The Holly and the why me?

We lift our hat to the good people at The [Australian] Age for the headline on their Ms Valance piece - Holly's semi-nude baptism of fire (would a flaming baptism be worsened by semi-nudity? would full nudity be better?), and since we've got our hat off, we'll bang our head a little bit, too. Holly wonders why - when there are a lot of female singers out there - she always gets compared to Kylie. The Age does its best to fill her in: "They both cut their teeth in Neighbours, and since Kiss Kiss, Valance is close behind (if you will) in the race for the most celebrated posterior in pop. Both are also Melbourne girls.

But the two Ramsay Street alumni also owe a debt of gratitude to the same songwriter: Rob Davis, who has penned Valance's sumptuous new single Down Boy, was also responsible for Can't Get You Out Of My Head, the number-one hit that reignited Kylie's career last year. (Davis also co-wrote Groovejet (If This Ain't Love), which propelled Sophie Ellis Bextor into pops upper echelons.) And if truth be told, Can't Get You Out Of My Head and Down Boy (the video which has Valance getting comfortable on a large bed with a variety of male and female chums) do share a certain robotic sensuality. Shall we go on? Apparently, that isn't similarity enough for Vallance. "You can't compare what we do" she fires back, getting tetchy. Okay, maybe

Dannii might be a more apt yardstick, but even so...
Interestingly, Holly would rather be comapred to Natalie Imbruglia, and yet at the same time, she claims she's "only" going to have an eight year career in pop (so, that's about sixteen times as long as Natalie, then).

"The previous day, [Valance tells the Age] she was cornered in a London restaurant by a gang of children screaming, "Show us your bum!" The singer says she found the experience "pretty upsetting, to tell the truth".

When the Sunday People asked pretty much the same thing, though, she was happy to oblige and readers of the Sunday Tabloid were treated to a glossy poster of the results over their breakfasts yesterday. You may now wonder idly why a bunch of kids could presume to think that Holly would want to flash them.