Songoftheday 3/22/23 - There's a dark secret in me, don't leave me left in your heart...

 

 

"Can't Get You Out Of My Head" - Kylie Minogue

from the album Fever (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #7 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 14

Today's song comes from Australian pop legend Kylie Minogue, who went from being a young actress on the immensely popular soap opera Neighbours to an international music career, landing three top-40 pop hits in America from her debut album Kylie in 1988 with "I Should Be So Lucky", "It's No Secret", and the top ten cover of "The Loco-motion". The following year, Minogue returned with her sophomore effort, Enjoy Yourself, which again topped the British Albums chart, and spun off four top ten hits in the UK with two of them, "Hand On Your Heart" and "Tears On My Pillow", going all the way to #1. However although the album was eventually released in America at the beginning of 1990, the album was terribly if at all promoted here in the States, and neither the singles or the albums graced any of Billboard magazine's charts. The same thing happened with Kylie's third disc (and best with producers/writers Stock Aitken Waterman); which also scored four top ten hits in the UK including one of his "signature songs", the British #2 hit "Better The Devil You Know", but Geffen Records already declined to release the set and dropped her. 

 

In 1991, Kylie's fourth album with the SAW production team, Let's Get To It, saw her international success start to wane a bit, with only two of the four singles released, with the big single from the set, a cover of the oldie "Give Me Just A Little More Time", hitting #2.  The album missed the top ten on the British albums chart, and Kylie outwardly was feeling pigeonholed by the domination of Stock Aitken Waterman on her work. She decided to leave the label after a Greatest Hits set which did return her briefly to the top of the British albums chart.

Minogue signed with Deconstruction Records, an edgy dance-oriented label, though not in America again. Taking more control of her sounds, Kylie released her eponymous fifth studio album in the fall of 1994. The lead single from the set, "Confide In Me", was a seductively-paced thriller of a number that sounded like it came from a James Bond movie, and it's to this day my favorite single of hers. The single topped the chart in her Australian home, and even popped on to the American Dance Club Play chart in Billboard (helped by a 12" release by Imago Records) at #39. The Kylie Minogue album returned the singer to the top ten of the British Albums chart at #4.

Kylie's second album with the label, Impossible Princess, had the unfortunate timing of coming out right after the death of Princess Diana of Wales in the late summer of 1997, which ended up delaying the set and a renaming to another self-titled album. It still hit #5 on the British chart, but with much lesser numbers, and none of the singles made it to the British top ten this time. Even so, the set has grown in stature over the years and fans consider it among of her best work. Also, her concerts were becoming legendary, and her tours grew and grew in size. However the lack of sales success caused Minogue and Deconstruction to part ways.

Closing the decade by signing with Parlophone Records, Kylie went back to the fun "pop" music her fans (and a hella amount of gay ones) craved. The result of this was my favorite of hers, Light Years, which came out in the fall of 2000. The neo-disco classic "Spinning Around", co-written by Paula Abdul, brought Minogue back to #1 on the British Singles chart for the first time in a decade, and that was followed by three more top-ten smashes there. Although the album wasn't released in the U.S., producer Mark Picchiotti put out a 12" single of remixes for the album "Butterfly" on his own Blue imprint, which climbed to #14 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart.

With her career reinvigorated, and a huge tour behind Light Years behind her, Minogue released her second album on Parlophone, Fever. The lead single from the was the electro-dance track "Can't Get You Out Of My Head", written by Cathy Dennis (who herself had a brief illustrious career with four top ten hits in America) and Rob Davis, with both of them producing. The lyrics are simple, with the title dominating the verses, which the "chorus" just being the insanely memorable earworm of "La La Las". Kylie's cooing vocals brings some lust to the cold robotic production, which is there to jump-start you to move. The music video, directed by Dawn Shadforth, has Kylie among an army of vamps, and the camera angles and studio tricks had her face really pop. The result was a massive his in the UK, one so big that American record companies couldn't ignore, and Capitol picked up the album for the States. "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" was then released at the start of 2002, and it was like Kylie never left...

Months after "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" topped the British chart for four weeks, the song gifted Kylie her second top ten hit on Billboard's Hot 100 pop chart in March of 2002. On the radio, the song went to #3 on the Mainstream Top-40 airplay chart, #23 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format, and #9 on the dance-oriented Rhythmic station list. The remixes of the single, done by a myriad of DJ's, helped the track top Billboard's Dance Club Play chart for a week. Internationally, besides her British success, the single was massive, going to #1 in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Australia, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Switzerland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Greece, Hungary, Croatia, and New Zealand. The Fever album, released in America in February of that year, spent a week at #3 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over a million copies.

Both Kylie and the Fever album will return to the series.

(10/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Kylie triumphantly came back and sang "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" on Top Of The Pops...

Next up, the extended "K&M Mindprint Mix" that was among many to help the song to #1 on the dance chart...

Kylie performed the song on the MTV Europe Music Awards in 2001...

But by far the most iconic live performance of the song came at the BRIT Awards in 2002, where Kylie "mashed up" her smash with New Order for "Can't Get Blue Monday Out of My Head". It ended up being so popular it became the "B-side" of her single "Love At First Sight"...

The song of course if a mainstay in all of her concert tours since; here she is on the Showgirl: Homecoming show (my favorite)...

And lastly, I'm including this amazing transformed version on her promo tour behind Golden at London's Hyde Park where he incorporates Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain" into it...

Up tomorrow: A future felon celebrates an iconic boxer.