The Next Big Miss Thing?

[February 13th, 2002]

Back off, Britney. Move over, Madonna. It's time you two made way for the true queen of the queer pop scene: Kylie Minogue.

You remember her, don't you? She's that deliciously diminutive Aussie diva who hit it big in the queer dance halls of the late '80s with her one-hit-wonder cover of "Locomotion."

Well, Kylie's back--although, the fact is, she never really left. Despite her graceful glide off the Yankee gaydar screen more than a decade ago--not counting acting spins as Cammy in Van Damme's classic Street Fighter or as the Green Fairy in the queerific Moulin Rouge--Kylie continues to command the charts everywhere else (she has sold more than 30 million records worldwide).

Now the 33-year-old ex-flame of expired INXS frontman Michael Hutchence wants to do it here. Music lovers in the good ol' U.S. of A. will get the chance to catch the red-hot Minogue when her new album, Fever, arrives on our shores Feb. 26. Her single "Can't Get You Out of My Head" is already stuck in a lot of people's noggins due to heavy rotation on radio stations, MTV and VH1.

But will Kylie be the next big thing--again?

It's not going to be easy. Plenty of pop stars find popularity outside our bucolic borders (David Hasselhoff, Anastacia, Posh Spice) but can't make a dent in America's hyped-up pop psyche. Kylie's different, though. Because she is witty, pretty and slightly fey in a tarty, Audrey Hepburn-meets-AbFab kind of way, gay men adore her. That means, in about three months, the rest of the country should, too. With the awesome power of a queer kingdom behind her, her Royal Highness should have no problem snatching pop's golden crown, right?

Well, there might be one little problem, actually.

According to one highly unreliable source (the irreverent dishfest that is popbitch.com), KM's American marketing machine is uncomfortable with her gay-icon status in the United States. In my own dealings with Kylie's publicity people, I found that, while they were completely cool with the idea of my writing an article on her, Miss Minogue would be unavailable for an interview for this particular queer-flavored column. Hmmmm...makes you kind of wonder who's running the show here. I mean, she is trying to get some publicity, right? And what better way than with a gay writer who actually adores her?

The fact is that Kylie is, and always will be, a queer icon--and being in a Baz Luhrmann project like Moulin Rouge only helps secure that status. And, I ask you, really what's wrong with that? It worked just fine for Judy, Barbra, Olivia and all those other mononymic mythmakers. And it should work for Kylie, too. By embracing the queer audience in America, Kylie is guaranteed love--or, at the very least, safe sex. And who can dispute the merits of that?