Before the youngest Jenner was even thought of, there was only one Kylie in the pages of i-D. Gracing the cover not once, but four times, Kylie Minogue was, and still is, our adopted pop princess; producer of some of the finest pop singles of the last four decades. Following her final (amazing) headline show of the year at Melt! Festival, we cast our minds forward and imagine what the near future might hold for i-D’s favourite pop i-Con, Kylie Minogue…
She signs to a trendy record label.
In 1993, Kylie signed to trendy dance label Deconstruction, hired a team of crack producers and rebranded herself as Britain’s first proper dance music megastar. It could have all gone horribly wrong and yet we ended up with the Brothers In Rhythm produced Confide In Me, a song that is not only stupidly brilliant but that also sounded absolutely nothing like Kylie had done before. Could she do the same in 2016? We say let her loose in a field with PC Music founder A.G. Cook and see what happens.
She reconnects with her indie inclinations.
Back when she was churning out conveyer belt pop hit after conveyer belt pop hit, no one would have predicted that in a few short years Kylie would become muse to one of indie music’s most revered artists. But that’s exactly what happened in 1995 when Where The Wild Roses Grow remoulded her into the Australian Nancy Sinatra to Nick Cave’s outback Lee Hazlewood. Co-writes with Manic Street Preacher’s James Dean Bradfield followed and suddenly the nation’s pop princess was ‘Indie Kylie’, working with guitar heroes and appearing in one of installation artist Sam Taylor Wood’s videos. Teaming up today with compatriot Kevin Parker makes the most sense air miles-wise, but what we’d really like to see is her make a racket with Maidstone two-piece Slaves. Cheer Up, Melbourne.
She rekindles her love affair with the British fashion press.
In March 1991, Kylie appeared on the cover of i-D’s The Lovelife Issue in a Robert Erdmann shoot that would change the girl-next-door image of Charlene from Neighbours forever. With a look caught somewhere between Brigitte Bardot and Barbarella, this was the beginning of what Kylie referred to as her ‘rebel period’ and marked the point when she discovered the effect that good styling could have in turning every single career move since into a hit. Kylie, we still have the PVC bustier in the fashion cupboard if you want to dust it off at any point.
And finally… she gets back to her soap roots by joining the cast of Coronation Street.
While Australia has always been a fairly useful place to banish soap characters who’ve long since run their course (e.g. when Lucy discovered Peter Barlow was a bigamist also married to Shelley so jetted off with their baby son Simon), it also comes in handy as somewhere torummage”long-lost” relatives up from without really needing to explain why we’ve never heard of them before. Enter Kylie, Norris’ long lost nice from Melbourne! In two short months she moves in with Emily at number three, gets in a catfight on the cobbles with Tracey Barlow and turns the Rovers into a Walkabout bar. We think British Soap Award victory beckons, for sure.