Why wasn't Kylie Minogue a hit in the States?

?

probably the music

she was? not for a sustained amount of time but iirc fever killed it here

the loco-motion was a hit. can't get you out of my head was a hit. what more do you want?? xp

ah yes, the loco-motion

it's just that, she's a little more than a two-hit wonder in europe

"Love At First Sight" and "Come Into My World" were also hits.

Stock Aitken Waterman records always tended to sell less in the US than in the UK/Australia (although a few sold massively). Their last top 10 hit in the US was "This Time I Know It's for Real" by Donna Summer in spring '89.

But then her non-SAW records from the 1994-2000 period did not go over at all in the US.

anything to do with the US allergy to non-RNB-dance-pop in the 90s/2000s?

Not in the early '90s.

I met a lot of American punk / alternative people around 2002-2005 and was surprised at how virulently anti-techno most of them were

Why was she a hit in Europe?

she has made undeniable pop classics throughout her career, seems like she just deserves it?

Americans deny them.

she kind of has an accent in some of her songs
there's a little bit of a stigma against eurovision-y type music in america?
she's too wholesome, americans like their divas a little bit closer to the stripper pole

these are reasons why she has a very devoted following among metropolitan queer men in america tho

locomotion is one of the first songs, or things in general, that i remember.

Dannii Minogue was a spectacular failure in the US. We just don't like the family.

she's too wholesome, americans like their divas a little bit closer to the stripper pole

"put yourself in my place" is like a perfect bedtime stories-era madonna song. i guess we already had madonna

was CGYOOMH not a big hit there? It was absolutely everywhere in the UK that year

i know the acronym and the melody fwiw

It hit #7 in the US and was #45 on the 2002 year-end chart

it was so big that the fucking flaming lips covered it

I question "adoption by The Flaming Lips" as a reliable metric of popularity/penetration

lol

The Kylie package is about a lot more than just music (or even music and videos), Kylie as persona is massively important and I don't think that resonates in the US because they never got to 'know' her in the 80s and early 90s.

was Neighbours even broadcast Stateside?

Fever was huge here, idk what you guys are talking about

between The Locomotion and CGYOOMH she had 27 UK top 40 hits (most of them top 10) and 0 chart entries in the USA.

i knew a dj who did kylie fridays in dc, with videos, it was pretty popular. that's it, submit post

i don't think it's that unusual for products of the uk pop industry to not do very well in the us. seems like they gave the us a try early on and had a little success with "i should be so lucky" & "locomotion" but nowhere near the success she had in europe & australia where she had existing fame from neighbours and so her labels quickly gave up completely for a long time there

even when she did properly breakthrough in the us with fever she didn't tour there and then quickly went back to having no success with body language

I don’t think I’d heard her name until the Agent Provocateur commercial set to The Hives

Contemporary to CGYOOMH

even when she did properly breakthrough in the us with fever she didn't tour there and then quickly went back to having no success with body language

I bought both these records. Lost interest after that. Didn't realize there was no Fever tour. I wouldn't have gone, but that seems like a mistake on her part.

is this the thread for talking about her new single (one of her best in ages i think?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnhk_UTyBqk

Kylie Minogue - Golden there was some talk of it here

You can talk about it but you have to explain why it won't be a hit in the States

i saw a british interview from maybe 15 years ago in which she explicitly didn’t give two shits about cracking america, but it seems that did change at some point

Her first North American tour was in 2009! Wtf.

Admittedly this is touching on taste, but I don’t know what KM was doing in the late 80s that couldn’t be done better by American solo artists (and be better produced) who were big at the time

AFAIK she never even considered touring with Shane McGowan and calling it "The Minogues."

I'm legit shook to learn that unperson bought two (2) Kylie Minogue records(!)

Admittedly this is touching on taste, but I don’t know what KM was doing in the late 80s that couldn’t be done better by American solo artists (and be better produced) who were big at the time

― Master of Treacle, Friday, 24 July 2020 00:26 (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't think there are that many people who defend the late 80s work except on nostalgia grounds.

Rhythm of Love was the big step-up.

I'm legit shook to learn that unperson bought two (2) Kylie Minogue records(!)

was Neighbours even broadcast Stateside?

I don't think there are that many people who defend the late 80s work except on nostalgia grounds.

Even though there's no reason to listen to those records, she was the best SAW puppet - with caveats for Mel & Kim's tragedy - and her soap background let her graft harder than the rest of their stable, which also inspired S and A to write up to her level of commitment (/ over her ostensible level of ability) once they realised. It made sense that while their style was in vogue, she'd become bigger than anything else they made (or than they were themselves as a #brand).

Obv she gets way better as she learns what she wants to do with her own career, before she ditches them, and actively great immediately after.

Fever was huge here, idk what you guys are talking about

Does anyone care about her now though? Like if she played live how big a crowd would she draw? Over here it would be gigantic - also she's become one of those artists for whom interest in Kylie the character dwarfs any interest in her more recent records. (Perhaps she was always there except around the turn of the millennium).

Its actually quite difficult to pinpoint any US pop star who occupies quite the same pop cultural niche as Kylie (or any British one for that matter) - although there are a few who might get there in time. Gaga is closest but also too self consciously arty. Maybe Miley in a decade or so?

she's toured north america twice, playing small arenas/big theatres

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodite:_Les_Folies_Tour#Leg_three
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_You,_for_Me#Tour_dates

she has a cult audience in the us, mostly among gay men.

I guess I've always perceived her as a bit of a blank slate and wasn't really even aware of any kind of persona at work behind her music.

It’s fair to see that almost is her persona. I cannot speak for the UK but in the Australia the fondness for her is in part for the idea that this pop star has been plying her trade for well over 30 years and has for the most part, with only a few exceptions, just been trying to make good pop music: typically you don’t have to come to grips with her persona in the course of deciding whether you like her product.

Even ‘Impossible Princess’, her purportedly self-consciously ‘personal’ album, was really more about reacting to mid-90s trends than it was projecting an actual persona, real or constructed.

i think people do like remember her here ... shes not like a total non entity. altho yes they remember her mainly as a one-album cycle star

yeah that's accurate. "Can't You Get Out of My Head" remains enduringly and broadly popular, beyond her cult

I think in the UK, aside from the gay icon thing which is obviously massive, there's a sense of enormous ongoing affection, almost like she's been adopted by the country, that people have grown up with her, plus the cancer battle at the peak of her career, there's an ongoing engagement with the soap opera of Kylie that's largely separate from what she might really be like as a person.

Also there's more than enough glamour going on to make her feel like a proper pop star while also fulfilling the key British pop criterion that you just might conceivably bump into her in your local pub. I think this might be different even to how it is in Australia.

Also the British media tends to occasionally Dianafy female pop stars and it definitely did that with Kylie around 2005.

there aren't really any australian pop stars who both have the star power of kylie and still live here so there's not really the 'just might conceivably bump into her in your local pub' thing i think

does Delta Goodrem come close? I’ve always had the impression she was/is mega big in Australia, but please correct me if I’m off the mark here (also, I don’t know where she resides obviously).

I dunno if Delta has any general cultural resonance as a pop star after the '00s, beyond it getting her a $2 million/yr TV gig, that then provides her with a discrete audience for the occasional record and tour.

(Even as a teenager she was basically AOR, too - a big chunk of her initial marketing was that she'd been signed by John Farnham's manager.)

omg i had no idea there was a new single, it's GREAT

Would be interested in seeing American’s take on the reaction of the Glastonbury crowd. Such a joyful, loving experience. I’d wonder if a ‘neutral’ could experience it in the same way without the back story of her career/persona.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ0Qr__LQNY

i hear Disco tracks out in the wild more than any other Kylie tracks these days, maybe even more than CGYOOMH. it's weird that it was slightly more of a slow-burn album for me at the very beginning, because it has the feel of one of her classics. for me at this point it probably rates vv slightly above the other disco-influenced pop classics of 2020, w/the exception of Roisin Machine.

Do you think there is some similarity to the Aussie love of Kylie as to perhaps Canadian Iove of Celine Dion or is that a totally different thing?

Do you think there is some similarity to the Aussie love of Kylie as to perhaps seppo love of Elvis Presley or is that a totally different thing?

Don’t think there is anything quite like death week in Memphis.

It’s probably that Kylie is the superstar everyone of a certain age grew up with via Neighbours, and she seems particularly beloved not just for that obv but for her persona and reputation for being a vv decent human being. But there’s more complexity to it than that I’m sure.