No Rock And Roll Fun

KYLIE PRAISED: Charlotte has reminded us of something that had been bothering us while we were in the States watching the dumping of EMI by Warners. When Robbie had been re-shackled to EMI, hadn't there been much talk that what had attracted him was the canny skills the label had shown in making Kylie such a big force in the US? And, at the time, we'd all sort-of-nodded and gone "Oh, yeah, they did it for Kylie."

So why is it the US seemed oddly Kylie-less? The whole of the UK seems to have accepted that she's cracked America, and yet... she hasn't, really, has she? If you check the MTV America Kylie Minogue news archive, and ignore the stories in which she appears only fleetingly (most she doesn't even crack the headline), they've written about her three times - twice in 1999 when she recorded a Duran Duran cover with Ben Lee, and once - most recently - on April Fool's Day in 2002. Hardly gives the impression of a massive breakthrough, does it? And if you seek out Kylie on Google News, the only American-published story about her in the last couple of weeks was in the gay press, mentioning her in a list of tracks on the Queer Eye For The Straight Guy soundtrack album. And, in this age where the panicky fear of evil interwebbers sharing their files has record companies rushing their prime beef to the market as soon as the final 'STOP' button is pressed on the studio tape recorder, Capitol don't seem that arsed about getting Body Language into WalMart - it's not even due out until February 10th, and the promotional push seems to consist of little more than a half-assed street team. Maybe she's about to crack America, but at the moment, she'd be lucky to get confused with Holly Vallance there.