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Dannii: Love,
luck and Kylie Minogue orders
plain water, shuts her cell phone off and welcomes me as if I were
the most important person she is seeing today. She's in Paris to
promote her new album, Neon Nights, and is ready to talk! Question:
You've changed your hair colour since Girl in 1997. You had fair
hair then, have you gone back to your natural colour? DM:
Yes. I wanted to find my natural colour, an intense brown. I was
getting fed up with being blonde. For the record, blondes do NOT
always have more fun. Q: Did you
suffer from the image that blondes have no brains? Like the joke,
What do you call 30 blondes in a swimming pool? DM: What? Q: An air pocket. DM:
That's terrible! I hate you! [Laughs.] In a way, yes, it is true.
People looked at me differently when I had blonde hair. However,
it was obvious that I wasn't a true blonde. But that did not prevent
people behaving badly anyway. But finally, understanding how people
think about you, according to the colour of your hair, was an interesting
experiment. I reckon that the fact that I reached the big 30 also
had an influence on my return to my natural colour. Why hide it,
you know what I mean? Q: You're
30 already? DM: Actually,
if you really want to know the truth [starts to fake crying], I'm
31. Q: Was it
hard turning 30? DM:
Frankly, all kidding aside, I loved it! I was very impatient, you
know. I knew I'd have to reach my thirties one day, so let's get
it over with. All my girlfriends made comments on how difficult
it was, how unbearable it seemed. They acted
like they were sooooooo old. Like they'd reached the twilight of
their lives. Frankly, since I turned 30, I feel so much more alive!
I feel so much more like a woman! Q: But could
you be tempted into getting married and having children? Do you
have the guts? DM:
Of course I do! Of course I would like to have a long lasting relationship.
But you know, I have been married once.... and being divorced, well,
it puts a different perspective for me on the marriage and family
thing. I was married in 1993 and I put myself through the marriage
test and failed. In fact, I did everything backwards... Q: Let's
talk about Dannii Minogue the singer. Why is it that you sing with
a very soft voice on all your dance cuts. Was it a conscious choice? DM: I
love dance music. It is really the reflection of my personality.
Which is that I'm an optimistic and calm person. But I believe that
this calm side I possess is owed to the fact that I'm happy and
free to do exactly what I want. My freedom is everything to me which
makes being married again a little complicated. Sometimes it's hard
for me to realise that I can have a career, and do all the things
that I like because to have that freedom AND a career is difficult. Q: Singing
, acting , TV shows...
you do a lot of different things because you can do what you want
or is it because you have a hard time focusing on just one thing? DM:
I need stimulation. I'm a stimulation junkie, in some respects.
I need to do a thousand things at a time. Perhaps this is not the
best way of managing my career. And inside I know that. Perhaps
I shouldn't spread myself so thin. But then you must take into account
my philosophy on life. That it's meant to be lived. When something
is offered to me, I need to research it before I do it. Q: Your
sister, Kylie, is very famous. To be in that corner, to be able
to be your own person, to be looked at as a success in your own
right - that must be a battle you have to fight with people's perceptions
every day. Has it been a headache from the beginning? DM:
In fact, I started my career before Kylie started hers. I'd been
singing for years when she started. I'd been acting for years as
well. I was the famous one in Australia, and Kylie was Dannii's
little sister. She was getting annoyed because she was the eldest
one and, for years, everyone got it the other way around. She always
would complain and say, 'Hey, I'm the older sister! Dannii is the
little sister, not me!' But when I arrived in London, it was my
turn to become Kylie's little sister. So we always lived our careers
on a parallel track. Q: Without
any competition? DM:
None. We have no competition between us whatsoever. She does what
she does, and I do what I do. We have a great relationship. We would
never reduce our relationship to that. For me, I could never be
in competition with my own sister. It's that simple. Q: You both
look so alike in many ways. Yes, you're both very sexy but your
music is so very different. Is this a way of expressing the difference
between you? DM:
We've never consciously have ever tried to look or be different
from one another. I believe that each person has their own unique
personality and that is what sets the tone. Also we both work very
differently, especially when we're in the recording studio. Hey,
we're sisters and it's normal to have some similarities. They do
exist between us in any case. As do our differences. Q: In what
ways are you different? DM:
My sister is a very calm and very strong woman. Me, I'm the extrovert
in the family. I'm noisy and have a rather big-mouth. I usually
respond loudly about what I like and what I don't like. Whereas
Kylie always stays on the quiet side and keeps a low profile. Q: You are
in a family with
three children. Who is the third one? DM:
I have a brother. He's in the middle, agewise. He is between Kylie
and me. Q: Does
he make music too? DM:
No. I heard him sing three times in my life and each time, he was
buzzed! Q: From
an outsider's point of view, you always seem to give the impression
that everything had been rather easy for you? DM:
Quiet now. When you consider the work you need to do every day,
it can be really hard. Very hard. But it is true. I'll admit it.
I have had it pretty easy for most things. I've been pretty lucky
on numerous ocasions. Q: Can you
tell me about one, for example? DM:
The first bit of luck, if you must know, was when I went to take
singing lessons at the age of seven. I loved singing, but I really
wasn't too good at it. Every girl was better than me and they came
in dressed and made up like real stars, with spangles and the whole
bit. They had talent, and they had even more ambition. Every talent
hour we went to, they seemed to be ready for us. To look back on
those days and where we are today - in some ways it is a miracle.
A little bit of luck, definitely. My singing teacher always seemed
to encourage me, which is what really helped. One day she actually
asked me to go to an audition for this talent show on television
called Young Talent Prime. I thought she was completely crazy! I
was, like, 'I can't sing as good as those kids!' And the real surprise
came when I was actually selected. That came as a real shock to
me. Tina Arena was part of the show. That was sooooooooo huge! I
wanted to learn and the best way to learn was just to throw yourself
in the fire and just do it. That's the
best school. This was a weekly programme. The friends I met at that
time have remained my friends till this very day, by the way. I
gave so much of my heart for it. And that's a big part of success,
I think. Q: You've
achieved success even when you know your weaknesses as a singer. DM:
That's exactly it. And I've remained pretty much the same as a person.
I know that I am not the best singer in the world, but I always
make an effort to improve myself. I believe that if everything stopped
one day, I would have experienced so many fantastic things and I
would not regret anything. Q: You don't
seek perfection in your real life? Not just a little? DM: No.
Perfection... being perfect, that doesn't really exist. Even in
paradise, nothing's perfect. And perfection won't lead you to paradise
either. Q: What
about the men you go out with? Do you seek perfection in a man? DM:
What I seek in somebody is definitely NOT perfection. Can you imagine
how terrible it would be to live with somebody who had no faults?
How boring! And you'd feel like an ant on a marshmallow because
you'd never feel good about yourself being around a person who was
as close to perfection like that. Forget about it. The thing that
attracts me to a man is his manners and his sense of humour, especially
in the beginning of the relationship. I expect men to be nice and
funny at first, not perfect. Q: And good
looking, I hope! DM:
Listen to me - beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. Everyone
with a brain in their head knows that. Q: So image
is not as important for you as one would think! DM:
Oh no. I prefer men who know how to dance the tango or know how
to waltz than just a man who relies on his looks and has no other
qualities. I love to dance to the music of the Fifties. A man who
could dance to Fifties music would win my affections immediately. Q: What
would you criticise about yourself? DM:
I have always the feeling that I wasn't good enough, if you really
want to know the truth. That's why I always have felt the incredible
need to work. If I thought I was perfect or really beautiful or
the greatest talent on Earth, that would give me a very big ego
and that would be very dangerous for me. That would be really horrible. Q: You say
you always try and improve yourself each day? How? DM:
I meet new people. I always seek new ideas, to learn about new concepts
which sometimes enable you to move forward much faster than singing
or dancing lessons. I read a lot, too. But the most important thing
remains in meeting people. That's where you enrich your life the
most, I believe - through people. |
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