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?
Johnny Depp has said he tried to talk the director of his new film out of casting him in one of the lead roles.
The Hollywood star plays France’s King Louis XV in historical drama Jeanne Du Barry, and attended the UK premiere in London on Monday evening.
Depp, 60, made his return to the red carpet for what is his first feature film since the conclusion of his high-profile defamation case against ex-wife Amber Heard in the US in 2022.
The film follows the life of Jeanne, a working-class woman who uses her intelligence and allure to climb the social hierarchy, eventually landing on the radar of the king. The character is played by French actress Maiwenn, who is also a co-writer and the film’s director.
Depp stars as King Louis XV. Pic: Stephanie Branchu/Why Not Productions
Depp spoke on stage at the premiere, saying he was surprised when he was approached about the film.
According to Hollywood trade publication Deadline, the actor, who is from Owensboro, Kentucky, told the audience: “Instantly what happens in your brain is that you go back to eastern Kentucky… you realise that you come from the ‘ombelico’, ‘nombril’, the belly button of nowhere, and you’re playing the king of France.
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Johnny Depp reading at MacGowan funeral
“It made no sense to me, I tried to talk her out of it. She wasn’t hearing it, and she had great courage to take me into her cast.”
Jeanne Du Barry received a seven-minute standing ovation when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023.
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The film is Depp’s first major on-screen appearance following his lawsuits against Heard and the publishers of The Sun newspaper in the UK.
In 2022, he successfully sued Heard over a 2018 article she wrote for The Washington Post about her experiences as a survivor of domestic abuse, which his lawyers said falsely accused him of being an abuser.
However, his UK case two years earlier was not successful, with a High Court judge finding that Depp had assaulted Heard during their relationship.
Entertainment
Hannah Waddingham hits back at photographer over ‘show leg’ request on Olivier Awards red carpet
Olivier Awards presenter Hannah Waddingham has made headlines for hitting back at a photographer who appears to have asked her to “show leg”.
In a video posted by a fan on X, Waddingham, 49, was heard scolding a photographer over a comment which cannot be heard but is inferred to have been a demand for her to show more skin.
“Oh my God, you’d never say that to a man, my friend,” the Ted Lasso actress said, before adding: “Don’t be a dick or I’ll move off. Don’t say, ‘show your leg’.”
Waddingham walks off before turning around and pointing her finger saying: “Have some manners”.
The incident happened as Waddingham posed on the red carpet ahead of the Olivier Awards at the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday night.
According to the person recording the incident, “Hannah was being her gorgeous self” when the photographer “made some comment about her leg”.
They added: “Well, the video speaks for itself. This woman is a role model. Always, always call pricks out on their bullshit.”
‘What a queen’
Fans heaped praise on the actress, with one commenting on the video saying: “What a queen – just when I thought I couldn’t love her more!”
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One Ted Lasso fan commented on Waddingham’s rebuke of the photographer’s apparent demand saying: “This is boss.”
Another X user praised the actress for her “class” saying it “will always stand out, well done Hannah”.
Waddingham, whose own work on the West End received three Olivier award nominations, presented the prestigious theatre awards for the second year in a row.
Olivier award winners
Sunset Boulevard dominated the Olivier awards, winning seven of its 11 nominations at the star-studded ceremony on Sunday night.
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Among the show’s triumphs were the best actor and best actress in a musical awards for its leading duo Tom Francis and Nicole Scherzinger, the former Pussycat Doll and Britain’s Got Talent judge.
The Best actor award went to former Sherlock and Game Of Thrones actor Mark Gatiss for his role in Jack Thorne’s The Motive And The Cue.
Succession star Sarah Snook beat fellow nominee Sex And The City star Sarah Jessica Parker to take home the best actress award for her West End debut performance in The Picture Of Dorian Gray.
It started with a gentle “I need your participation, please”, as Blur frontman Damon Albarn sought an audience singalong during a Coachella performance.
But as the British rock band were consistently met with near-silence, an increasingly frustrated Albarn eventually remarked: “You’ll never see us again”.
The English band have released nine albums since its formation in 1988, seven of which reached No 1 in the charts, including their latest record, The Ballad of Darren, which was produced following an eight-year break.
But some of their hits did not seem to resonate with audiences at the world-famous Coachella festival, held at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, over the weekend.
During their Saturday slot, the group, part of a star-studded line-up, performed a host of their hits including Song 2, Beetlebum and Tender.
As the band struck up the chords to their 1994 hit Girls & Boys, lead singer Albarn, 56, tried to encourage the crowd to sing along to the chorus, saying: “I need your participation, please.”
In videos shared on social media, he can be seen attempting to engage the concert-goers a number of times, telling them “you can do it better than that”, but his efforts continued to receive a lacklustre response from the US crowd.
Damon Albarn of British band Blur performs during the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California in 2013. Pic: Reuters
The musician appeared to get increasingly frustrated until he told the audience: “You’ll never see us again so you may as
well f****** sing it.”
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Dressed in a white suit and a black T-shirt paired with a pair of black sunglasses, Albarn led the band, which also includes guitarist Graham Coxon, bass guitarist Alex James and drummer Dave Rowntree.
Blur have released nine albums in total, including 1994’s Parklife, 1995’s The Great Escape, 1997’s Blur, 1999’s 13, 2003’s Think Tank and 2015’s The Magic Whip – which all went to number one in the charts.
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The group helped pioneer the Britpop genre, fiercely competing with rival band Oasis in the charts over the years.
They went on hiatus after their 2015 Magic Whip tour, but came back last year with their first record for eight years, titled The Ballad Of Darren, which soared to number one.
Singer-songwriter Raye and dance outfit Jungle were also among the British acts who took to the Coachella stage over the weekend.
London-born Raye teased her next music project during her set, the follow-up to her award-winning debut album My 21st Century Blues.
Last month, she overtook Blur, Harry Styles and Adele by picking up the most Brit awards in one year during the 2024 ceremony.
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