Can’t Get You Out Of My Head at 20: The story behind Kylie Minogue’s biggest hit
At London’s Hammersmith Apollo in the spring of 2001, Kylie Minogue previewed a previously unheard song.
While new material doesn’t always receive quite the same enthusiasm in a live setting as fan favourites – particularly when you have a back catalogue of bangers such as Kylie‘s – this was Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, an instant earworm like nothing she had recorded before, a song that was soon to take on a life of its own.
Rob Davis, former Mud glam-rocker turned acclaimed pop and dance songwriter, was in the crowd to see it performed on stage, before Minogue had even recorded it. “It was really exciting,” he says. “It went down amazingly. It’s quite sing-along, isn’t it, so I think people got the gist quickly. And it’s Kylie, people love her, don’t they?”
The previous year, with three-and-a-half minutes of shiny disco pop helped by a pair of teeny gold hotpants, Minogue had firmly reinstated herself as one of our most beloved music stars, following her mid-90s period experimenting with the still brilliant (Confide In Me remains one of her best) but less commercially friendly Indie Kylie. Spinning Around was glitzy and fun and instantly propelled the singer back to the top of the charts – but if this was Minogue’s “comeback”, we hadn’t seen anything yet.
La la la, la la la la la: 20 years ago, in September 2001, Can’t Get You Out Of My Head was suddenly everywhere. Released first in Australia and the following week in the UK, it spent four weeks at number one over here (one of just two tracks that year to stay for so long, matched only by Atomic Kitten’s Whole Again) and 30 weeks in the Top 40 in total, according to Official Charts.
Another charts fact? It took just over four months to sell a million – compare that with 25 years for her second biggest-selling UK hit, 1989’s loved-up duo with Jason Donovan, Especially For You. Around the world, it is estimated to have sold more than five million copies.
It was a moment in music where the stars aligned: a song we aptly couldn’t get out of our heads; a slick, futuristic video with simple, almost robotic choreography (the start of Kylie’s jerky, face-up-close-to-the-camera moves she became known for around the period of Fever, her eighth album); and another unforgettable outfit in the form of her hooded, slashed-to-the-navel white jumpsuit.
Plus of course, the magic of Kylie.
It started in a garage-turned-studio at Davis’s then home in Epsom, Surrey. Davis – who includes Spiller’s huge summer 2000 hit Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love), featuring Sophie Ellis-Bextor, and dance classic Toca’s Miracle, also released in 2000, on his CV – co-wrote the track with Cathy Dennis, another former pop star turned acclaimed songwriter. It was the first time they had ever worked together.
Minoque performed the song live for the first time at the Hammersmith Apollo in 2001, before it had been released. Pic: Ilpo Musto/Shutterstock
The star performing in Munich, Germany, in 2002
“It was just one of those days where everything worked,” he says. “It was all written as we went, no preconceived ideas or anything. All I started with was a 125 drum loop… and I played a bit of guitar and [Dennis] came in with the ‘I Just Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ thing straight away. Gradually, we wrote it in sections on the keyboard. With a lot of dance music, you have a whole backing track first. But we didn’t, we gradually wrote it from top to bottom as we went along.”
Eschewing the traditional verse-chorus-verse pattern, Can’t Get You Out Of My Head has an unusual structure. “It’s funny because at the time one of my publishers said to me, ‘where’s the chorus?’ because it comes in with different hooks… this was almost chorus-bridge-chorus. But there’s no rules, really. It’s a good example, Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, that you can go anywhere.”
The star went on to win numerous awards, including best pop and best dance artist at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 2002, following the release of Can’t Get You Out Of My Head and the Fever album
Davis says he and Dennis had a good feeling about the song, knew that in the right hands it could do very well. “But there’s other songs I’ve been excited about that haven’t done as well,” he says. So he didn’t let himself get too excited.
The song was originally sent to Ellis-Bextor’s team, who reportedly passed, and S Club 7 were said to have been in the running at one point, too. Ellis-Bextor, says Davis, is a friend and “always has a grin” when it comes up; the song that got away.
“I don’t think it could have been as big with anybody else,” he says. “It just worked for her brilliantly.” Minogue’s A&R representative wanted it immediately and, according to a 2012 interview with The Quietus, it took just 20 seconds of hearing the demo for the star herself to be hooked. She went to Davis’s garage studio to record it.
“It was a sweet moment, she was really nice,” says Davis. “She brought her own food – smoked salmon and stuff like that, from a deli – and brought enough for everybody. It was all done in the garage, just me and Cathy producing it. It was done in bits but she’d already learnt it – she’s very pro, Kylie. She’d done it live before, routined it for the [Hammersmith] live gig, which was really cool. So she already knew the song really well.”
Five months after the song’s release, Minogue performed it at the Brits, a mash-up with New Order’s Blue Monday, arriving on stage on a giant Kylie CD. She won the awards for best international female and album, for Fever. At the MTV Europe Music Awards later in 2002, she was named best pop act and best dance act.
“The whole buzz around it was incredible,” says Davis. “It was an amazing time. I think now, it’s considered an iconic song for her.” Davis and Dennis also wrote Come Into My World, another track on Fever, which won a Grammy in 2004.
Can’t Get You Out Of My Head even broke through to the NME Awards and was nominated for best single that year. As Minogue has put it herself, the song “kick-started a whole different phase in my career”. The music has never stopped, with the star releasing her 15th album, Disco, in 2020 – and becoming the first woman to top the UK album chart across five decades.
“Wow. I mean, WOW!!! What a moment in my lifetime,” she said, sharing a clip from the Can’t Get You Out Of My Head video on social media to mark the Australia release earlier this month. “I’ve been singing it ever since!!!”
Haven’t we all?
Jimmy Cliff, a musical artist who helped bring reggae to an international audience, has died aged 81.
Known for hits including You Can Get It If You Really Want, The Harder They Come, and Many Rivers To Cross, his career spanned six decades.
Cliff performing on the Pyramid Stage, at the Glastonbury Festival in 2003. Pic: PA
His wife, Latifa Chambers wrote on Instagram: “It’s with profound sadness that I share that my husband, Jimmy Cliff, has crossed over due to a seizure followed by pneumonia.
“I am thankful for his family, friends, fellow artists and coworkers who have shared his journey with him.
“To all his fans around the world, please know that your support was his strength throughout his whole career. He really appreciated each and every fan for their love.”
Thanking the medical staff who helped during his illness, she added: “Jimmy, my darling, may you rest in peace. I will follow your wishes.”
Signed by his wife, and two of his children, Latifa and Lilty, the statement concluded: “We see you Legend.”
Tributes to the singer included those from Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness, calling him “a true cultural giant whose music carried the heart of our nation to the world… Jimmy Cliff told our story with honesty and soul. His music lifted people through hard times, inspired generations, and helped to shape the global respect that Jamaican culture enjoys today.”
UB40 star Ali Campbell, who covered Cliff’s song Many Rivers To Cross in 1983, also paid tribute, saying he was “absolutely heartbroken to hear about the passing of a Reggae forefather” in a post on X.
Campbell also called Cliff “a pillar of our music, and one of the first to carry reggae out into the world”.
Jimmy Cliff (L) stands with Wyclef Jean at his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2010. Pic: Reuters
A legend of music and screen
A two-time Grammy-winning artist, Cliff was awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit in 2003, the highest honour in the arts and sciences, from the Jamaican government.
Over the years, he would work with stars including the Rolling Stones, Sting, Elvis Costello, Annie Lennox, Paul Simon and Wyclef Jean.
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010.
A prolific writer, frequently expressing his humanitarian views through his work, his 1969 track Vietnam was reportedly described by Bob Dylan as “the best protest song” he had ever heard.
Cliff was also well known for cover versions of songs, including Johnny Nash’s I Can See Clearly Now, which appeared on the soundtrack of the 1993 movie Cool Runnings, and Cat Stevens’ Wild World.
He twice performed on high-profile US chat show Saturday Night Live.
An actor and a musician, as well as singing the title track of 1972 cult classic The Harder They Come, Cliff also starred in it.
One of the first major commercial releases to come out of Jamaica, the movie is credited with bringing reggae to the world, as well as showing a grittier and more realistic side to the country.
During this time, Cliff’s fame rivalled Bob Marley as the reggae’s most prominent artist.
The storyline, which revolved around Cliff’s character, Ivan, moving to Kingston, Jamaica, to make it as a musical superstar, had parallels with his own.
Cliff at the MOBO (Music of Black Origin) Awards at the London Arena in London’s Docklands in 2002. Pic: PA
‘Hurricane Hattie’
He was born James Chambers, during a hurricane, on 30 July 1944, in St James Parish, northwestern Jamaica.
In the 1950s, he moved with his father from the family farm to Kingston, determined to succeed in the music industry.
He began writing as Jamaica was gaining its independence from Britain, and as the early sounds of reggae – first called ska – were being developed.
At just 14, he became nationally famous for the song Hurricane Hattie, which he had written himself.
Cliff would go on to record over 30 albums and perform all over the world, including in Paris, in Brazil and at the World’s Fair, an international exhibition held in New York in 1964.
The following year, Island Records’ Chris Blackwell, the producer who launched Bob Marley And The Wailers, invited Cliff to work in the UK.
Jimmy Cliff during the Love Supreme Jazz Festival in 2019. Pic: Shutterstock
‘I still have many rivers to cross!’
Speaking about his burning passion for life during a 2019 interview, when the star had begun losing his sight, Cliff said: “When I’ve achieved all my ambitions, then I guess that I will have done it and I can just say ‘great’.
“But I’m still hungry. I want it. I’ve still got the burning fire that burns brightly inside of me – like I just said to you. I still have many rivers to cross!”
Cliff’s last studio album, Refugees, made with Wyclef Jean, was released in 2022, and the singer said he wrote the title track “due to emotional feelings towards freedom taken away from human beings”.
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