As one of the architects of Kylie Minogue’s decades-spanning global pop career, hitmaking producer Pete Waterman has opened up about the unassuming start of his working relationship with the star, admitting he had never heard of her when he first signed on to produce her debut three studio albums.
Waterman’s recollections feature in the new Netflix documentary simply titled *Kylie*, which charts the Australian singer’s extraordinary trajectory from a small-screen soap opera actor on *Neighbours* to one of pop music’s most enduring international icons. The project marks a reflective full-circle moment for Waterman, who, alongside production partners Mike Stock and Matt Aitken, formed the legendary Stock Aitken & Waterman team that shaped Minogue’s early sound in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Speaking in the documentary, Waterman explained the collaboration first came about at the request of the Australian distributor for Stock Aitken & Waterman’s record label, which reached out for support to launch Minogue’s first foray into music back in the late 1980s. This was months before her breakout role as Charlene Mitchell on *Neighbours* turned her into a household name across the United Kingdom.
“She turns up at the studio, we knocked together *I Should Be So Lucky*, and she was at the airport by 4 o’clock, to fly back to Australia for *Neighbours*,” Waterman recalled.
The partnership would go on to spawn a record-breaking string of chart hits for Minogue. *The Loco-Motion*, which became the first of her 54 UK Top 40 hits when Minogue was still just a teenager, was actually a remixed version of a track that had already claimed the number one spot on Australian charts, produced by the Stock Aitken & Waterman team. *I Should Be So Lucky* followed as the trio’s second hit for the rising star. Between 1988 and 1992 alone, the production collective delivered 19 Top 20 hits for Minogue, and ultimately produced four full studio albums for the singer between 1988 and 1991.
Waterman shared that his first impression of the young artist was that she was soft-spoken but unwaveringly driven. He recalled his partner Matt Aitken telling him, “this kid’s got an amazing voice and is a great learner of a song. We taught her the song once, she’d remembered it straight away. Because she’s an actress, of course.”
Despite *Neighbours*’ rapidly growing popularity in the UK that was turning Minogue into a national sensation, Waterman said the production team had no time to anticipate how that fame would translate to massive record sales. “This sounds ridiculous [but] we had no concept of how big Kylie was,” he said.
That explosive growth quickly became clear as the team negotiated for Minogue’s third album. Waterman noted, “So here we are, Kylie’s selling 2.5 million albums every time we put an album out and suddenly we’re negotiating for a third album. And you’re dealing with lawyers who are basically Madonna’s lawyers. So you’ve gone from a little girl in *Neighbours* to the hottest lawyer on the planet who’s looking for millions of pounds in his pocket.”
When Minogue reached out to Waterman to ask him to appear in the new documentary chronicling her life and decades-long career, he said the decision to participate was immediate. “It wasn’t a thought, it was – yeah, where do you want me to be?” he said. “This is Kylie from the four men in her life. What an amazing honour that is, from [being a boy from] Stoke Heath to world domination! My God, what a place to be!”