Fame, Fortune, but No Respect

Being a rich, 20-year-old pop princess--a star on three continents--isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Just ask Kylie Minogue, the perky, personable Australian whose single, “The Loco-Motion,” shot into the Top Five of the Billboard magazine pop chart and was a smash in other countries as well. Another single, “I Should Be So Lucky,” from her Geffen Records debut album, “Kylie,” was also a fair-sized hit in this country and a chart-topper in others.

In Australia, Minogue is a superstar, one of those unfortunates who can’t walk down the street without attracting a crowd of admirers. Back home, even before she started singing, she was famed soap queen, co-star of “Neighbors,” a popular daily TV drama.

Hers is not one of those tearful tales of a star burned-out by the rigors of celebrity. “I like it that people know me,” admitted Minogue, in town recently as part of an international promotional tour. “That doesn’t really bother me.”

If she’s comfortable with fame and fortune, then what’s the problem?

Lack of respect for her singing, it turns out.

Dance-music fans, who concentrate more on beat than vocals, do love her but, among critics and industry colleagues, she’s not known as a great singer.

That’s because she isn’t.

“I want to do better,” said Minogue, who wants to be recognized for at least being a capable singer. “If given a chance I can do better. But I know my limits.”

Welcome to the club. Minogue has been rudely indoctrinated into a sorority of female dance-music pawns--vocalists who, in the studio, are treated by producers as just another instrument, secondary instruments at that. As Samantha Fox, a member of this sisterhood of maligned singers, cracked during a Calendar interview last year, “A drum machine gets more respect than a dance-music artist.”

Pebbles, Jody Watley, Expose, Bananarama are also members of this exclusive club that no one wants to join. Debbie Gibson and Vanessa Williams were in it briefly, too--until they proved themselves. Minogue longs to join them as a dropout.

Minogue, whose ace-in-the-hole is an uncommonly pretty face, is small and frail-looking. It would take a serious eating binge just to get her up to 90 pounds. Vocal power is not what you expect from someone like that. She doesn’t even talk loudly.

“I’ll be the first one to admit that I need to work on my singing,” she said. “I could be stronger.”

But if she stays with the English production/writing team of Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Waterman--the Svengalis of dance-music who gave the world Fox, Bananarama and Rick Astley, among many others--she won’t have to learn to sing. Using a studio technique called double-tracking, this combination is famous for adding muscle to thin voices.

Now it’s fashionable to knock these guys--particularly in England, where their sound is dominant. Say what you want about their dance-music formula, but it works--and they have a stack of hit singles to prove it.

Minogue went to them last year when she had to record an album to follow up on the success of “The Loco-Motion,” which was one of the big hits of the decade in Australia. (The first version of the single was produced by Mike Duffy.)

Because of her work on the TV show, Minogue didn’t have much time to do the album, which was recorded in London. “I had to put myself in their (Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s) hands,” she said. “They had already picked the songs and recorded the music tracks. I wanted to do something a little more daring, something R&B;, but Pete Waterman didn’t like the idea.

“The whole point of the album was to keep it very light, not get into any heavy statements--any themes that were too deep--and not do anything that might turn off my fans. I have this following--mainly young girls. This album had to appeal to those fans. If the singing was too R&B;, they wouldn’t like it, I guess. These producers think pop music is candy music. They’re saying: ‘Here kids, have a piece of candy’.”

The production team first aroused her ire when they forced her to redo the version of “The Loco-Motion” that had been such a hit in Australia. “Pete Waterman hated it and wanted to totally change it,” Minogue said. “The original version by Little Eva (a 1962 hit) was a sentimental favorite of his and he wanted it done in a certain way. What Pete Waterman wants, he gets.”

What he wanted was a smooth, synthesized sound--on “Loco-Motion” as well as the other songs--and Minogue’s voice double-tracked. “I asked them to let me use my real voice on something so they let me do that on part of ‘Look My Way,’ one of the songs on the album,” she pointed out. “It sounds more like me than any song on the album.”

Judging from “Look My Way,” her voice needs more power, but it does sound warmer and more human--unlike the team’s usual impersonal fare.

“I wanted my voice to come through and it doesn’t,” she said. “I feel very removed from this album because I didn’t have much say about it and it doesn’t sound like me. They did what they thought they had to do to deliver a hit, which they did. But the album still isn’t me .”

Minogue’s singing career is an accident--and definitely a result of her TV soap fame. She had taken some singing lessons a few years ago but more for fun. “I was really into acting but I thought being able to sing might come in handy,” she recalled. “I had no plans to try to for a recording contract.”

But last year, at a benefit, she sang an impromptu version of “The Loco-Motion.”

“People liked it so much, they said I should record something,” she said. “That inspired me to make a demo (demonstration record) of ‘Loco-Motion.’ ” A local label signed her, undoubtedly thinking that a single by a major soap star might get airplay.

Those label execs guessed right.

If Minogue hadn’t been a TV star, would the single have gotten much attention--or would she even have had a chance to record it in the first place?

“Probably not,” she said.

But singing, which was just a sidelight for her a year ago, has become the focus of her career. She got out of her TV contract because the show was taking time away from her record promotion duties.

“I can always go back to the show,” she explained. “I’m not through with acting. I’d like to do movies next year. But singing is No. 1 now. I really like it. I want to follow through on it. I want to get better at it. I want to be recognized as a good singer.”

That might mean working with producers other than Stock, Aitken and Waterman on her next album.

“No decisions have been made about that yet,” she said.