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Kylie splits from manager, will focus more on acting, though not quitting music for good

By | Published on Monday 14 January 2013

Kylie Minogue

Kylie Minogue has parted company with her long term manager Terry Blamey, it has been confirmed, in a move that is likely to see the singer focus more on her acting career in the immediate future, with a concurrent plan to spend more time closer to family in Australia.

Minogue and Blamey’s professional relationship passed the quarter century last year, the latter having guided the former’s career ever since she made the move from ‘Neighbours’ to the pop charts in 1987. That achievement was recognised at last year’s Artist & Manager Awards, where Blamey was presented with the Music Managers Forums’ lifetime achievement prize the Peter Grant Award by Minogue, who made an emotional speech about their work together over 25 years.

However, it’s now emerged that both singer and manager decided to bring their partnership to a close at the end of 2012. Some media have reported that growing tensions between Blamey and Minogue’s father were behind the split, though Blamey himself insists the parting is amicable.

He is quoted by the Daily Mail thus: “As we reach this fork in the road after a wonderful 25 years working together, we do so amicably, wishing each other nothing but the very best for each other’s continued success”.

Various media reports on the Minogue/Blamey split yesterday suggested that the development also meant that the popstar was quitting music for good, with some speculating that the recent sale of her record company EMI to Universal Music had also played a part in that decision.

Though given that seemed to be based on the notion that Kylie feared being a ‘smaller fish’ within the much bigger Universal Music Group, even though the Parlophone label to which Minogue is signed isn’t being absorbed by Universal (rather, it’s being sold off), that’s a dubious theory.

On Twitter Minogue herself said, in hashtag form, “not quitting”, while Blamey explained that, while there would be a focus on acting in the short term (possibly motivated by the success of recent acting project, the French/German film ‘Holy Motors’), this didn’t mean his former client was leaving the music industry for good.

Blamey: “Kylie has decided to pull back slightly from the pressures of her career and devote more time to herself and her acting career. This is not to say she will be retiring from music, just taking a bit of a break”.



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