13 August 1988
Fitzroy Football Club in Melbourne, in a post on their Facebook, say it happened on 11 July 1986. At a club benefit show that night, Neighbours star Kylie Minogue took to the stage and performed ‘The Locomotion’. It went down a storm. She had already appeared on a high-profile hit, as one of the celebs on a home-grown 1985 deaf charity fundraiser called Hearing Aid, but in 1987 Mushroom Records in Australia asked Kylie to record ‘The Locomotion’ as a single, to coincide with the Kylie-Jason Neighbours wedding storyline. That single became a smash hit in Australia and, with Neighbours-mania hitting the UK (and whatever parts of the east of Ireland could pick up the British channels) in 1988, inspired Stock, Aitken and Waterman to sign her up for a record deal in this part of the world. So, there’s the origin story of Kylie as pop icon, all thanks to ‘The Locomotion’.
I’m pretty certain no one was particularly thankful for Kylie’s ‘The Locomotion’ in 1988, which for us was a re-recorded version produced by Stock, Aitken and Waterman. It’s one of those early-’60s dance-craze novelty songs, and not one of Gerry Goffin and Carole King’s finer compositions. Still, it sold truckloads for Little Eva in 1962 and seemingly for everyone who has ever recorded it since. Here, Stock, Aitken and Waterman just go straight for the cheapest hi-NRG setting on their keyboards; their production blares and roars at you like a skin rash. Fine, you can jump around to it at a party or in the comfort of your own home, and Kylie does the job well, but by now you have to wonder if SAW in 1988 were just out to troll everyone.
