Who Do You Love Now?

Piers Morgan's Life Stories with Dannii Minogue, shown on ITV1 was interesting last night, if only for the inspired choice of putting Kate Miller-Heidke's Last Day On Earth in the backgroud of one of the segments (surely this needs a UK release?). It presented Dannii in a very good light which is apparently contrary to the media perception of her, backed up by Sharon Osbourne calling her an 'insect', not hated because that would take too much emotion and feeling, but rather somebody who was unimportant, whom she could pretend wasn't there. This was a shame to hear as Dannii's always seemed like one of the nicer people in pop to me, in fact I would go as far to say I'm a big fan, particularly since she has shown herself to be very warm and caring on X Factor, spending a lot of time with her three excellent artists and making some very inspired song choices, particularly for the chavtastic Stacey who has sung beautiful and unique renditions of The Scientist and Somewhere Only We Know in recent weeks, rather than being subjected to doing the usual Mariah/Whitney standards usually seen on the show.

With all of this press attention surrounding Dannii these days, it is thought that she is even more popular here now than Kylie, and after the relative flops of Body Language and X (by her standards at least), maybe there is some truth in this. Personally, musically, I've always liked them both equally. Kylie has the pop and karaoke classics such as I Should Be So Lucky, Step Back In Time, Spinning Around and Can't Get You Out Of My Head whilst Dannii has produced some stunning dance pop in her time; All I Wanna Do, Perfection, Who Do You Love Now?, I Begin To Wonder and my favourite, You Won't Forget About Me.



Of course despite the fact that she has achieved nine UK top ten hits, few non-fans could probably name any of them whereas it's a very different matter for Kylie, 'the people's popstar'. But like in the late 1980's when Dannii was by far the bigger star in Australia, and the late 1990's, where Dannii was achieving top five hits and Kylie's comebacks were faltering outside the top twenty, maybe the late noughties is marking another Minogue turning point due to the phenomenon that is the X Factor. Ask a child in the street to name a member of the Minogue family and chances are they'll say Dannii, as she is more relevant these days.

She serves a purpose on the X Factor panel. Simon is the boss, Cheryl is the superstar, Louis is the joker, and it seems that Dannii is the friend, the most likeable judge the X Factor has ever seen perhaps!?! A far cry from the days of the Dannii that was portrayed in the media as distant and fame hungry, latching onto her sister's success. Dannii is now finally a superstar herself in the UK. This new found fame may not result in record breaking #1 hits a la Cheryl Cole, but it's nice to see her break out of her sister's shadow and become a talked about star in her own right without the constant thoughts that 'she's not as good as Kylie'.