22 September 2001
Look who’s here! Yes, this is her first Irish chart-topper in 12 years. However, Kylie Minogue still had eleven Irish top ten hits in that time, the same number as Take That and one more than the Spice Girls. What’s more, one of those Kylie hits was the sensationally brilliant ‘Better The Devil You Know’, and just outside our top ten was another fantastic record, ‘Confide In Me’. Those are two of the best pop singles of the ’90s. Comeback? Kylie never left.
‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ is as much the story of Kylie as the story of an early-’90s Kylie pretender. Cathy Dennis had a few chart hits in 1991 with some bright post-SAW pop singles. By 2001 Dennis was now a writer-producer who had just scored her first UK number one (and Irish no. 2) in 2000 with S Club 7’s gaseous Winterval slowie ‘Never Had A Dream Come True’. Her co-writer-producer on ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ is Rob Davis, the Mud guitarist who had collaborated on an even bigger 2000 hit, Spiller’s ‘Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)’.
So, how do two proven hitmakers and a proven pop icon get on here? I feel like that question is redundant. Is there anyone who has listened to pop music at any stage in the last two decades who isn’t aware of ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ and how sublime it is? Itemising it as a product of its time, the track combines the two signature styles of retro-futuristic French indietronica: the broad-stroke playful repetitive beats of Daft Punk and the swish synth effects of Air. Add the Scandinavian touch of Cheiron sleekness, and you have a pop record at the vanguard of what was current in 2001. That it still sounds current today is testament to how that was such a winning formula. Also, the song is bloody catchy but never annoyingly so: Kylie’s previous wholesale suppliers Stock, Aitken and Waterman would have hammered you over the head with that “la la la” refrain but here the Scandi-French design lets that chorus breathe.
And what about the singer? Well, ’90s Kylie had shown that she always had pop smarts; she just needed better material. ‘Better The Devil You Know’ and ‘Confide In Me’ were stunning, but got lost in post-SAW snark and the decade of Britpop and boybands. ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ not only matches that level of perfection but also becomes a bigger and beloved hit. Amazingly, as per this interview with Dennis and Davis, first refusal on the song went to the hapless S Club 7; they might have made another adequate ‘Don’t Stop Movin” disco bop of it, but no more. Another to turn it down was Sophie Ellis-Bextor; despite the charm of ‘Groovejet’, her cut-glass vowels (“I just cawn’t get you out of my head” or what have you) would have just sounded clumsy and uncool here. By contrast, Kylie clearly gets it: her breathy sang froid and pure star quality are the final essential touches. Two chart-topping hitmakers write and produce it, but it takes a real-deal icon to make ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ one of the pinnacles of ’00s pop music.
