Dannii Minogue has reunited with Ian Masterson for her first single release in six years.
The Aussie superstar released her last original track, Galaxy, back in 2017, and although she shared a new version of the classic All I Wanna Do in 2020, she’s been absent from the pop scene since.
However, that’s all changed and after teaming up with Kylie for a show-stopping performance at Sydney WorldPride earlier this year, she’s release her brand new track, We Could Be The One,.
🌈 My new single ‘We Could Be The One’, the theme song to ‘I Kissed A Boy’, is out June 2. All profits from the single will go to @switchboardlgbt. Pre-save the track now ➡️ https://t.co/CUur5yDk9n#lgbtq+ #safespace #listening #understanding pic.twitter.com/Uhg8nDvUns
— Dannii Minogue (@DanniiMinogue) May 16, 2023
The single is written by Masterson, who began working with Dannii around the time of her third album, ‘Girl’ (1997), for which he penned the classic Disremembrance, and worked extensively on her follow-up LP, ‘Neon Nights’ (2003).
It serves as the theme song to Dannii’s BBC Three gay dating show, ‘I Kissed a Boy’, which is airing now with new episodes dropping weekly.
“I have had the privilege of being involved with the LGBTQ+ community for many years,” Dannii told the BBC. “I am a staunch ally, and in return I have always been welcomed with support that feels like a huge hug.”
All profits from the single will go towards queer charity Switchboard LGBT+ – a telephone helpline that has provided support for queer people since 1974.
Listen to We Could Be The One below.
New music comes as Dannii is celebrating 20 years since the release of her seminal fourth album, ‘Neon Nights’, on the cover of RETROPOP’s June 2023 issue.
The hitmaker dominated the charts with her classic LP, which delivered four Top 10 singles: Who Do You Love Now?, Put The Needle On It, I Begin To Wonder and Don’t Wanna Lose This Feeling.
But it came about at a time when Dannii was without a record label, following the release of her third album, ‘Girl’, in 1997, when she didn’t know what her next career move would be. “Sometimes you need that bushfire to clear the slate and regenerate,” says the pop legend of the transition.
“We all get to know – when we’ve got enough years behind us – when you need to firmly shut a door for a very different one to open. It was like that. I was at peace with everything being finished and then this came as an unexpected surprise…”
It was a call from DJ supremo Pete Tong, who was working as A&R at London Records and asked her to lend vocals to a new version of the instrumental track Stringer from disc jockey duo Zki and Dobri, aka Riva, with a view to impacting the clubs.
“I felt like I wasn’t cool enough to be getting a call from Pete Tong. I thought if you were outside of the pop-loving world, I was uncool,” admits Dannii. “But he said, ‘Do you want to sing on this song, Who Do You Love Now?,’ and I was really blown away, but also like, ‘OK, do not get excited here, this is a one-off thing’. Because it really was just a vocal for a record.
“I had no idea it was gonna turn into this album, which is so special and really had everything thrown at it, thanks to the energy of the record company,” she reflects. “Phil Faversham doing A&R was just superb to work with – we were thick as thieves and it was a really good give-and-take. He would let the reins out and then rein me back in enough to make sure he got what he wanted, because if you give an artist as much lead as they want, they can end up very far away from where you want them to be.”
Twenty years on, with the release of a massive, 100+ song box set in June, Dannii is finally able to appreciate the impact the record has had on her career in the decades that followed.
“When it’s the first release of something and it’s doing really well – which is what you want it to do – you’re so busy doing all the promo that it kind of becomes a blur. Your brain goes into overload taking it all in,” she shares. “So to be able to do this with friends and fans and people who worked on the album, with everybody giving me their recollections, it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, damn, that happened.’ Without that, I wouldn’t get to relive it.
“I don’t think ‘The X Factor’ would have come without the call from Pete Tong. And then there’s other stuff afterwards that wouldn’t have happened if Simon Cowell didn’t say, ‘You should be on this show’.”
‘Neon Nights 20’ is reissued on June 16 via London Records.
