Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
I should be so lucky... that’s the story of Kylie’s love life
ater, also tted phie
inez The rock east tion
odel 2008 e 12 ared:
med t in ite a they nt in llecmid
bout nish 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 once 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.