so within four years
(32:41):
of realizing oh right, i have a bunch of gay
fans and I'm being portrayed by drag queens in Sydney,
Kylie is performing at big, big, big queer events. So
in nineteen ninety four, there's a kind of iconic performance
that she gives at Sydney's Mardi Gras celebration. Do you
(33:02):
know anything about this?
Speaker 2 (33:04):
It's about Sidney's Marti Gras as a big queer event.
Speaker 5 (33:07):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Yes, it's interesting because I feel like I was talking
to a friend of mine is Australian about this and
I was like, oh, so it's basically so it's like
a Pride celebration and she was like, yeah, except we
take over the city. It's a major, major event. And
it's interesting. You watch these performances of Kylie at this
event and they are electric. I'm talking Kylie singing songs
(33:30):
like I should be So Lucky, so rounded by fifty
men in the tightest, tightest fanny underwear type deals that
you could imagine like spectacular images, and she nurches that,
you know what I mean. Even though she sees herself
as this serious artist, she performing at these different Pride
(33:52):
celebrations and things like that around the world, giving those
fans what they want, right, which is her original dancing
quote unquote manufactured music. And towards the end of the nineties,
her sort of indie artist's face has ended. She's looking
for a new direction and where does she go. She
kind of goes to an updated version of that early
(34:14):
dance music that she was doing. And this brings me
to the album that I was introduced to her via,
which is this album called Light Years that came out
in two thousand. I feel like everywhere that me and
my mom at this time used to spend a lot
of time in the car together, like varying around the
(34:36):
different activities. My family had moved outside of London for
the first time, so we'd have these long drives back
to the city, and I remember listening to this album
with my mom on repeat, and I remember being stopped
at traffic lights and realizing that the car next to
us was also bumping this album You Be Good as
it was, and there's this song in it that is
(34:56):
one of my favorite dance songs of all time called
Spinning Around. Do you know this song?
Speaker 2 (35:01):
I don't know, maybe, oh man, I.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Re listened to it for the first time in a while.
Is Joy personav you know? With his rain Wright is
talking about how she's the gay shorthand for Joy. I
don't know, necessarily a straight person what gay Joy is specifically,
but if I had to guess, it's Spinning Around. So
(35:26):
it kind of starts with what I call sort of
like the supernova era of her career, and this is
the era where she's making just straight bangers, you know
what I mean, Like spinning Around, I can't get you
out of my head, and all of it is suspended
in this very knowingly campy disco vibe. Like that's the
(35:48):
whole point of it is. It's ridiculous. It's music made
for the club, and specifically, I think, really knowing me,
made for gay clubs, for gay clubs.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
I was gonna say, I'm pretty sure this is the
era in which my boyfriend was dance out speakers then
London gay clubs.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
So my question is there was.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
A period in the nineties thinking about le Minogue being
taken up by the gay community there was appeared in
the nineties where at least in my experience, was the
first time they started really aggressively marketing things at us.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Where vaka, you know, absolute.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Vodka became the like drink of the gay community because
they would constantly out to do ads directed at us.
And I wonder, you know, was it sounds like Kylie
and her team were savvy about the fact that gay
people liked her, So how much was she the beginning
of that process of seeing that there's commercialism, there's money
(36:43):
to be made right right to gay people.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
So we'll never know probably like exactly how calculated it was,
right she's in the record of just saying it was
sort of like a natural connection that happened. But here's
the thing, there'd be key points where you can see
her definitely embracing gay culture and doing things that like
gay people in particular really responded to. So a big
(37:08):
example is her big b hits, like spinning around, She's
wearing this particular kind of outfit. She's wearing these kind
of two small like gold pants, and what I mean
by gold pants is like gold underpants in the video
spinning around, dancing around, and those pants were a suggestion
(37:30):
by this famous gay designer who was like, just put
me on in the video, trust me, put on.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
I'm looking at a picture of it now and it's
like short, short, short shorts.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Yeah, short shorts. And yeah, it feels like they were
making these choices like to sort of cause conversation with
a demographic that up until that point, I feel like, yeah,
like had been not taken suit, Like she'd had gay
fandom from kind of from the beginning. But those critics
(38:06):
who derided her didn't see those fans as like valuable,
right right. They were just like, oh, you're not artistic,
you're manufactured, but never thinking about the people that music
was manufactured for, ah, or like who liked it. You know,
it's big for a reason. Who's buying these records?
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Right right?
Speaker 1 (38:26):
And I do feel like they're sort of irony thing
because really the people who are buying Kylie records in
the eighties, famously with little kids who love us song
locomotion and just gay queens having the time of their lives.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
And it's interesting because around this time she's interviewed a
lot about like, wow, you are such a big star, right,
And it's interesting because one thing I think you can
always bet on the Bridge to do is we'll adopt
anybody who has even like a tangential relationship to us
if they seem like they're becoming a global phenomenon.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Well like that is very United Kingdom, it's.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Very and like she's Australian. But because of her time
on Neighbors, because of her stardom, the British public, which
you know, a lot of which was very snarky about
her in her early days, now is fully fully claiming her.
And of course around this time, she goes on the
big talk show in the UK, which we've talked about previously.
On this show Parkinson, so our old friend, our old
(39:30):
friend Parky and goes on there and I have to say,
she's so effortlessly charming and it's this nice interview where
she's just basically very much a self relatable, sweet funny
or whatever. And Party asked his question that is direct
but honestly was I think for our bursinesses is very useful,
which is he asked her. Okay, so, like, you know,
(39:52):
you went through all that criticism early in your career,
people wrote you off as a disposable nothing. Basically, why
didn't you become that?
Speaker 5 (40:02):
I mean, how come that you didn't become disposable?
Speaker 4 (40:05):
See? What is it in you?
Speaker 5 (40:06):
That's that's I mean, well, it's.
Speaker 4 (40:09):
The sixty four thousand dollars question. I don't know, and
I'm more comfortable not knowing. I would probably mess it up.
There's an immense goodwill towards me, and as you mentioned
in the intro with this living in this country in
the way people have pretty much adopted me, I really
(40:31):
don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
And so on the one hand, she's like, I don't know,
and if I did know, I would probably mess it up.
But there's something happening between the lines here that is
not really being said, which is the answer is, well,
gay people have kept me alive, and I don't know
necessarily what it is, but I've done to deserve their love,
(40:53):
and I definitely don't want to mess it up. So
I'm just going to keep on keeping on. And I
just want to return here to how we started this show,
which is we're talking about Ruver's Retainwright saying, right, Kylie
is sort of the anti Madonna. Now I didn't know
what that means, and I don't know. I guess to me,
(41:14):
it seems the difference here is you have this person
who has become a gay icon who doesn't really overthink it,
Like do you feel like that it's a difference.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
That so yeah, I mean, so I didn't know about Kylie,
but now that I do. You know, the point is
that Madonna tries really hard to be to get attention,
you know, and uh, and I mean she wrote a book,
she made movies about her sex life. She you know,
she just really does the most and had done did
(41:47):
the most from the beginning and wanted it to be
super intellectual and you wanted to appear as a performance
artist and all of this. And it sounds like Kylie
was like, I'm happy to go to the club and
have fun, y'all.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Let's go totally. Like even by the early two thousand,
ills a kid like Madonna is still doing things in
that sort of provocateur artist lane, so to speak. Right,
whereas my memories of Kylie in the early two thousands
outside of her music are these very I don't know
if relatable is necessarily the word, and maybe it's overused,
but she's going through things with her life that I
(42:20):
feel like, oh, she's just like a regular person. I
Remember it was big, big news when in two thousand
and five Kylie got diagnosed with breast cancer. But the
way that people responded that, in a way she responded
to it was really to kind of like almost take
a little bit of a step back while also being
this big, big advocate for just like awareness about breast
(42:41):
cancer and women. It was almost like, in that period
of a career, the music was not really the thing
she was focusing on. And I think maybe because of that,
she was so loved and I think this person who's human,
and I think no small part of her appeal to
so many people to get people to not is also
that she did come through that period of criticism and
(43:04):
everybody loves like a comeback story in that kind of way.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
I mean it sounds like you're saying from a fairly
early in her career actually, I mean, if we're talking
about the early nineties, you know, where she notes that
they're doing drag about her, and she's like, great, you
know all the way through. Now everybody likes somebody who's
like consistently on your side, you know. I mean she
(43:29):
was clear from the beginning like, okay, gay people like me.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
I like gay people, and watching some of the criticism
about her listening to you, I'm like, oh, some of
this kind of reminds me of do you remember what
happened to do with LIPA a couple of years ago
where she was performing and someone commented on one of
her videos of her performing a concert like, go girl,
give us nothing. I don't remember that, okay, But I
(43:54):
feel like there's this thing that we do in culture
sometimes which is weird. You see someone out there who
you know is talented, right, but you are just sort
of like I know what you are and you know
what you are, and it's funny we make fun of
those people, but I also think we love those people intensely,
where we're just like, you know, good for you for
(44:16):
doing the thing and making songs that I love and
not trying to make it more than that.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
To them, and that I can go to the club
and have fun and I have memories of my fun
time with your music, not like I have to debate
how much meaning it has in the world and in
the culture. And you know, that's certainly how again, my
entire relationship is Kylie Minell gets through my boyfriend, but
that is absolutely how he talks.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
About her totally, totally. Well, I hope this has cleared
up some of any some of the mysteries around Kylie
for you.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Here's my question, Can I go see? Can I watch Neighbors? Now?
Is that a thing that I could go see somewhere?
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Well? Okay, So the answer as of everything on the
internet is yes.
Speaker 3 (44:59):
Okay, Well I need to go down a little bit
of internet rabbit hole and see this early Kylie Neighbors.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Gotta do it.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Well, thank you for this, Thanks you.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
So whos thanks for me? Who do you go?
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Well?
Speaker 3 (45:14):
You know this is gonna be interesting because I find
this person's life story super endearing, Okay, And and they're
kind of quirky in that, like they managed to be
like super niche and like mass celebrity at the same time.
And I'm just super curious whether you have any relationship
to this at all. So let's let's just play our
(45:37):
clips and see if you even recognize them.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
I love it.
Speaker 5 (45:40):
After nineteen sixty nine, the gay liberation movement began, and
there they were these guys and girls sacrificing everything and
loudly advocating just you know, to be liberated, to be
able to hold a job, a.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Bit of a curve ball for you, so you may
not recognize.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
Yeah, it's interesting because there is this sounds older in
that clip.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
Uh huh.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
But they're talking. The way they're talking about gay rights
and other things makes me I'm having a hard time
placing them. I'm interested.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
Yeah, it was a curve ball clip. Okay, let's go
for the next one.
Speaker 5 (46:19):
Suddenly we saw two soldiers marching up our driveway carrying
rifles with shiny bayonets on them. Stomped them the front
porch and with their fists started pounding on the door.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
An Yeah, no, I mean the sad truth of it
is that I asked us have a question in my brain,
I was like, what incidents in American history are troops
or paramilitary like coming up with somebody's front door, And
it's actually a lot.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
You got to think for a while.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Yeah, okay, okay, yeah, one more, one more.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Here we go.
Speaker 5 (46:56):
You will also appear to have killed him after a
fierce back.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
Oh incredible, but it will leave me in command.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Yeah, I saw, I saw, I saw it. Flash. I
saw a flash cross your face.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
Aw man, I am so excited for this.
Speaker 3 (47:15):
Okay, something for me, okay, okay, Okay, that's next week.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
Big Lives is a production of BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries.
Is hosted by me Manuel Jochi and Kay Wright. Our
team over at BBC Studios includes producer Emma Reverel, archive
producer Samir Chowdery, sound design by Melvin Rickerby. Our executive
producer is Annie brown Our production coordinator is Galen Davis Connolly,
(47:45):
and our production manager is Mabel Finnegan Wright. Our apprentice
is Amy Woods, and our executive producer is James Robinson.
The team over at Pushkin Industries includes executive producer Constanza Goryardo,
producer Daphne Chen. Our legal advisor is Jake Flanagan, and
our marketing team includes Morgan Ratner and Jordan McMillan
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Before we get going here, some real talk.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
The BBC has been sitting on decades of tape, and
Emmanuel and I are just two guys trying to make
sure the good stuff doesn't get buried.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
The way you can help us do that. Leave a review.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Don't have to be a long one, just a few
lines about how the show is changing your thinking.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
And think about who in your.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Life has a strong opinion about David Attenborough or Muhammad
Ali or Meg Ryan or anyone else We've covered for
them this episode. Because you know, I'm saying whatever they
think they know, they probably don't know the whole story.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
It's kind of the point. Okay, let's get started.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
From BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries. This is Big Lives.
I'm a Manuel Joe Chi, I'm Kai right, and on
this show, what we do is we take a single
cultural icon and we break down their life and impact
using the BBC's are guy and today. The person that
I'm talking about Kai is Kylie Minogue.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
I don't know a thing about her, so this is
gonna be an excellent education for me.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
There was such a the the amount contained in that
sigh you just took before you responded to be fix Volumes.
I know you don't know a thing about it, but
when you think of Kylie Minogue, what comes to mind,
like anything.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
My boyfriend dancing on a speaker in London because.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
He has had a massive relationship to Kylie Minogue, which
traces back to being in London clubs as a twig.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Okay, okay, okay, okay. Honestly, that that makes sense because
and I have to say, even though my relationship is
not necessarily dancing to Kylie Minogue in London clubs as
a twink, it's not totally dis similar my relationship, do it.
I remember being a kid living in the UK in
(02:13):
like ninety nine, two thousand and just anywhere you went,
you'd have these absolute bangers that actually put out stuff
like this definitely a totally songs like this one can't
(02:38):
get you out of my head, just like Pop personified
and in my brain. Actually as a kid, what I
associate that song with is like, actually a bunch of
older girls in my school throwing glitter on me at
a school like that. Okay, That's what I am asso
saying with. But you have identified a gap here, But
I want to get into so kind of an Ogue,
(03:01):
massive Australian singer pop superstar, mostly at least in my lifetime,
in the nineties and the two thousands, massive when I
was a kid. But it's interesting because I moved to
the US age twelve, and I remember so clearly having
a conversation with somebody where we were talking about music,
(03:22):
and I remember realizing, oh, nobody, at least in Toledo, Ohio,
where I moved to, seemed to know who Kindlie Minogue
it was. And I was like, oh, a lot of
America might not know who Kylie Minogue is. A few
years ago, I was having a conversation about Kylie Minogue
(03:43):
for like the upteenth time, and someone asked me just
a really basic level question. I had gotten into a
routine where I would say, oh, my gosh, you don't
know Kyli Minogue is so typical, and I would play
Can't Give It out of My Head or one of
these other songs of hers, right, But this person was like, Okay,
so I get that she's created this cool dance music
and it's great, But besides that, I've looked online and
(04:05):
it seems like she's so huge, maybe even bordering on iconic.
Why is that.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Like, why is she so iconic?
Speaker 1 (04:13):
What was the person's question, Yeah, outside of just the music,
and I realized, I don't know. And so that has
been rumbling in my head a while now, along with
one other fact, which is I've lived in New York
now about ten years, and I have finally found a
(04:35):
lot of people who also know Kylie Minogue who are American,
and I think what I've just realized, which I thought
you were in earlier, which is like, oh, but people
in America who really love Kylie Minogue, they're gay.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
I say, I'm guessing. I'm guessing that these are your
homosexual friends.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Definitely, like Luke flashed to just me, apparently she's been
a gay icon this whole time. Recently, I was diving
into that a little bit, educating myself, and I came
across this old article from forever ago where this other singer,
this guy Rufe Reinwright, lists a bunch of his personal
gay icons, and it was interesting. You've got like Judy Garland,
(05:17):
Stevie Nicks, Madonna, just the usual kind of suspects, and
then there's like a little bit about Kylie Minogue and
and here's what it says, I love Kylie. She's the
anti Madonna. Self knowledge is truly a beautiful thing, and
Kylie knows herself inside out. She is what she is,
(05:37):
and there is no attempt to make quasi intellectual statements
to substantiate it. She is the gay shorthand for joy.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Wow, the amount of Madonna's shade in that's a visit.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
The thing. I kept coming back to the bit about
the anti Madonna and reading that, I was like, I
don't know what that means in my life. I don't
know that I naturally put Kylie Minogue in a definitely
not a musical category, totally different to Madonna. She's a
pop singer, loves dancing tunes. Obviously, now I know that
she's beloved by gay people. I don't know. I was
(06:14):
just sort of what's the difference. So I went into
the BBC archives basically just to try and understand how
exactly Kylie built her career, how she became a gay icon,
and what that says about the whole generation of female
pop stars and their relationship to probably their most important
fans and.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Maybe a whole generation of gay band too, because I
actually don't know how she's not an icon to me
because I think I'm too old or I was too
old by the time she became an icon, and I
don't know how she became one either.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
So this is going to be great exactly.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
That's what we're going to get into today. Why do
people love Kylie Minogue so much in the UK and
Australia and she just never really quite hit the same
sort of ubiquitousness here in America. And that's what we'll
get into after the break.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
You need to spend so much time in the States
to cover and to get yourself known that I couldn't
spend a year, you know, Carly Kaylee Minuje Monaghue. Oh
you're Australian, right, And I frankly I'd rather put pins
in my eyes.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
For a year. Welcome back to Big Lives. They were
talking about Kylie Minogue, who kai you know nothing about?
Speaker 2 (07:47):
So I know the box, but I don't know her
as a person.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Okay, So just to get you some basic facts. So
Kylie was born in Australia in Melbourne in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I didn't know she was that all, not that that's all.
It's just much older than I thought she was.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
No, Honestly, guy, I share that I feel like when
I actually looked her up, I realized, Oh, this person
has had a much longer career than I. I realized, like,
I've only ever known her in the context of my life,
which was sort of like late nineties, early two thousands.
Her fame is what I remember then, but no, she
had a career that really started in a big way
(08:22):
in the eighties. And I just got to say right now,
like the moment I started digging into her history via
the BBC archives, I at this moment where I just
felt so stupid, and oh no, I felt stupid because
I just had completely missed this fact about her that
explained so much, which is kind of Mino's career as
(08:45):
a public person in Australia begins with this TV program
that is an institution. It was an institution in my
life as a child. Every day at like five or
six o'clock, I was watching this show and I am ashamed,
and I mean it's sincerely to say that I have
(09:06):
not thought about this TV show in many year is
And literally the moment I looked at it, I was transported.
I'm just gonna play this for you. No, everybody needs
good name, just a friendly way each mom. Okay, does
(09:28):
that song mean anything to you at all? It doesn't.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Should I be ashamed of myself too?
Speaker 1 (09:33):
No? No, no, no no, because this is wherever cultural
divide begins. So that is the theme song to an
Australian soap called Neighbors. And like it's funny because I
feel like soaps here in the US they're relegated to
sort of midday television. Your grandma or your mom or
(09:57):
someone else who's watching you when you're homesick from school.
That's what you're watching. That is not what Neighbors was.
As a kid, Neighbors was like tea time television.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Even the fact that there's a such thing as tea
time telling are more cultural divide.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
But yeah, like where my parents got home from work,
that's what was on the television. And it was a phenomenon.
Like the reason why it's called Neighbors is because it's
a show just about the goings on in this one
neighborhood on this one street right called Ramsey Street in Melbourne,
and you have all these different characters in different families
and this show, I don't know how to describe it.
It was a soap and it was dramatic, but it
(10:34):
wasn't like Days of Our Lives where it's dramatic in like,
oh my gosh, so and so is cheating on so
and so and so and so. It was kind of
slice of life in this very wholesome, wonderful way. But
more importantly for our purposes, it was the incubator for
so so so many Australian stars. Like basically, if you
are famous and you are Australian and we know about
(10:56):
you outside of Australia, there's eighty percent chance you had
some role on this show. So Heath Leedsure, Margot Robbie Hemsworth, Brothers,
that guy appears like pretty much every Australian actor has
even been on Neighbors all this other biggest radium, so
Home and Away, Like that's the sort of institution this was.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Really and they all come on like later early evening
for us.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Yeah, well for us in the UK, that's the time.
I have no idea what time illustrated, but yeah, I
remember on the BBC you'd have children's programming after school
what they used to call CBBC on this main channel,
BBC one, and then you would have this little break
before the news and that was neighbors slot. It was
(11:39):
literally the transition from like kids programming to the beginning
of adult programming, so it was kind of adult but
kind of good for everybody to watch. And I watched
that every.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Day, which is pop now that you say it.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
M H and Kyie. She was a main character from
the beginning and really it's breakout staff from the beginning
in nineteen eighty six, basically like a year the show launched.
She played this character named Charlene who was this tomboyish
wanna be, which is interesting because I don't know, do
(12:12):
you know what kind of even know looks like at all?
Speaker 3 (12:15):
I'm ashamed to say, I don't think I could. I
don't think I could point her out.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
No, Okay, so kind of is a very very pretteete
white woman. It's the eighties at this point, so she
definitely has that curly hair perm but she has this blonde,
curly hair perm down to her shoulders kind of deal.
And what she does have in space, even though she's
(12:38):
pretty sure, is it's very perky personality, which definitely goes
with both I think the attitudes and the vibe of
the show right which is that it is enables us
to sort of like kind of happy show and you
can even just hear from the theme song. But also
(12:59):
that was what my image and stereotype of your beach
kissed Australian last Ones or something like.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
It was just that like perky and pretty and bubbly.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
And totally totally but also not afraid to get stuck in,
but also a mechanic, someone who's down to earth.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Kind of the Australian stereotape, right like you're a good
time also you're not too good for whatever, you know.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, definitely, definitely, And she gave an interview in the
only two thousands of her just talking about that time
on Neighbors and what the significance of a program was
because Neighbors was, you know, of its time in Australia
and it was a surprise even to her and to
other cast members that it ended up becoming such a
big hit that it became in the UK.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
I think the reason that the British like it so
much is, for one thing, it's normally sunny. Most days
we shot outside it was raining or overcast, but it
does come across as being bright and cheerful, and you know,
it's an ideal sort of world, and we're not in
an ideal world, so I guess it's like a fantasy
for them. When they get home five point forty five
(14:07):
or whatever time it's on, they switch off. I don't
even have to think to watch Neighbors. Everything is spilt
out for them. It's like giving it to them on
a silver pleasure, So they just like go off into
another world for half an hour and get lost in
this pretend land.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
I would say when the show first launched, especially in
the late eighties, it was appointment television, like we are
watching to see what happens on Neighbors tonight, and Kylie
was like a massive part of that. And through that
role she becomes cemented both in Australia and like in
the UK as this girl next door kind of type.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Was she a child star?
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Not really. I mean she had started acting as like
a kid, but by this point she's like firmly adult.
She's in her like late thians or early twenties.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
That.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
But the thing I want you to think about as
well is this show Neighbors. It's almost as if the
producers and everybody involved realized the power of this show
to sort of make it across Oceans from Australi. You
came to become big. This is really the first of
its kind in that way, and so the stars in
it start thinking a little bigger. And at this point,
(15:19):
I feel like, I want you to think about Neighbors
not just as a soap, not just as a friend's equivalent,
but almost the singular equivalent of the Disney Channel star machine.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
That's what I was starting to think about as you talk.
That's kind of why I asked about was she a
child stir because it sounds like, yeah, the Disney Channel
stars got it.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, it's like you have acting. And then literally the
way the show sort of handled her favor at that
time was obviously she was playing this role, but then
she and some of her friends in the show end
up forming a band and they're making music within the
world of the show, and you can kind of see
where this is going, right, And so what she does
(16:02):
is she puts out a song in the late eighties,
her first real like big solo career sort of launch.
And what that song is this cover of like a
nineteen sixties song. But I actually, in going through the archive,
didn't know about like, I've definitely heard this song of
Virginian Times, which is locomotion. Yeah, the lotion. No, she
(16:28):
did this big cover of it in the eighties that
actually was like a global hit, but not that many
people know who sung it at all.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
I didn't know that was I know the song you
talked about. I didn't know that was Kylie Blow.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yeah, I mean she didn't. There's an original one that's
really old, right.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
No, I remember the cover version and I didn't know
that was Kylie Minogue.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Yeah, that is that is her, and nobody knows her
in part because it's not like the song has amazing
vocal stylings, right, But what it is is it's catchy
and it's interesting and I feel like right there from
the beginning, you see, I think in some ways the
power of Kylie Minogue, right, but also I think the
(17:07):
the anonymity of her in this where you were just like, oh,
it's just a bop, that's what you remember. You don't
remember anything else about it. But what that does do
for her if it allows her to have a bonafides
to start a solo career and sort of team up
with producers in the UK who all belonged to this
production company called stock Aitken and Waterman, who at the
(17:29):
time were like big, big, big hit makers and producers.
I'm just going to play you a little bit from
the interview where Kylie talks about coming to sort of
meet with them in London for the first time.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
As the story goes, apparently Pete Waterman had forgotten to
tell Matt and Mike that there's this Ozzie girl, Charlene
from Neighbors. She's waiting in the studio. We need a song,
and one of them said she should be so lucky.
And apparently that's how they wrote the song in thirty
to ten minutes. Certainly they didn't have long. I remember
(18:03):
being so nervous, maybe almost to the point of crying nervous.
And then we got on a plane and went home,
and neither Terry, my manager, or I.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
We couldn't tell.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
We didn't know have have we got a song?
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Have we got the song?
Speaker 2 (18:18):
I turned out we did have the.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Song, And so basually she's talking about the recording of
the song with all these producers and I'm gonna play
you that song. Okay, Okay, I'm just kidding. I'm just
I was like, no, I'm sorry, Okay, I know, I'm sorry.
(18:39):
Apologized for Rick rolling you in a year twenty twenty
six of Our Lord. But here's the thing, her early
songs sounded very similar to that, and it sounded similar
to that because that production factory that she just joined,
they had created Rick Astley, they had created that song,
and all of those songs that this production team put
(19:01):
out sounded very very similar to each other. And the
reason I played never Going to Give You Up specifically
is because any early days of Kyli Nex's career of them,
there was actually a conspiracy theory that she and Rick
were the same person.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
What yes, like kind of like a Janet and Michael thing.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
More than that, the conspiracy theory was that they were
the same person, just pitched up or down, which I'm
reading it about this. Learning about this, I was like,
no way, but I'm just gonna take you on the journey.
I went on for a second, if you indulge me. Wow, Okay,
So I'm going to play you the actual song that
(19:42):
Kylie first recorded, which is this song called I Should
Be So Lucky, which is a big hit for her.
I'm just going to play you this so you can
hear it. Right. You had about driving Baseline, that's very
similar to Rick Astley song You've got repetitive lyrics and
(20:03):
I should say the song is not much more complex
than that, right, but it is about you know, you
could almost see like the dance moves in the video.
Now I'm just going to play you another version of
that same song you just heard that's pitched down.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Oh my god. Right, that's the same track but just.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
The same just pitched down slightly.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
It does sound exactly like Rick, it really does.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
You can totally understand why this conspiracy theory existing.
Speaker 5 (20:38):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Well, it's also suggests she's so manufactured.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
It's like the implication here exactly. That is the implication.
And people are not totally into that, especially because I
mean wrong, this is a person, right that they have
sort of seen through the beginnings of what will be
a major star machine for kind of anybody famous in Australia. Right,
(21:04):
She's got the Neighbors launching pad, she's got cross Commonwealth
of you I guess with the UK, and now she's popping.
She's done a cover of a famous song to launch
it and now she's into this new phase. It's interesting
because a lot of her early tape in the BBC
archive is her basically having to defend herself and her
(21:28):
producers against those accusations. There's so much of these early
interviews that are her saying, I'm not an industry.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Plant, but what was the song?
Speaker 1 (21:37):
A hit? A decent hit. It wasn't like a mega hit,
but it was one of those. It seems like the
sort of one hit, one day earworm that comes and goes,
is the way it was at that time. I'm going
to pay you a clip of her talking about just
what it was like to work with those producers and
kind of defending her work with those producers, which is
she's basically saying, listen, I get the criticism, but we're
(22:00):
making bangers.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
I get an awful lot of undu criticism simply because
they're successful. They're not magic. They don't touch something and
it just works. They are where they are because of
experience and being professional and being talented, and the pressure
that they're under to keep coming up with hit songs
is I don't even know how many hit songs they've written,
but for people trying to write one, that can be difficult.
(22:24):
So I really respect and admire them if that's what
they're good at doing, and I'm good at singing and
projecting an image. Well, we should stick to our own
areas and that's why we're having so much success.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
It's kind of weird that she has to defend working
with like hit makers.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, but listen the criticism. It's interesting. I think we
live in the era now where music criticism. I don't
know if it's nicer or if I just don't hear
the critics from Rolling Stone who hate things, you know
what I mean. But some of the things people said
about her back then were pretty harsh. I mean, at
(23:05):
that time, there was a radio DJ thet BBC who
literally decided, instead of having Kylie on his show, interviewed
a cardboard cutout of her because he was just like,
that's how much personality she has, That's how much people
were questioning her. So I guess she felt like she
(23:25):
had to do. It's like, but what's interesting is in
these same interviews where she is having to defend how
manufactured she is, and you can just hear in her
voice one I think both a rebuttal to that fact
that she's a cipher with no personality and is not
really a person, and also her beginning to get a
(23:47):
very solid worldview about herself, which is just I'm gonna
be who I am and kind of be that. Well,
I'm going to play you this from an interview that
she do in two thousand.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
People don't give you credit for being for being what's
what I'm looking for? For being not like the opposite
to artie commercial. Yeah, we don't give you credit for
being commercial. But I'm sure there's a lot of people
out there that are all art for art's sake, that
(24:18):
would kill to be played on the radio, also have
fans writing to them or to have a number one hit.
And then on the other hand, there's people that say
there art for art's sake and yet will appear on
the cover of smash hits. So that's contradictory in itself.
But you have to have a talent to have worldwide appeal,
I mean a mass appeal, I should say, and there's
(24:40):
nothing to be ashamed of. And people try to put
you down and say, oh, well, you're just manufactured, you're
a puppet. And if I was, if I was a
manufactured product, I wouldn't still be here. I wouldn't be
able to sit in this room now talking, you know,
without someone hand up my back, moving my mouth for me.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
You know, there's something you her voice in some of
these interviews that ways he stumbles over the sorts of
things where you're just like, this does not feel polished
in some ways, you know what I mean. But there
is a sincerity there, you know what I.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Mean, There is absolutely a sincerity there.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
She can't come up with the word commercial, you know,
but in the process of being like, so I'm commercial,
Like you don't want to be like you ain't trying
to make money and be popular too, you know.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Right, it feels like she's just she's just honest. And
here's the thing. She's got her critics, but as we
alluded to the beginning of this, she has her fans too.
And that's what we're going to get interview after the break,
which is basically how Kylie's audience finds her. Welcome back
(25:51):
to Big Lines. Today, we're talking about Kylie Minogue and
where we left off Kai, we were talking about Kylie
kind of being a bit of a target in the
late eighties, right.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
She's plastic and manufactured.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Right, plastic and manufactured, And I feel like a bit
reason a lot of that conversation was happening was because
there was something else kind of in the e for
app this time, we're now really what at least I
considered to be peak Madonna.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
There are several peak Madonna periods, I have to say,
but like, but yeah, if we're in the late eighties,
that is one of them.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
The late eighty exactly exactly, and you know, Kylie is
doing a sort of dancey pop where basically the whole
point is just the good time you're having. Right as
you can hear in these interviews, there's no artistic statement.
She's out here literally just defending bops for commercial sake, right, locomotion,
(26:51):
locomotion exactly. And meanwhile, across the ocean in America there
is this woman, Madonna, global pop sensation who is making
bangers short, but I think is making bangers that are
having such a big cultural impact as more than just
bangus and all around the world. I feel like I
(27:14):
have this image in my brain in the late eighties
and early nineties before I was born, which is just
everybody is just vibing to Madonna, and one of the
songs that they're vibing to, especially in nineteen ninety is
Vogue Yes, And He's this thing where I'm not gonna
say here I tell you about Vogue, but I want
(27:36):
you to tell me about it, Like, what was that like?
Speaker 3 (27:39):
So Madonna throughout the eighties, it's not just the music
people are vibing to her.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
People are also.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Arguing about her constantly because she is a provocateur throughout
the eighties, you know, I mean, and she's constantly doing
this thing where she's selling sex but not selling sex,
and you know, asserting her right to be sexy in public,
you know, and then she's really rubbing up against black
queer culture a lot, you know, which is what Vogue is,
(28:10):
which feels like in the late eighties, and intentional provocation.
So she's constantly provoking with things that are kind of
sexy and illicit. And I can see why that would compare.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Someone like Kylie Minoguan.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
The way you're describing her would be ungenerously compared to
Madonna in that time. Part of the argument over Madonna
was like, is she like putting all this on? She's
deliberately provocative, and she's like as folks as strike a post.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Right, exactly striking a pose, wearing it as a costume
for shock value. Around the same time, Kylie is sort
of getting flak for being kind of a knockoff Madonna,
but she herself is undergoing. Kylie's undergoing her own sort
of shift, right. She's at this point been a couple
years out of the like sort of Disney Channel machine
(29:02):
that is Neighbors Right. The eighties are becoming the nineties.
She has continued her acting career. She started in a
couple of movies, and she's trying to share the character
that she played on Neighbors Right. That's sort of a
happy girl, lucky, sunny, innocent little girl basically, And so
she's working on new music that leans more into her
(29:25):
sex in US. She comes out with a song called
Better the Devil You know that I just say is
a bop, but the music video is way more suggestive.
Gone are sort of the curly PERMEI lot. This is
someone who you're just like, Oh, this is a this
is whoever I grew up with Kylie being. And at
(29:46):
the same time, Kylie notices this thing happening in Sydney
in Australia, and I'm just going to play you an
interview she gave about it not too long ago, actually
about this moment.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
I think it was nineteen ninety nineteen ninety and I
was in Sydney and there's a very famous gay bar
on Ox Street in Sydney and they were doing a
Kylie Knight this night, which I'd never heard of and
never been to. I remember being in the car with
(30:20):
whoever it was, but no, my manager at the time
was in there. I said we should go, and he
said no, like that's just just me too much organizational,
we didn't have time or whatever. But that in that moment,
I thought, oh my god, what is that? And I
heard that there were people dressed as me and it
sounded like a good time.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
So people dressed as me, obviously is what she's describing
was a drag show of Kylie.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
By this point, they're already doing Kylie dragged exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
By this point, they were already doing Kylie drag. And
what's happened is, even amongst all of the criticism, right
and they manufactured there's a group of people who have
loved Kylie's music from the beginning, and that is the
gay community in places like Sydney or in London York.
And so it's this thing where she's not really taking
(31:13):
from Greg Gold as much as it is that queer
culture is sort of taking her music and giving meaning
to it.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Honestly, it's interesting when I don't know anything about that
time at Sydney and the queer community and so forth.
But like the idea that she was a manufactured star
would be attractive in a drag setting, right, Like, that's
part of the point is the artifice.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Well, and I could totally.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
See why if there had been this whole debate about
this woman who makes great music, is she too manufactured?
It makes total sense that what follows is that drag
queens start doing her numbers. And that's part of what
you're doing with drag, you know, is commenting on artifice
and performance and you know what is real and what
is it? You know.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
But she makes an interesting choice here, which is throughout
the nineties queer wise, Kinie's sort of pop career is
a little bit on an off. She takes some really
interesting creative diversions, so she ends up doing more indie projects.
She exaborates with artists like Nick Cave. Even though she's
(32:20):
seen as this big manufacturer pop star, she kind of
takes these steps to move away from that a little bit.
And yet there were one sort of venue where she
was very happy to revisit like the music she was
singing in the eighties and the early nineties, and what
that is is queer space. Is so within four years
(32:41):
of realizing oh right, i have a bunch of gay
fans and I'm being portrayed by drag queens in Sydney,
Kylie is performing at big, big, big queer events. So
in nineteen ninety four, there's a kind of iconic performance
that she gives at Sydney's Mardi Gras celebration. Do you
(33:02):
know anything about this?
Speaker 2 (33:04):
It's about Sidney's Marti Gras as a big queer event.
Speaker 5 (33:07):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Yes, it's interesting because I feel like I was talking
to a friend of mine is Australian about this and
I was like, oh, so it's basically so it's like
a Pride celebration and she was like, yeah, except we
take over the city. It's a major, major event. And
it's interesting. You watch these performances of Kylie at this
event and they are electric. I'm talking Kylie singing songs
(33:30):
like I should be So Lucky, so rounded by fifty
men in the tightest, tightest fanny underwear type deals that
you could imagine like spectacular images, and she nurches that,
you know what I mean. Even though she sees herself
as this serious artist, she performing at these different Pride
(33:52):
celebrations and things like that around the world, giving those
fans what they want, right, which is her original dancing
quote unquote manufactured music. And towards the end of the nineties,
her sort of indie artist's face has ended. She's looking
for a new direction and where does she go. She
kind of goes to an updated version of that early
(34:14):
dance music that she was doing. And this brings me
to the album that I was introduced to her via,
which is this album called Light Years that came out
in two thousand. I feel like everywhere that me and
my mom at this time used to spend a lot
of time in the car together, like varying around the
(34:36):
different activities. My family had moved outside of London for
the first time, so we'd have these long drives back
to the city, and I remember listening to this album
with my mom on repeat, and I remember being stopped
at traffic lights and realizing that the car next to
us was also bumping this album You Be Good as
it was, and there's this song in it that is
(34:56):
one of my favorite dance songs of all time called
Spinning Around. Do you know this song?
Speaker 2 (35:01):
I don't know, maybe, oh man, I.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Re listened to it for the first time in a while.
Is Joy personav you know? With his rain Wright is
talking about how she's the gay shorthand for Joy. I
don't know, necessarily a straight person what gay Joy is specifically,
but if I had to guess, it's Spinning Around. So
(35:26):
it kind of starts with what I call sort of
like the supernova era of her career, and this is
the era where she's making just straight bangers, you know
what I mean, Like spinning Around, I can't get you
out of my head, and all of it is suspended
in this very knowingly campy disco vibe. Like that's the
(35:48):
whole point of it is. It's ridiculous. It's music made
for the club, and specifically, I think, really knowing me,
made for gay clubs, for gay clubs.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
I was gonna say, I'm pretty sure this is the
era in which my boyfriend was dance out speakers then
London gay clubs.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
So my question is there was.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
A period in the nineties thinking about le Minogue being
taken up by the gay community there was appeared in
the nineties where at least in my experience, was the
first time they started really aggressively marketing things at us.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Where vaka, you know, absolute.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Vodka became the like drink of the gay community because
they would constantly out to do ads directed at us.
And I wonder, you know, was it sounds like Kylie
and her team were savvy about the fact that gay
people liked her, So how much was she the beginning
of that process of seeing that there's commercialism, there's money
(36:43):
to be made right right to gay people.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
So we'll never know probably like exactly how calculated it was,
right she's in the record of just saying it was
sort of like a natural connection that happened. But here's
the thing, there'd be key points where you can see
her definitely embracing gay culture and doing things that like
gay people in particular really responded to. So a big
(37:08):
example is her big b hits, like spinning around, She's
wearing this particular kind of outfit. She's wearing these kind
of two small like gold pants, and what I mean
by gold pants is like gold underpants in the video
spinning around, dancing around, and those pants were a suggestion
(37:30):
by this famous gay designer who was like, just put
me on in the video, trust me, put on.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
I'm looking at a picture of it now and it's
like short, short, short shorts.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Yeah, short shorts. And yeah, it feels like they were
making these choices like to sort of cause conversation with
a demographic that up until that point, I feel like, yeah,
like had been not taken suit, Like she'd had gay
fandom from kind of from the beginning. But those critics
(38:06):
who derided her didn't see those fans as like valuable,
right right. They were just like, oh, you're not artistic,
you're manufactured, but never thinking about the people that music
was manufactured for, ah, or like who liked it. You know,
it's big for a reason. Who's buying these records?
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Right right?
Speaker 1 (38:26):
And I do feel like they're sort of irony thing
because really the people who are buying Kylie records in
the eighties, famously with little kids who love us song
locomotion and just gay queens having the time of their lives.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
And it's interesting because around this time she's interviewed a
lot about like, wow, you are such a big star, right,
And it's interesting because one thing I think you can
always bet on the Bridge to do is we'll adopt
anybody who has even like a tangential relationship to us
if they seem like they're becoming a global phenomenon.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Well like that is very United Kingdom, it's.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Very and like she's Australian. But because of her time
on Neighbors, because of her stardom, the British public, which
you know, a lot of which was very snarky about
her in her early days, now is fully fully claiming her.
And of course around this time, she goes on the
big talk show in the UK, which we've talked about previously.
On this show Parkinson, so our old friend, our old
(39:30):
friend Parky and goes on there and I have to say,
she's so effortlessly charming and it's this nice interview where
she's just basically very much a self relatable, sweet funny
or whatever. And Party asked his question that is direct
but honestly was I think for our bursinesses is very useful,
which is he asked her. Okay, so, like, you know,
(39:52):
you went through all that criticism early in your career,
people wrote you off as a disposable nothing. Basically, why
didn't you become that?
Speaker 5 (40:02):
I mean, how come that you didn't become disposable?
Speaker 4 (40:05):
See? What is it in you?
Speaker 5 (40:06):
That's that's I mean, well, it's.
Speaker 4 (40:09):
The sixty four thousand dollars question. I don't know, and
I'm more comfortable not knowing. I would probably mess it up.
There's an immense goodwill towards me, and as you mentioned
in the intro with this living in this country in
the way people have pretty much adopted me, I really
(40:31):
don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
And so on the one hand, she's like, I don't know,
and if I did know, I would probably mess it up.
But there's something happening between the lines here that is
not really being said, which is the answer is, well,
gay people have kept me alive, and I don't know
necessarily what it is, but I've done to deserve their love,
(40:53):
and I definitely don't want to mess it up. So
I'm just going to keep on keeping on. And I
just want to return here to how we started this show,
which is we're talking about Ruver's Retainwright saying, right, Kylie
is sort of the anti Madonna. Now I didn't know
what that means, and I don't know. I guess to me,
(41:14):
it seems the difference here is you have this person
who has become a gay icon who doesn't really overthink it,
Like do you feel like that it's a difference.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
That so yeah, I mean, so I didn't know about Kylie,
but now that I do. You know, the point is
that Madonna tries really hard to be to get attention,
you know, and uh, and I mean she wrote a book,
she made movies about her sex life. She you know,
she just really does the most and had done did
(41:47):
the most from the beginning and wanted it to be
super intellectual and you wanted to appear as a performance
artist and all of this. And it sounds like Kylie
was like, I'm happy to go to the club and
have fun, y'all.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Let's go totally. Like even by the early two thousand,
ills a kid like Madonna is still doing things in
that sort of provocateur artist lane, so to speak. Right,
whereas my memories of Kylie in the early two thousands
outside of her music are these very I don't know
if relatable is necessarily the word, and maybe it's overused,
but she's going through things with her life that I
(42:20):
feel like, oh, she's just like a regular person. I
Remember it was big, big news when in two thousand
and five Kylie got diagnosed with breast cancer. But the
way that people responded that, in a way she responded
to it was really to kind of like almost take
a little bit of a step back while also being
this big, big advocate for just like awareness about breast
(42:41):
cancer and women. It was almost like, in that period
of a career, the music was not really the thing
she was focusing on. And I think maybe because of that,
she was so loved and I think this person who's human,
and I think no small part of her appeal to
so many people to get people to not is also
that she did come through that period of criticism and
(43:04):
everybody loves like a comeback story in that kind of way.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
I mean it sounds like you're saying from a fairly
early in her career actually, I mean, if we're talking
about the early nineties, you know, where she notes that
they're doing drag about her, and she's like, great, you
know all the way through. Now everybody likes somebody who's
like consistently on your side, you know. I mean she
(43:29):
was clear from the beginning like, okay, gay people like me.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
I like gay people, and watching some of the criticism
about her listening to you, I'm like, oh, some of
this kind of reminds me of do you remember what
happened to do with LIPA a couple of years ago
where she was performing and someone commented on one of
her videos of her performing a concert like, go girl,
give us nothing. I don't remember that, okay, But I
(43:54):
feel like there's this thing that we do in culture
sometimes which is weird. You see someone out there who
you know is talented, right, but you are just sort
of like I know what you are and you know
what you are, and it's funny we make fun of
those people, but I also think we love those people intensely,
where we're just like, you know, good for you for
(44:16):
doing the thing and making songs that I love and
not trying to make it more than that.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
To them, and that I can go to the club
and have fun and I have memories of my fun
time with your music, not like I have to debate
how much meaning it has in the world and in
the culture. And you know, that's certainly how again, my
entire relationship is Kylie Minell gets through my boyfriend, but
that is absolutely how he talks.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
About her totally, totally. Well, I hope this has cleared
up some of any some of the mysteries around Kylie
for you.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Here's my question, Can I go see? Can I watch Neighbors? Now?
Is that a thing that I could go see somewhere?
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Well? Okay, So the answer as of everything on the
internet is yes.
Speaker 3 (44:59):
Okay, Well I need to go down a little bit
of internet rabbit hole and see this early Kylie Neighbors.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Gotta do it.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Well, thank you for this, Thanks you.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
So whos thanks for me? Who do you go?
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Well?
Speaker 3 (45:14):
You know this is gonna be interesting because I find
this person's life story super endearing, Okay, And and they're
kind of quirky in that, like they managed to be
like super niche and like mass celebrity at the same time.
And I'm just super curious whether you have any relationship
to this at all. So let's let's just play our
(45:37):
clips and see if you even recognize them.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
I love it.
Speaker 5 (45:40):
After nineteen sixty nine, the gay liberation movement began, and
there they were these guys and girls sacrificing everything and
loudly advocating just you know, to be liberated, to be
able to hold a job, a.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Bit of a curve ball for you, so you may
not recognize.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
Yeah, it's interesting because there is this sounds older in
that clip.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
Uh huh.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
But they're talking. The way they're talking about gay rights
and other things makes me I'm having a hard time
placing them. I'm interested.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
Yeah, it was a curve ball clip. Okay, let's go
for the next one.
Speaker 5 (46:19):
Suddenly we saw two soldiers marching up our driveway carrying
rifles with shiny bayonets on them. Stomped them the front
porch and with their fists started pounding on the door.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
An Yeah, no, I mean the sad truth of it
is that I asked us have a question in my brain,
I was like, what incidents in American history are troops
or paramilitary like coming up with somebody's front door, And
it's actually a lot.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
You got to think for a while.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Yeah, okay, okay, yeah, one more, one more.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Here we go.
Speaker 5 (46:56):
You will also appear to have killed him after a
fierce back.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
Oh incredible, but it will leave me in command.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Yeah, I saw, I saw, I saw it. Flash. I
saw a flash cross your face.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
Aw man, I am so excited for this.
Speaker 3 (47:15):
Okay, something for me, okay, okay, Okay, that's next week.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
Big Lives is a production of BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries.
Is hosted by me Manuel Jochi and Kay Wright. Our
team over at BBC Studios includes producer Emma Reverel, archive
producer Samir Chowdery, sound design by Melvin Rickerby. Our executive
producer is Annie brown Our production coordinator is Galen Davis Connolly,
(47:45):
and our production manager is Mabel Finnegan Wright. Our apprentice
is Amy Woods, and our executive producer is James Robinson.
The team over at Pushkin Industries includes executive producer Constanza Goryardo,
producer Daphne Chen. Our legal advisor is Jake Flanagan, and
our marketing team includes Morgan Ratner and Jordan McMillan
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