The traffic to the blog slows up over the Festive period, and it’s therefore something of an opportunity to take a bit of a breather.
Over a period of 26 days, I’ll be posting a single never previously featured on its own before – it might have sneaked in as part of an ICA or within a piece looking at various tracks – with the idea of an edited cut’n’paste from somewhere (most likely wiki) and then all the songs from either the vinyl or CD.
I is for l Should Be So Lucky released by Kylie Minogue as a single on 29 December 1987. Which makes it one day short of being 34 years old…..
Kylie Minogue was one of the most popular stars of Neighbours, an Australian soap opera which aired daily here in the UK on BBC1 at 5.30pm, preceded by children’s TV and followed immediately by the evening news bulletin. Back home in Oz, she was already something of a pop star in that Locomotion, her debut, and at this point only single, had spent six weeks at #1. She was invited to the UK to work with Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW), a songwriting and record producing trio who had enjoyed considerable success, beginning from the mid-80s, with an approach to music that was akin to an assembly in that the tunes would be put together using synths, drum machines and sequencers, before the singer was asked to add the vocals at the end.
History records that SAW weren’t ready for the arrival of the soap star, and didn’t have a ready-made song to hand. Everything was put together in a hurry, and Kylie seemingly left at the end of the day, really unhappy with how it had gone.
Nobody really knew what to expect when the single was released in that period between Christmas and New Year. It was a slow burner of sorts, in that it entered the charts at #90, before climbing to #54, #31 and #16 before leaping to #2 and then hitting #1 in late February, where it would stay for five weeks. By the time it left the charts in May 1988, it had sold almost 700,000 copies.
SAW, by this time, had gone out to Australia to apologise for the initial lack of welcome, realising that they had, certainly for the short-term, another singer they could add to the assembly line, with a guarantee of a few hit singles before Kylie went out of fashion, as all pop stars of the nature inevitably do.
mp3: Kylie Minogue – I Should Be So Lucky
The partnership with SAW eventually came to an end in 1992 with Kylie saying she now wanted the freedom to pick and choose which songwriters and producers she would work with. Very few people thought she would thrive or develop with the guiding hand of SAW. Twenty-five further Top 20 singles in the UK would suggest she made the right call.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
Good to see this here today.
A few years back, I ran a series on my blog called something like “Records I bought because I fancied the singer”. I never completed the series, but I always intended this to be the final entry. I had a real love/hate relationship with SAW at the time, slating their tinny production and chart-domination which kept the “proper” music I was into from getting a look in.
And yet, I bought this. Largely because I fancied Kylie in Neighbours. Ironically, I also bought a couple of the Jason Donovan singles because they were damned good pop songs that I used to sing along to on the school bus home (with a mate whose record collection was otherwise dominated by the Smiths and the Pet Shop Boys).
It was a very confusing time.
In later years, I’d come to feel embarrassed at having bought this single, trying to airbrush it from my collection, despite the fact that Kylie went onto transcend her SAW roots and become much cooler in the process.
Nowadays, I’m past being embarrassed by any of the records I bought, ever. I even bought a U2 album once. God knows why, because it was bloody awful, but that’s beside the point. I’d rather listen to SAW-Kylie any day of the week.
All that said, I never thought I’d see this single featured here. Happy New Year, JC. Long may you reign.