Kylie Minogue MTV Interview

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Kylie Minogue MTV Interview: Thigh High

- "Don't count your chickens, you know?"

Thus spake Kylie Minogue as she made her whirlwind way around New York City promoting the U.S. release of Fever, answering her label's expectations that she would enter the albums chart at #1. "I think we're #10, maybe," she prognosticated warily. "It's all good. I don't want to put the pressure on #1."

She did a wee bit better than she'd thought. Fever — the eighth album proper by the Australian actress/singer/superstar, a pop culture icon seemingly everywhere but here — debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200. Hopefully everyone who chuckled over the notion of her closing Sydney's 2000 Summer Olympics has digested his or her hat by now.

Yes, she's that Kylie, the one who first squeaked into American consciousness nearly 15 years ago — the petite, toothsome teen in workout togs chirping out "The Loco-Motion" over herky-jerky beats manufactured by the Stock-Aitken-Waterman production team, headphones clamped over her crispy, Stiff Stuffed-up curls, singing her heart out in staged "in-the-studio" glory as if she were pouring her very soul into every cheery syllable.

That squeaky-clean Kylie, who quirked eyebrows by dating INXS frontman Michael Hutchence when he was at the peak of his powers, transforming herself into what the overseas press gaspingly dubbed "SexKylie" while everyone in the U.S. wondered, "What on Earth is he doing with her?" The same Kylie who starred in movies with — ack — Pauly Shore and Jean-Claude Van Damme, then went on to collaborate with goth poet king Nick Cave and proletarian rock resuscitators Manic Street Preachers. What on Earth are they doing with Kylie "I should be so lucky, lucky-lucky-lucky" Minogue?

The answer lies somewhere between the gutter and the stars...

The answer lies somewhere between the gutter and the stars, with her celestial image balanced out by her unaffected approachability. To straight men, she's the girl next door who grew up to become a pleasurebot with a penchant for hot pants. (Hey, you'd show off too if you looked that good at 33.) She's a gay icon who doesn't resort to gay clichés to pacify or exploit her gay audience. To females, she's the perfect, pretty rich cheerleader everybody loves because she reads to the blind, knits sweaters for orphans and is extra-super-nice to everyone, always. She's a happiness-radiating, glitter-encrusted fairy out of a Walt Disney movie, hot yet pure — no wonder Baz Luhrmann cast her as just that in "Moulin Rouge."

While other pop stars go out of their way to reinvent themselves, Kylie Minogue perfected herself. With her last album,Light Years (2000), Kylie fully embraced the role of a disco pixie who's unashamed of her past pop transgressions. She's entirely capable of singing into a live mic yet entirely incapable of covering herself up, preferring tiny interstellar stewardess outfits or just a few filmy bits of gauze — the most sturdy item of clothing she sports in the album's booklet is a towel. A towel. Best of all, she can do the Robot. Jeez, why did it take so long for us to get it?

"Nothing else that I had done had translated," Minogue said. "A few times people said, 'Hey, this might work in the States,' and I'd go, 'Yeah, maybe, but I've heard all that before, and it's never happened.' "

And it still may never have happened, had Madonna not stretched Minogue's name 'cross her chest in T-shirt form at the 2000 MTV Europe Music Awards — just as she had on these shores with Britney Spears' name the previous week.

"I was so surprised," Minogue recalled. "I had done my performance with Robbie Williams. I was heading back to my dressing room, and there were a few people around a monitor and they saw me coming and said, 'Quick! Quick, come!' Probably no words came out. What can I say? I mean, it's fantastic. I'm extremely flattered."

Well, if Madonna's willing to draw a comparison between Kylie and Britney, she can't be wrong, right? Thing is, just as Robbie Williams has failed to make a blockbuster leap, so were expectations low for Kylie's crossover. And Light Years — a near-perfect concoction of burbling Giorgio Moroder/Donna Summer futurmuzik, smarmy lounge funk, Village People homages and epic tales of good times spent at the discotheque with "Le Freak" and "Dancing Queen" — was, perhaps, a little too out-there to make the trip. Fever, which traded in Light Years' Robbie Williams collaborations for work with D-Mob diva Cathy Dennis, proved to be just the ticket thanks to its first salvo, the aptly titled "Can't Get You Out of My Head."

"It's basically down to the song," Minogue said. "People are responding to the video and the imagery and the album and everything surrounding it, but I have a lot to thank the song for.

"We're trying to keep up with the song," she continued, invoking the royal "we" to put the onus on the troops of label reps and business-enders fluttering about. "It's doing most of the groundwork."

Helped, no doubt, by the bizarre white-hooded-poncho-type-thing she's wearing, which threatens to reveal more than just cleavage at every turn.

"Everybody, of course, is wondering how that dress defied gravity," Minogue said. "I was saying [to reporters], 'Well, we had a team of professional stuntmen, we had harnesses, we had a couple of Alsatians, sticky tape ...' and they're like, 'It was tape, right?' Yeah — it was a couple of bits of tape.

"I managed to keep my modesty intact those two days of filming," she insisted. "It was funny. People have said, 'But you're not wearing anything!' and I'm going, 'I'm wearing more fabric than I've ever worn in my life in that outfit!"

Now that American audiences are suitably entranced, she won't have to do as much legwork to re-introduce herself over here — something she feared every time someone would suggest she conquer the States.

"I can't spend a year crossing America and going, 'It's not Kelly,' 'Karly,' 'Minoog,' 'Monogway,' starting at the very, very bottom," she said. "I don't mean any offense or harm — the boredom and repetition of that would drive me mad. I just thought, 'No, [my music is] not going to work there.'

"I can't spend a year crossing America..."

"That's why I'm surprised," she continued. "We still had no intention on coming over, but radio stations picked up the song. This isn't launching our assault on America. It's more a case of, 'Hey, they're playing [my song].' You know, steps one and two were taken care of, and it looked like it was going to be a hit. I'm still in shock that I'm here."

The former child star has a lot to be shocked about — and thankful for. She began acting at the age of nine, eventually ending up on the Aussie soap "Neighbours" and recording on a whim. By the time she was 18 she was a massive pop star, going on to rack up hits like "I Should Be So Lucky" and "Better the Devil You Know" with Stock-Aitken-Waterman, the production team who also turned molehills into mountains with Rick Astley and Bananarama. She even recorded a hit single with her then-boyfriend and "Neighbours" co-star, Jason Donovan, who became a pop idol in his own right despite his terrifyingly bad hair. (Sound familiar?) Yet even with dogs like "Bio-Dome" and "Street Fighter" on her résumé, the acting bug still beckons.

"Someone has got a demo of me where I sound like Mickey Mouse ..."

"Acting was always on the agenda," Minogue said. "Singing, I've been sidetracked doing that for a long time, but over the last few years I've really felt a growing desire to get back and do more acting. To have a teeny, teeny little part in 'Moulin Rouge' brought it more to the forefront. I'm sure I'll be terrified acting again, because I haven't done it in so long, but I think that's a part of me that will happen again.

"I never intended to be a singer," she recalled. "I remember doing a demo tape when I was 17, three songs, the whereabouts of which are unknown at this point, so someone has got a demo of me where I sound like Mickey Mouse singing 'Dim All the Lights' by Donna Summer, 'New Attitude' by Patti LaBelle and 'Just Once' by Quincy Jones ... I sure picked them, didn't I?"

Sounds good to us.

By Kim Stitzel, with additional reporting by SuChin Pak