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Clip description
This is a 30-second clip from I Should Be So Lucky, a pop-dance song performed by Kylie Minogue. The song features a wickedly catchy chorus, of the kind writer-producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman were famous for in the 1980s and ’90s.
In this clip from the song, Kylie is upbeat, despite the one-sided nature of her love affair with her would-be beau, singing:
I’m dreaming …
You fell in love with me
Like I’m in love with you
But dreaming’s all I do
If only they’d come true.
I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky
I should be so lucky in love.
I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky
I should be so lucky in love.
It’s a crazy situation
You always keep me waiting …
Curator’s notes
This 30-second clip from I Should Be So Lucky features the catchy chorus that entered the national consciousness after the song was released and will forever be associated with Kylie Minogue. This clip also features the refrain at the end of the first verse, which encapsulates the song’s simple story of fantasising about an ideal but inattentive lover. The song worms its way into the listener’s brain through the repetition of the word 'lucky’ in the chorus, the heart of the song (it is heard ten times in this 30-second clip alone). The lyrics have an additional meaning in the clubbing context, where dance hits are frequently all about finding a sexual partner – 'getting lucky’.
Minogue’s voice was not classically trained and, although she has developed it over the years, she did not have a wide vocal range in the late 1980s. The song has an easy sing-a-long quality, and the instrumentation is about as synthesised as music gets, with Mike Stock on keyboards and Matt Aitken on guitars and keyboards. As with much of Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s work, drums on the track are credited to 'A Linn’, a reference to the Linn brand of drum machine.
The song’s popularity and its instant recognisability, particularly in Australia and the UK, made it ripe for mocking. There were some high-profile parodies including one by comedians Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders during the 1990 season of sketch show French and Saunders (1987–2007). In their parody, British mezzo-soprano Sarah Walker performs the song, eliciting laughs from mixing opera ('high’ culture) and pop ('low’ culture). In the send-up presented by British satirical programme Spitting Image (1984–96), Kylie is depicted as being brought to life in the vein of Frankenstein’s monster.
I Should Be So Lucky is similar in style and execution to dozens of other SAW-produced songs, such as 'Never Gonna Give You Up’ by Rick Astley and 'Respectable’ by Mel and Kim, with their repetitive, catchy choruses, dancability and synthesised instrumentation. In that sense, there is not much unique or remarkable about 'I Should Be So Lucky’ as a song, but as a vehicle for broadening Kylie’s appeal from her TV fan-base it was enormously successful.
It’s hard not to feel affection for the young woman portrayed by Kylie in the music video for the song, poised beautifully on the divide between girlhood and womanhood; at once self-conscious and innocent. The video features 19-year-old Kylie, prancing about her 'house’ (filmed at the studios of Channel 7 in Melbourne). Her wholesome, girl-next-door image is played up to, with scenes of her giggling girlishly and blowing bubbles in the bath towards the camera. Kylie’s future role as a style icon is hinted at with seven costume changes in just over three minutes. For the contemporary viewer, the video is a veritable catalogue of 1980s fashion, from peasant tops and flip skirts to hair scrunchies and a revealing, backless version of the pinafore dress.
More than 20 years later, Minogue continues to perform this song in her live concerts, reinterpreting it as a jazz-infused track for 1999’s Intimate and Live tour, and remixing it for the Kylie-X-2008 and For You, For Me (2009) concerts.
