Dannii Minogue enjoys life as mum while looking forward to Culture Club performance
AFTER a frenetic international music and television career Dannii Minogue is enjoying life in her home town of Melbourne making being a mum her priority.
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SOMETHING unexpected has invaded Dannii Minogue’s wardrobe: flat shoes.
Since becoming a mother to her rapidly growing son, Ethan, 5, the petite pop star has seen her trusty heels gathering dust. “I never used to own a single flat shoe, apart from gym sneakers,” Minogue says.
“I’ve got the mum uniform now — complete with flat shoes.
“Heels are something I have to prepare myself for. Heels are for work.”
Work has also drastically changed for Minogue this year. After relocating to London in 1990 to launch a successful music career (14 No. 1 hits on the UK club charts and 13 UK top 20 hits, among them Put the Needle On It, I Begin to Wonder, This Is It, You Won’t Forget About Me, All I Wanna Do and Who Do You Love Now), a decade ago Minogue returned to where she began — a television talent show.
Her professional life began in Melbourne in 1982 on Young Talent Time.
For a while she’d planned to go to Swinburne to do a directing course. Instead she got to “learn on the job”.
Minogue was picked by music guru Simon Cowell to be a judge on the UK’s The X Factor in 2007, with the live shows often seen by up to 20 million Brits.
Between 2007 and 2010 Minogue did double duty, filming The X Factor in London and Australia’s Got Talent in Melbourne each year. It was a time-consuming return to her first love, live TV, on both sides of the world.
“That was crazy, I was pregnant during one show, had Ethan, then was back on camera when he was four months old for the next show,” she says.
“I look at photos of me holding him backstage. The whole pregnancy happened in among so much other stuff going on.”
That workload and schedule couldn’t last forever. Minogue began working on a plan to free her schedule once Ethan, who turns six in July, started school.
Last year, Minogue performed a handful of concerts in the UK and made a return to Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian mardi gras, as well as judging on the Australian version of The X Factor.
In 2013, she mentored Dani Im, who this week placed a close second at Eurovision. This year, after nearly a decade of back-to-back TV shows, her schedule was clear.
So here she finds herself. Wearing flats.
“I just want to have a year where I regroup, have a totally different year,” she says.
“I feel like I haven’t stopped in so long. The way I do the job (The X Factor mentor), it’s so involved and so hard. Ethan’s started school, so that just tipped it to the point where I want to be around at home and school.
“You can just work, work, work. But if you’re thinking life-balance and my son and the importance of getting him settled into school, it’s a no-brainer. I’m a mum first now. Work is amazing, but it has to fit in around Ethan.”
That work includes recording new music, which she’s been doing on and off for the past two years, at her own pace. Since Neon Nights , Minogue has released a string of compilations. But last year a new song, Summer of Love, surfaced, signalling her musical silence was over and exciting her extremely patient fans.
Well, most of them. “I did get one guy tweeting me in some hilarious and very colourful language basically saying to stop messing around and get some music out,” Minogue says. “So he’ll be happy.”
Adelaide’s coolest export, Sia, has written a song for Minogue, which she recorded in LA.
“It’s a really hard sing, of course, because it’s a Sia track,” Minogue laughs.
The music industry is a different world in 2016; rather than sign with a major record label, she’s self-funded her music and plans to release it independently. One of the most internet-savvy Australian celebrities, Minogue is able to tap into her millions of social media followers when she’s got something new available.
“There’s no stress now,” she says. “Music isn’t my livelihood; back in the day it was. I’m just doing it to have fun.”
This year will also mark Minogue’s first hometown live show since 1998 — when she played Mushroom Records’ 25th anniversary concert at the MCG.
While she’s performed through the UK and Europe, and a handful of Sydney shows, her last appearance on stage in Melbourne was in 2006, when she sang Kids with sister Kylie at Rod Laver Arena. (The same venue housed her performance in Grease in 1997.)
“It’s so weird to think I haven’t played my own show in Melbourne in 18 years,” she says. “It doesn’t feel that long. That’s something old people say, isn’t it? So technically, I’m an old person now, I guess.”
In the end, all it took to get her back on stage in Melbourne was for someone to ask: Culture Club requested she open at its Rod Laver Arena concert early next month.
“Bizarrely, my brother (Brendan) found my Culture Club concert ticket from 1984 three days before the request to open for them came in,” Minogue says. “He was opening a box of old stuff and that was in it. Spooky. He could have not opened that box for another 12 years, but it came just a few days before being asked to play with Boy George.”
That early Culture Club experience came amid a rush of gigs for young Danielle Minogue. “I remember there was Wham!, David Bowie, Culture Club and Michael Jackson,” she says. “That’s not a bad education as far as going to concerts when you’re a kid.”
Famous herself as part of the YTT team, Minogue dressed as Boy George for the event, recently posting a photo of herself going to the gig on social media.
“I totally remember trying to braid things into my hair,” she says.
Boy George saw Minogue’s flashback photo.
“That was a really cute picture,” he tells Weekend. “She was a very, very well-dressed Culture Club fan as a kid. I’m very fond of Dannii, it’s going to be an exciting show.”
Minogue will perform a 30-minute set of her greatest hits at the Culture Club show, with a full live band.
“I’ve had people tell me they’re flying in from interstate and even overseas just for this one show,” Minogue says. “The mums at Ethan’s school were saying, ‘You’re playing with Culture Club.’ I tell them that’s the other me, that’s a very different me. Some of them are buying tickets to the show. It’s going to be a good vibe. People love these retro shows. No one’s trying to be cool. Those days are gone.”
One person who probably won’t be there is Ethan.
“I’m sure he’ll want to come, I’m sure it’ll be a battle on the day, but maybe he can come to sound check in the afternoon,” Minogue says.
His favourite song of his mum’s? Put the Needle on It.
“He knows the chorus to that one,” Minogue says. “He actually sings more than me. I love listening to him. Kylie taught him the words to (Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’) Thrift Shop, we have a video of him singing that when it came out. He was still tiny.
“Our favourite song at the moment is Meghan Trainor’s No. That’s our jam when we’re in the car. He loves music and he loves comedy. His biggest love is making people laugh and knock-knock jokes. He loves slapstick. I can’t wait for him to be old enough to watch the films I loved growing up, like ET and Ghostbusters.”
Away from a world filled with cameras, stylists and audience, Minogue is relishing doing the school run.
“I’m getting fit walking to school,” she says. “I used to be able to carry Ethan, but I can’t pick him up any more, he’s too tall now. He’s the tallest in his class. I can probably get back into heels now I can’t pick him up — that’s what got me into flats in the first place.”
Minogue and Ethan’s father, her ex-partner Kris Smith, keep Ethan’s face off social media and only released one photo of him — for free — after his birth.
“There’s no handbook to being a parent and no handbook to being a parent when you’re a celebrity. We don’t do red carpets, we don’t pose for photos, we don’t go to openings, I don’t post pictures of him, Kris doesn’t post pictures of him,” Minogue says.
That means the UK press is legally obliged to pixelate Ethan’s face in paparazzi shots of him.
“Australia doesn’t have that law, which it should. We should be protecting children in Australia, and I’m not just talking celebrity parents,” Minogue says.
“We can do so much more. Of course, I want to protect my child, but the other kids at school don’t need someone with a camera out the front gate. As a parent you can’t take a picture of your child at school, you can’t post things, but if you’re a paparazzi you can do whatever you want.”
After weeks of being snapped by photographers, in plain sight and some hidden in bushes, while picking Ethan up from an eastern suburbs childcare centre, Minogue vented on Twitter.
“I used the hashtag #makeitillegal,” she says. “You shouldn’t be able to point a long lens at a school or a child care facility. But if you remove that, make it illegal so you can’t take those pictures, it’s a lot more simple.
“It’s not fair for any kids or parents to walk out the school gate and see people with a long-lens camera hanging around taking photos of kids. It actually makes my hands shake and my blood boil. After I sent that tweet out it calmed down a hell of a lot.”
Spending the bulk of the past five years in Melbourne has given Ethan valuable time with Dannii’s parents, Carol and Ron.
“It’s so normal and so different after my life was frenetic for so many years,” Minogue says. “It’s nice to cook family meals, crawl around looking for my vinyl from when I was a kid at my parents’ place.
“I’ve just found another box of old stuff I have to go through. I sound like a boring old lady. You won’t see any of that at the concert.”
Many performers talk about the alter-ego they channel for onstage performances.
“I definitely have to separate things,” Minogue says. “The world of entertainment is all about me, me, me. You’re controlling everything. As a mum, everything’s out of control. The first year of your kid going to school there’s all these extra hours in the day where you don’t know what they’re doing, and that’s hard.”
And there’s a reason why you never see Carol and Ron Minogue interviewed or even photographed at events: “They’re very private, that’s their idea of hell. You’d have to prop them up like Weekend at Bernie’s to get them on a red carpet.”
After her public relationship — and public split — with Smith, Minogue has taken a new approach to her personal life: keeping it personal. She’s been dating songwriter and producer Adrian Newman for several years, but politely declines to discuss him. Newman also shies away from most media, but close friends say Minogue has never been happier.
“The media have actually been very respectful,” Minogue says. “Instead of being caught up in the craziness, it’s actually very calm and everyone respects the no-go zone.”
She does admit being surrounded by babies at school, and her work with charities St Kilda Mums and the Nappy Collective, have got her thinking.
“Some days I think I’d like another child,” she says. “Especially going into school and the mums are there with little babies. I was filming something for The Project recently and holding babies and I thought, ‘I’m good at this.’ It’s definitely more in your face when you walk into a schoolyard and there’s prams everywhere and kids of all ages. The sleepless nights would be brutal again though.”
Two years ago, Minogue launched her Petites line for Target — her latest foray into the world of fashion.
“We made the first petite mannequins in the country,” she says proudly. “The same way you never saw plus-size mannequins or models, now you do. Hopefully, it’ll change even more. If we’re happy with where it’s at now, that would be pretty pathetic. We have to keep going.”
Minogue gets regular inspiration from fellow petites.
“Women stop me in the street thanking me because they were sick of shopping in children’s stores for their clothes, and those clothes aren’t appropriate for the boardroom or business meetings. It’s definitely still an emotional thing for me if I try something on and it fits.”
Minogue and sister Kylie recorded a duet for her Christmas album last year, called 100 Degrees — they followed that by spending Christmas together. Around that time Kylie’s boyfriend, Joshua Sasse, proposed.
“He’s cool,” Minogue says of her future brother-in-law. “He just makes her happy. I don’t know about any other plans. I’m not being the sister vault here, I just don’t know.”
The younger Minogue is approaching what they call a milestone birthday in October, turning 45.
“I reckon 45 will be even more exciting than 50. I don’t want to wait until I’m 50 to have a big party. I want to do something cool ... 45 is a big one, but I’m not scared by it, 50 might be another story.”
Dannii Minogue will perform as a special guest at Culture Club’s concert in Melbourne only, with support act Kids in the Kitchen. Rod Laver Arena, June 10. $76.46-$147.83
Originally published as Dannii Minogue enjoys life as mum while looking forward to Culture Club performance
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