Recipe: take one pop princess, season lightly with sprinkles of rock star god, add dark, gothic rock poet/singer and place into oven. After some time, remove from oven and lif you have followed instructions precisely, you should have one of the most effective duets of the mid to late 1990s. When Nick Cave released his album “Murder ballads” in 1996, it was many an eyebrow that was raised at the inclusion of one Kylie Minogue on the fifth track, but as it turned out, “Where the wild roses grow” was a huge success, both for Cave (who probably could care less about such things) and for Kylie. In the case of the latter, it raised her profile beyond the somewhat limited pop/dance area she was known for, following on from her association with Michael Hutchence of INXS, under whose tutelage Kylie's own music had been starting to break out of those boundaries.
Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue --- Where the wild roses grow
The tale of a man who meets his lover by the river and kills her, in order that her great beauty be preserved and not fade, the song is based, according to Cave, on the old traditional song “Down in the willow garden”, and is replete with metaphors and images of death and decay, which would not normally be where you would expect to find she who found fame with such inoffensive ditties as “Hand on your heart”, “Devil you know”, “Can't get you out of my head” and of course “Spinning around”. Remembered, at that time, more for skintight supershort golden knickers than for dark morose songs about death, Kylie did herself no harm at all in teaming up with the Reaper of the music world, and the song, released as a single, did well all over the world, especially in her, and his, native Australia.
Nick Cave says he wrote the song specifically with her in mind, and had been trying for several years to write a song worthy of her. It was only when he penned this that he knew he had the song he could approach her to perform with him. She jumped at the chance, and the rest is history. It's probably unlikely that they will ever collaborate again, as Cave hates to repeat himself, and indeed Kylie has of late returned to the style of music that initially made her famous, dance and pop, but for a brief moment there, the marriage of, as it were, goddess and devil, took the world's breath away.