Jive Records sabotaged Kylie Minogue’s Body Language Era

I worked as a publicist for Jive Records from 2000-2005 (mainly a record for acts like Britney Spears or *NSYNC). The push Jive did for artists like Britney was insane, and I remember in the summer of 2000 just how much money she was bringing in. The Oops I Did It Again album sold 4 million copies in one week if I remember correctly... but Jive began to lose some core artists around 2001/2002 (*NSYNC being the main one) and even Britney began to slip. I remember when her third album came out (forgot the title) it under performed massively, they poured so much money into the singles and promotion and it didn’t even sell 1/2 as well as her two previous albums. Jive realized Britney was losing steam and other artists like Christina Aguilera began to gain it. Jive was worried so they set up a team to try and suppress new pop females from becoming more successful. Kylie Minogue unfortunately fell into that category. I remember her album Body Language was coming out and she was gaining a lot of attention from performing with artists like JT and her previous album got her a solid base of fans. When Jive was able to hear her lead single they knew it spelt trouble for Britneys upcoming album because it was coming out around the same time and looked like it could steal major steam from Britneys upcoming singles they had lined up (including Toxic which was previously a song Kylie Minogue had if I remember right). In a move to stop the album from doing anything of the sort Jive threatened basically every pop radio and TV station with suspension of their artists playing on their stations, if they didn’t snub artists like Kylie Minogue. If you were a non white non pop non female you were safe, but unfortunately a few pop stars viewed as threats got the full wrath of this. When this went into affect Minogues new single “Slow” was already gaining traction but immediately fell off. The boycott stopped Minogue from getting another hit album in the USA and stopped many many other females from being as big as they could have been. That being said Britneys albums still didn’t do nearly as well as Jive hoped causing this whole no other female pop plan to be abandoned after Britney hurt her knee. I quit Jive in 2005 and have never looked back, just sad that so many females had their careers stunted by a irrational fear of them. One thing I do know is “Slow” and the following singles would have at least gone top forty if this Jive thing never went down.