Kylie Minogue started her long career as actress on an Australian soap, but her charisma and

chameleon-like talents as a pop singer soon landed her on top of the music world. The ride was bumpy,
with high highs (chart-topping singles and albums, a brilliant collaboration with Nick Cave) and low lows
(cancer, being dropped by record labels), but through it all, Minogue's cheerful relatability never flagged.
Through her early days in the '80s with Stock, Aitken & Waterman to her giant electro pop hit in 2001
("Can't Get You Out of My Head") to her triumphant worldwide tours in the 2010s, Minogue carved out
space in the upper echelon of pop all her own.

Born in Melbourne, Australia on May 28, 1968, she began acting in television dramas at the age
of 12. Although the small roles brought her a fair bit of exposure, it was her 1986 debut on the insanely
popular soap Neighbours that catapulted her to stardom. In Australia, Minogue's role as the tomboy
Charlene won her a number of awards, but in Britain, the exploits of that character and her love interest
-- played by the actor Jason Donovan -- attracted record numbers of television viewers, and made the
Aussie drama one of the most watched shows in the U.K. Understanding Minogue's megastar potential,
as well as her ability to vamp and sing, Mushroom Records signed her to a contract in 1987. Her success
was immediate, as her debut single, "The Loco-Motion" (a cover of the 1962 Little Eva hit) rocketed to
number one and eventually took the globe by storm, hitting the upper reaches of the charts in many
countries.

Kylie then headed to England and partnered with the production team of Stock, Aitken &
Waterman. The first track that the group released with Minogue, "I Should Be So Lucky," dominated the
Australian and U.K. charts, did well on a number of charts in Europe, and hit the Top 40 in the U.S. Her
pop status was further consolidated with her debut album, 1988's Kylie, which topped the charts in the
U.K. and did very well in many other places, including Australia. As the '80s drew to a close, Minogue's
stature worldwide only grew. Her duet with Jason Donovan, "Especially for You," sold over a million copies
in 1989, even while being critically panned. A second full-length, Enjoy Yourself, was also released that
year, along with a handful of singles that managed to further dominate charts in both hemispheres. In the
midst of this pop success, Minogue also appeared in her first feature film, The Delinquents.

Many things would change for her in the frenetic decade of the '90s. She began to trade in her
cutesy, bubblegum pop image for a more mature one, and in turn, a more sexual one. Her relationship
with the late frontman of INXS, Michael Hutchence, and her shedding of the near-virginal façade that
dominated her first two albums, began to have an effect, not only on how the press and her fans treated
her, but in the evolution of her music. Released in 1990, Rhythm of Love, its worldwide hit single, "Better
the Devil You Know," and its follow-up, "Shocked," took her out of the stifling world of teen pop and
brought her into the more adult world of dance music and nightclubs. Her career was not without its ebbs,
however. As she began to flex a bit more creative muscle, her relationship with Stock, Aitken &
Waterman felt restrictive. Their sound had dominated music for a number of years on both sides of the
Atlantic, but the scene was beginning to move on, and Kylie's fourth and final album with Mushroom and
the production team, Let's Get to It, would sell disappointingly. Freed from the yoke of both a production
team and a mainstream pop label, Minoguebegan a long trend of collaborating with up-and-coming and
hot producers and songwriters, which not only allowed her to roll with cultural trends and stay current in
an extremely fussy and fickle genre, but allowed her to branch out into new areas of performance unheard
of by most pop singers of her style.
 Now signed to the dance label Deconstruction, Minoguereleased a much more mature and stylish
dance-pop record in 1994's Kylie Minogue. The singles "Confide in Me" and "Put Yourself in My Place"
were slicker and more stylish than anything she had previously recorded. While the record sold well
and Kylie made more movie appearances (1994's Street Fighter and 1996's Bio-Dome), the next couple of
years were fairly quiet except for the hit single (and unlikely collaboration) with Nick Cave entitled "Where
the Wild Roses Grow." A dark ballad (with a video based on the Millais painting Ophelia) about a murder
-- the duet featured Cave as the murderer singing his point of view, and Minogue as the victim singing
hers -- the single was widely successful in Australia and the U.K, earning Kylie a new set of fans and a new
sense of respect.

Her eagerness to expand on this collaboration led to the work that would make up her 1997
album, Impossible Princess. While the lead single, the more rock-tinged "Some Kind of Bliss," was the
result of working with James Dean Bradfieldand Sean Moore of Manic Street Preachers, the rest of the
album (for the most part) consisted of further collaborations (with Brothers in Rhythm co-founder David
Seaman, for instance) and efforts to expand on the dance-pop that was her bread and butter. The album,
soon retitled Kylie Minogue in England due to the death of Princess Diana, was successful, but her attempt
at developing her sound met firm resistance critically, with many radio stations and journalists writing her
off, figuring her career had run its course. Obviously, this was not to be, as Minogue toured the world for
the album, selling out stadiums (as usual) and appearing in a number of specialty concerts over the next
two years.