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She should be so lucky…

People tend to forget that multi-million selling singer Kylie once upon a time started out as a lowly soap star in the Antipodean soap ‘Neighbours’. Back then, Kylie, along with her on-screen boyfriend Jason Donovan, were too saccharine-sweet to have any credibility beyond the narrow pop audience they appealed to. With her ‘girl-next-door’ image and zero personality, she embodied the very worst of Stock, Aitken & Waterman’s airbrushed pop army. Fast forward to the present day, and things couldn’t be more different. Kylie is so famous that her surname has become entirely obsolete. Moreover, she literally oozes credibility.

The real turning point came in 1995, when pop fans were wowed by the sight of her dueting with the towering, Dracula-like figure of Nick Cave for the track ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’. Kylie barely seemed to reach past Cave’s waist, and their difference in size was matched by their vastly backgrounds – him the ex-junkie rock Wildman, her the squeaky-clean pop starlet. Since her career has only moved in one direction: up. The millennium saw her reinvent herself once again, this time as the purveyor of dance hits that made drunk people dance and also managed to get rave reviews in serious broadsheet newspapers: "Can't Get You Out of My Head", the biggest success of her career, being a case in point. Say what you like about Kylie, but it’s a song that it’s impossible not to want to dance to, regardless of whether you’re drunk or not.

Having gone from soap-star to pop-star, a career move that’s so well established that even the most lowly Romanian telenovela actress is tempted to try it, Kylie is now attempting what looks set to become the next natural transition: from pop star to author.

Kylie’s first book will be released in September this year. Entitled Showgirl Princess, it tells the story of an ambitious young girl who dreams of being a showgirl, and who struggles to eventually achieve her dream. Sounds a bit familiar? Get this: the lead character is called ‘Kylie’. What’s more, the book will be luxuriously illustrated –with ample photographs of the petite pop princess herself.

You might have already guessed that this isn’t going to be a contender for a Pulitzer prize. It’s a book for children, and sounds like a thinly disguised, slightly puffed-up version of a Kylie Annual. However, what’s worrying isn’t the book itself, but this sudden wave of literary pretension that we’re seeing from our pop singers. What’s wrong with launching your own line of underwear? Or a perfume? In a world where every two-bit singer is able to launch their own doll, or scent, it seems that writing a children’s book has become a signal that you’re in the Premier Division of the pop world.

The most obvious example of the phenomena is Madonna, who wrote The English Roses, to critical dismay and huge commercial success, in 2003. It was published simultaneously in 100 countries and 30 languages, selling more than 50,000 copies of its English edition in less than two weeks. She has since written four more books including Lotsa de Casha and Mr Peabody's Apples. The New York Daily News reported that Madonna decided to write her own books because when she read children's books to her three year old son, she "'...couldn't believe how vapid and vacant and empty all the stories were.” Hmmm.

There are a only a small number of people who’ve managed to make the shift from a musical to a literary career. 60s beat-miserabilst Leonard Cohen can get away with being an author, because he’s clearly a talented writer. Nick Cave can similarly pull it off. However, everybody else realises the patent stupidity of a pop singer pretending to write a book. What’s wrong with the old industry staple, releasing an autobiography that was written by the singer together with the ‘help’ of a professional writer? I’m always surprised that pop stars are able to be able to read. I certainly don’t expect them to write.

Literary pretensions appear to be the first sign of a star loosing the plot: take Madonna. She marries the most ridiculed man in the film industry, Guy Ritchie; she appears in a number of films that are so bad that you can’t even get them on video; she gets sucked into a religious cult that teaches you can understand ancient Jewish texts by simply ‘holding your hand over them’; and to cap it all off, she starts writing books for children. Looks to me to form part of a terrible downward spiral. Stick to what you’re good at, eh, Kylie?