KYLIE MINOGUE (AUSTRALIA)

Born: 28 May 1968
Full name: Kylie Ann Minogue

Kylie was born in Melbourne, Australia. Her mother had been a ballet dancer and her father was an accountant. The name Kylie is the Aboriginal word for boomerang.  As a youngster she had piano and violin lessons and later she and her sister Danni would take singing and dancing lessons. When she was 10 she landed a minor role in the soap opera ‘The Sullivans’. She would later be in another show called ‘The Henderson Kids’ before landing a role in ‘Neighbours’. In the interim, she tried, unsuccessfully to launch a singing career. In 1987 at a benefit concert, she performed a version of ‘I Got You Babe’ and ‘The Loco-motion’. The producer of the show liked what he heard and arranged for Kylie to record a demo of ‘The Loco-motion’. The song was released as ‘Locomotion’ and was in the wake of her wedding scene with Jason Donovan in ‘Neighbours’. It would go to number 1 in Australia. This led to her travelling to London to work with the production team of Stock Aitken & Waterman. They had forgotten she was coming so quickly wrote ‘I Should Be So Lucky’ while Kylie waited outside the studio. The resultant recording rocketed Kylie to superstardom as it went to number 1 in at least 6 countries, including the UK. At the time of writing, she had seen 61 UK hits with 7 of them hitting the top spot. She has not been as popular in the US where she has only managed 4 Hot 100 hits with 2001’s ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ giving her a best peak of 7.

Date of entry	Song	Peak (weeks at 1)	Weeks
05-May-1988	I Should Be So Lucky	1 (7)	27
04-Aug-1988	Got To Be Certain	6	24
20-Oct-1988	The Loco-Motion	1 (11)	19
16-Feb-1989	Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi	23	2
		Total hits	4
		Total weeks	72

Biggest climber awards	2
Star rater climbs	8
Biggest fallers	1
Weeks with oldest in the charts	1
Longest run in the charts (weeks)	43
Weeks with more than 1 in the charts	26
Biggest gap between hits (weeks)	0
Top 30 points ranking	59
Top 20 points ranking	45
Top 30 points	1528
Top 20 points	862

‘The Loco-Motion’ was 1 of 6 songs to spend 11 or more weeks at 1. Both ‘The Loco-Motion’ and ‘Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi’ were on the final chart in February 1989 (at number 4 and 23 respectively). Had the charts continued for another week, it is quite likely ‘The Loco-Motion’ would have ticked over to 20 weeks and Kylie would have been the 7^th act and first female act to see 3 hits reach 20 weeks in the charts. On a top 20 points basis she would be the 5^th highest ranked female act, but would only rank 10^th using a top 30 points basis.