Kylie Minogue - Impossible Princess

February 1999
Kylie records a track with the Pet Shop Boys for their forthcoming album. The track, In Denial is backed by a full orchestra and is about a gay dad coming out to his daughter. "The Pet Shop Boys are so talented," she says "the offer came out of the blue. I have such fun with these little projects, there's no pressure because it's fun and it's not your album. It's quite dramatic and musical, quite theatrical. I'm singing in a fairly dramatic way. Craig Armstrong (Massive Attack) did all the string arrangements. It's quite lovely and really catchy." Lyric soundbite: "You're not admitting / You should be quitting / All these queens and fairies / And muscle Marys..."

March 1999
Kylie travels to Barbados to appear as Miranda in a production of Shakespeare's 'The Tempest', her first ever stage role. Kylie announces plans to release a book later in the year, tentatively titled Kylie Evidence, in which she intends to include other peoples' opinions of her, both celebrity friends and people she has never met, in a mixture of articles, photos, stories and images. "In this book, I am both spectator and participant, objective and subjective...I am celebrating and questioning what I have known and that includes the achievements and embarrassments, loves, lessons, the amusing, the reality and the possibility."

April 1999
Kylie travels to New York to record with fellow Aussie Ben Lee, a cover version of Duran Duran's The Reflex for a forthcoming Duran Duran tribute album to be released in Australia.

Kylie signs a major recording deal with Parlophone Records part of the EMI Group and commences work on her 7th studio album.

In Sydney, she records a track for the Sample People soundtrack, covering Russell Morris' 60s hit The Real Thing with dance producer Josh Abrahams. "I'm not sure how to describe it, but it was great working with Josh. It's quite faithful, the original is so good you wouldn't want to veer too much from it," Kylie comments.

May 1999
Kylie arrives in Adelaide to film scenes for another small film role, this time in Mushroom's first ever film production which is a teen horror flick called Cut. Co-starring American actress Molly Ringwald (Pretty In Pink, The Breakfast Club), Kylie plays Hilary, a film director who gets brutally murdered in the film's opening scenes!

Kylie 1999

June 1999
Kylie signs to Parlophone Records (a subsidiary of EMI) and a press release confirms she is already writing and recording for a new album. Kylie says: "I took my time in choosing a new label and I am very excited about signing to Parlophone. There is much I hope to achieve with my next album and I believe that anything is possible with this new partnership. I have learnt a lot in the last couple of years and I am very enthusiastic to make a record that is 'Kylie'."

A & R Director at Parlophone, Miles Leonard, states "Kylie is undeniably one of the most successful female solo artists of our time. She can capture a broad range of fans across all age groups, whilst staying ahead of her peers. She wants to make a pop album and we found that we have a shared idea of what the next record will sound like. We've had great initial response from key producers, Kylie is raring to get started with the album and I'm sure we'll get the Kylie record that everyone has been waiting for!"

In Vienna, Kylie appears at the Imperial Palace Charity Fashion Show, wearing a very revealing Versace outfit.

Kylie performs I Should Be So Lucky and Where The Wild Roses Grow at The Meltdown Festival in London with Sir Les Patterson, who chases her offstage with his false penis!!

Kylie spends time in the studios with Robbie Williams working on tracks for her album, including a rumoured duet.

September 1999
To celebrate Australian Vogue's 40th year, Kylie is featured on the cover in an exclusive photoshoot with Elle MacPherson.

October 1999
21st October - release of "Kylie" the book, at a signing session held at Selfridge’s department store in London. The book is a large, hot-pink colour 'coffee table' style hardback, housed in a slipcase with a life-sized photo of Kylie's arm on it. It features numerous photos, paintings, visual interpretations and pages of text from the likes of Elton John, Boy George, Patrick Cox, Bono, Vivienne Westwood, Clive James, Jason Donovan and Kylie herself. Profits from the book project are to be donated to various charities.

November 1999
7th November - Kylie headlines the grand opening of Sydney's Fox Studios, performing a recreation of Marilyn Monroe's Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend (from Monroe's film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes).

Signing sessions for the "Kylie" book take place in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

December 1999
21st December - Kylie travels to East Timor to headline the Tour Of Duty concert for Australian troops stationed there. Dressed in a cute Santa outfit, her set consists of classic Christmas tunes Santa Baby, Rockin' Robin and Jingle Bell Rock, as well as Lulu's Shout which she performs with John Farnham. The experience of travelling to that part of the world and the things Kylie sees has a profound effect on her and she states it has changed her life.

February - March 2000
Kylie continues to record her new album. Meanwhile, new remixes of her contribution to the Sample People soundtrack, The Real Thing, are released to Australian DJs on a promo 12".

Along with Natalie Imbruglia, Kylie presents the 'Best International Female' award to Macy Gray at the Brits.

May 2000
Sample People is released in Australia.

Parlophone release a one-sided white label of Butterfly, a track from Kylie's brand-new album Light Years. The track was written by Kylie and Steve Anderson and is produced by Mark Pichiotti. The 12" promo features the Sandstorm Dub version of the pounding club track.

Spinning Around is released to radio and goes down an absolute storm. Co-written by Paula Abdul, the single is a funky disco track and marks a definite return to Kylie's pop roots. The video features Kylie dancing in a nightclub wearing a soon-to-be infamous pair of gold hotpants (!), the clip reportedly costs £400,000 to make.

June 2000
Promotion of the single begins in the press, with numerous magazine appearances in the UK alone. Kylie's appearance on the cover of "GQ" magazine sparks controversy, when she is photographed by Terry Richardson in a recreation of the famous Athena poster of a tennis player lifting her skirt to reveal her bum! It is claimed that the magazine has airbrushed her tiny thong out of the cheeky photo...

10th June - Kylie performs at the opening of a brand new nightclub, Essential in Manchester, showcasing some of the tunes from her new album for the ecstatic crowd.

17th June - Kylie performs a special set at G-A-Y in London. Her setlist consists of Light Years (the title track of her new album, a throbbing disco track in the same vein as Donna Summer's I Feel Love and Visage's Fade To Grey), Step Back In Time, Victims (a cover of the Culture Club classic), Your Disco Needs You (written by Robbie Williams and Guy Chambers, reminiscent of any Village People track you'd care to name), Spinning Around, Butterfly and Better The Devil You Know.

19th June - Spinning Around is released in the UK and Australia and enters both countries' charts at No.1, making Kylie one of only two female artists (the second being Madonna) to have No.1 singles in the eighties, nineties and noughties! Spinning Around is Kylie's fifth UK and Australian No.1 and is her first single to enter the charts at the top spot in the UK.

July 2000
1st July - Kylie co-hosts and performs Spinning Around at Mardi Gras in London.

Her appearance at Capital FM's Party In The Park in London turns into a near disaster as the heavens open on the open-air stage, forcing Kylie to swap her Manolo's for a pair of trainers! Unfortunately, the rain also causes the sound monitors to cut out so she is unable to hear her music or her own voice. Nevertheless, Kylie and her dancers battle on through their performance of Step Back In Time, What Do I Have To Do and Spinning Around.

Kylie visits Ibiza for an exclusive club performance. Whilst on the island she is photographed for the cover of Light Years.

August 2000
5th August - Kylie appears at Amsterdam's Gay Pride Festival, performing Step Back In Time, What Do I Have To Do, Spinning Around and Better The Devil You Know. She also takes the time to attend a signing session at the city's Fame music store.

Kylie films the video for her new single On A Night Like This in Monte Carlo. The sinister video depicts Kylie as the wife of a gangster, played by Rutger Hauer, at the casino draped in £2M worth of diamonds.

20th August - Kylie performs On A Night Like This and Spinning Around at Radio One's One Big Sunday show in Plymouth in front of an estimated 60,000-strong crowd.

29th August - the BBC broadcasts the debut performance of Kids, a duet with Robbie Williams, for a Top Of The Pops Robbie special.

September 2000
Release of the second single from Light Years, On A Night Like This. The single is produced by Brian Rawling, responsible for Cher's almighty hit Believe and is very Euro-pop. It enters the UK chart at No.2 and the Australian chart at No.1, making it Kylie's sixth Australian No.1 hit.

25th September - Light Years is released to several glowing reviews from the music press. The disco theme introduced by Spinning Around is evident throughout the whole album, which features collaborations with Biff Stannard & Julian Gallagher, Robbie Williams & Guy Chambers, Mark Pichiotti, Johnny Douglas and Steve Anderson. The CD includes a special hidden track called Password, found at the beginning of the album by rewinding Spinning Around! The album enters the UK and Aussie charts at No.2, Kylie's highest charting (studio) album since 1989's Enjoy Yourself.

It is confirmed that Kylie is set to make a cameo appearance in Baz Luhrman's new film Moulin Rouge!, starring Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman. The film is set in Paris in 1900 and tells the story of a writer (Ewan) and a French courtesan (Nicole). Kylie is to play The Green Fairy, who appears to Ewan in an absinthe-induced hallucination!

October 2000
2nd October - Kylie makes the performance of a lifetime at the spectacular closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games as only she can. Joining such Aussie stars as INXS, Elle MacPherson and Midnight Oil, she arrives in the stadium atop a giant flip-flop, to be carried onstage on a surfboard by a group of hunky lifeguards. Dressed in a big floppy hat and short dress, she is surrounded by dancers onstage and emerges resplendent in a sequinned pink outfit with pink feather headdress to rip through a rendition of Dancing Queen. After the arrival of a troupe of drag queens in a Priscilla Queen Of The Desert tribute, Kylie reappears in a shimmering gold dress to perform the very apt On A Night Like This. The ceremony ends with a gigantic fireworks display across the city and is viewed by an estimated 4 BILLION people worldwide!

Continuing the Olympics theme, Kylie is featured on the cover of Australian "Rolling Stone" magazine wearing a bikini and clutching a gold medal.

On A Night Like This re-enters the No.1 position on the Australian charts.

9th October - release of Kids in the UK, entering the UK charts at No.2. The video features Kylie and Robbie cavorting around surrounded by showgirls and boys and ending up in a clinch in a swimming pool.

15th October - Light Years goes to No.1 in Australia, Kylie's first ever album to reach the top spot in her homeland.

16th October - Release of Hits+, a retrospective of tracks from Kylie's time at deConstruction. The CD features singles, B-sides and remixes, as well as four previously unreleased tracks - Difficult By Design, Gotta Move On, Stay This Way and This Girl.

Paralympics opening ceremony, Sydney 2000

Following her triumph at the Olympics closing ceremony, Kylie headlines the opening ceremony of the Sydney Paralympics, performing Waltzing Matilda, Celebration and Spinning Around.

November 2000
Spinning Around wins 'Best Pop Release' at the ARIA Music Awards in Australia.

Kylie films a commercial for Pepsi, featuring On A Night Like This and a magical TV remote that makes her come to life out of the TV!

Kylie announces her first UK tour in nine years, set to kick off in March 2001. A press statement from her management company reads: "Not one for the minimalist approach to live shows, it is expected that the forthcoming shows will build-on the theatrical extravaganzas she has devised for previous tours. Sequin and glitter stocks are running high."

16th November - Kylie and Robbie perform Kids at the MTV Europe Awards in Stockholm, Sweden. Kylie steals the show wearing a very revealing sparkling silver dress. The other highlight of the evening is an appearance by Madonna, who performs her single Music dressed in a black T-shirt emblazoned with the words 'Kylie Minogue'!!!!

December 2000
11th December - The flamenco-flavoured Please Stay is released in the UK and Australia, featuring a video with Kylie in full-on camp mode complete with revolving bed, fireman's pole and a dance routine atop a pool table! The single reaches No.10 in the UK, giving Kylie her 20th Top Ten hit, and meaning that all the Light Years singles have gone Top Ten.

Kylie appears on various TV shows to promote Please Stay, including live performances on TFI Friday, The National Lottery, CD:UK and the Royal Variety performance, where she also performs Spinning Around. For a Top Of The Pops Christmas Special, Kylie performs Santa Baby, the B-side of the single.

Kylie travels back to Australia for Christmas and films her scenes for Moulin Rouge! in Sydney, singing The Sound Of Music for her role as the mischievous Green Fairy.