I should be so lucky... that’s the story of Kylie’s love life
Thirty years ago, a fresh-faced 19-year-old Kylie Minogue sat in a quiet studio in London’s PWL Records completely ignored. She grew so bored, she began crocheting – a skill she’d been taught by her mum.
The Neighbours star had flown over from Melbourne on the promise of a pop career, but the famous Stock, Aitken and Waterman production team had forgotten all about the tiny teen. They were busy with their stars – Bananarama, Donna Summer and Rick Astley.
When they were reminded that Kylie had come rather a long way, they hastily scrawled half a pop song they thought might do as a novelty number.
I Should Be So Lucky, as it turned out, was to become a No1 hit in February 1988 – exactly 30 years ago next week – sell more than 700,000 copies, and launch the teenager’s pop career.
Three decades and 50 million records later, ahead of her 50th birthday in May, Kylie has released another single, Dancing, and her 14th studio album, Golden, will be launched this spring.
But Mike Stock, who wrote I Should Be So Lucky alongside Pete Waterman and Matt Aitken, believes the song was prophetic in more ways than one. It was, of course, a song about being unlucky in love – a fact about Kylie now almost as famous as her huge back catalogue.
Mike says: “It is funny, given that all I knew was she was on a hit TV show. So I thought, ‘Well, perhaps she can’t find true love?’ Lyrically, I Should Be So Lucky is not a happy song.
“In a way, that’s how I interpreted her to be at the time.”
And Mike adds: “Looking back, it seems as though that is the way her life has turned out.”
While Kylie’s career has persisted, her love life has never enjoyed the same permanence. We have watched her move from one long-term relationship to another with a host of gorgeous men – all Mr Wrong.
First, of course there was her Neighbours co-star, Jason Donovan. However, their relationship ended after three years when Kylie fell for INXS singer Michael Hutchence.
Again, that coupling had a three-year shelf life, from 1989 to 1991. Later, there was model James Gooding, also lasting three years, till he admitted cheating on her with model Sophie Dahl. French model Olivier Martinez followed, from 2002 to 2007. The fact that Martinez was a rock through her battle with breast cancer made their separation all the more surprising.
Then came Spanish model Andres Velencoso, from 2008 to 2013. Their split came 12 months after Kylie declared: “He’s the one.” Finally, the singer seemed to have found Mr Right in actor Joshua Sasse, 30, despite a 19-year age gap. When they announced their
engagement in 2016, the nation released a collective sigh of relief.
But last year they split amid reports Kylie had suspicions about Sasse’s relationship with a Spanish actress. In parallel, Kylie’s career storms on.
I Should Be So Lucky was the catalyst for her success, but it very nearly never happened. Mike describes how Kylie flew in from Melbourne especially to record “something” in 1987.
But due to a miscommunication between her business manager and the record team, she was not contacted for three days. Finally, she demanded to know what was happening.
Mike recalls: “On the final day of her stay, they all turned up at the studio at 11 o’clock in the morning and said, ‘Unless you work with us now, we’re going back this afternoon’. So that is what kind of forced Matt and I to get our act together.
“I told them: ‘Go and sit in the room next door and have a cup of coffee. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’”
So patient Kylie sat, and crocheted. Meanwhile, I Should Be So Lucky was born – speedily.
“It took us about 40 minutes to write the song,” says Mike. “I knew nothing about Kylie, if she was a soprano or alto, so I took a wild guess.”
It was when they got Kylie in to sing it, they realised just how good she was. “We hadn’t even completely written it all, so I got her to sing a line here and there, and worked out the rest.
“She was patient, understanding and nailed it. I realised we had treated her very shabbily.”
But even then, the song was put on the backburner – till the Christmas party, when the DJ began playing it.
Mike says: “I went to Pete Waterman and said, ‘Crikey, this sounds good, dunnit?’ And Pete said, ‘Bloody hell, what’s this?’
“I said, ‘It’s the girl we’d forgotten was coming in’. It was only at that moment that we realised we had something, and so we rushed to get it out.”
In just over a month, it hit No1, and a panicked Mike flew to Australia.
He says: “I got on my hands and knees and apologised to Kylie profusely.” But despite her success, Kylie has had her share of ridicule. In Oz she was nicknamed the “Singing Budgie”.
Mike says: “Kylie got loads of stick. We were in a Melbourne restaurant having lunch and one of the waiting staff inhaled some of the helium from a balloon and started singing I Should Be So Lucky.”
Recalling the last time he saw her, a few years back, he says: “We chatted and I said, ‘We should all have grown an extra layer of skin in this pop world’.
“And she replied, ‘Yes, I know, I’ve got my steel knickers on’, and I understood exactly what she meant.
“You grow this steel armour, and she had hers covering her completely.”
Kylie recorded four albums with the team over four years, with hits including Better The Devil You Know and Hand On Your Heart.
In 1992, Kylie entered her indie phase, which coincided with her relationship with rocker Hutchence.
Sales didn’t take off. But she returned to her pop roots in 2000 with the single Spinning Around.
The singer enjoyed her heyday all over again in the noughties, winning a Grammy, Brit Award and MTV honours, and since then has rarely been out of the limelight. Mike says: “She is a one-off and there is not going to be another one like her.”
It’s just a shame that no matter how much a nation wills it, Kylie can’t find The One for her. But perhaps one day she will finally be so lucky, lucky, lucky.
She got lots of stick. But she said she that she wore steel knickers
MIKE STOCK
ON KYLIE DEVELOPING A THICK SKIN