On the 4th July 1988, Kylie Minogue released her debut album, simply titled Kylie and with it the world witnessed the birth of a pop superstar. Celebrating 30 years of music this year with another no.1 album to her name with her current album Golden, we thought we’d take a minute to step back in time (there’s just no other way to say it!) and celebrate the album that started it all.
Kylie started her showbiz career at the age of just 11 in an Australian drama called The Sullivans, several shows and a few years later and Kylie was about to become a household name in her native Australia when she joined the cast of popular soap Neighbours as Charlene Mitchell. With Neighbours being picked up late 1986 in the UK, we had to play catch up and would first see Charlene on BBC1 in 1987. Meanwhile, in Australia her star was already on the ascendance and following a live charity gig where she appeared with the cast of Neighbours and sang Loco-Motion, she caught the eye of Mushroom Records and released that song as her debut Australian single. It was released in 1987 and went on to become the biggest selling single of the decade in Australia. Mushroom Records decided to draft in the UK’s premiere pop songwriting team of Stock, Aitken and Waterman and Kylie flew to London to record.
Stock, Aitken and Waterman ruled the world of pop having success with the likes of Bananarama, Mel & Kim and Rick Astley at the time, but as is now urban legend in the world of music, they hadn’t been made aware that they’d agreed to write for Kylie. It wasn’t until the last day of her trip when she was sat in the studio lobby that they realised. In a panic, they talked about what song she could have and one of them suggested an unused Bananarama song and the phrase ‘she should be so lucky’ came out and quickly became I Should Be So Lucky; the song was written in about 20 minutes.
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Released on 29th December 1987 it took just a few weeks to find it’s way to the top of the charts where it stayed for five weeks. It was followed in May by Got To Be Certain, which like all but one of the tracks on the upcoming album were written by SAW. It reached the no.2 position in the UK and was still clinging on to the lower echelon of the UK top 40 singles when the album Kylie was released on 4th July 1988.
The album debuted at no.2, held off the top spot by Tracy Chapman. It spent several weeks in the top 5 before climbing to the no.1 spot in August which coincided with a new version of Loco-Motion being released and going straight in to the chart at no.2, something unusual at the time.
Kylie was 10 tracks of pure pop with SAW signature sound including the exotic french titled Je Ne Sais Pas Porquoi which became the fourth and final UK single in October 1988. Kylie has likened the recording process as similar to Neighbours career; you learn your lines, you go in to the studio and lay them down. This seemed to work for both her and SAW whilst she had a busy schedule with Neighbours and promoting her music. The winning formula saw Kylie crowned the biggest selling album of 1988 and set the path for a career that’s lasted 30 years so far.
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It’s No Secret was due to be the fifth single lifted from the album, but ended up only being released in North America and Japan, with Australia and UK moving on to Hand On Your Heart from Kylie’s second album Enjoy Yourself. Turn It Into Love was also released in Japan where it topped the charts and in the UK the song was released as a single by Hazel Dean instead.
It was, and still is a great time to be a Kylie fan and to borrow from one of the album tracks, Kylie, who knew after 30 years, I’d Still Be Loving You!
