Having already written about Saint Etienne’s signature song, it seemed like a good idea to finally post that “karaoke version” of Kylie Minogue’s for comparison. “Nothing Can Stop Us” was the first track Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs recorded with Sarah Cracknell, who was then supposed to be just another in a long line of guest vocalists—Moira Lambert was the woman behind “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” the dance redo of the Neil Young song. That song was essentially recorded on a whim; the boys had some studio time and decided to see what they could put together. The other song from that session was also a cover, mainly because Stanley and Wiggs hadn’t bothered penning any actual material before heading into the recording booth. “Nothing Can Stop Us” was one of the first songs the band had written themselves, and became the formula upon which Saint Etienne’s early career would be based. But the band didn’t bother spending a whole lot of time on the track: “from the days when we recorded a song on Monday, mixed it on Tuesday, released it on Wednesday, buried it on Sunday,” as they put it.

Kylie Minogue’s first single with the star production/songwriting team of Stock, Aitken and Waterman was similarly haphazard. The team had forgotten the Australian soap star had flown into London for the recording session, and wrote her first British single in 40 minutes while she waited. After “I Should Be So Lucky” dominated the British charts for over a month, Mike Stock went back to Melbourne to apologize profusely to Minogue and ask if she’d come back to have another go. Thus began a somewhat stormy relationship between Minogue and the trio, which ended in 1993 with Minogue wishing to escape the constraints of the formula Stock, Aitken and Waterman had imposed on her.

She moved to Deconstruction Records and began running the show herself artistically; her self-titled 1994 album thus became a restatement of purpose for the pop star. One of her first recordings for Deconstruction was a cover of “Nothing Can Stop Us,” eventually backing first single “Confide In Me.” For any pop star to cover Saint Etienne—not the most commercially successful group even at the height of their powers—is a bit of a surprise, and evidence that Minogue wasn’t just an airheaded pop singer. Minor as it was, “Nothing Can Stop Us” was also one of the first left turns in a career surprisingly full of them, from a duet with Nick Cave to several odd vocal turns on Towa Tei records.

As the closest thing Australia and Great Britain has had to a home-grown Madonna, Minogue has always managed to appear in control of her own destiny, even during the low periods when she spent little time on the pop charts. And in a very small sense, it all began with a song called “Nothing Can Stop Us.” Fitting.