Best Record of 2001: Day 55
Cover art courtesy of Parlophone.
Good morning!
We’re in for a treat today, as Lavender Sound (Max Freedman) takes the wheel and shares his take on Kylie Minogue’s Fever LP.
Today, as part of the Best Album of 2001 series, Lavender Sound (Max Freedman) is back to share his take on Kylie Minogue’s Fever album. He previously covered Björk’s Vespertine.
The words—and work— below the jump are all his, and I’m beyond grateful he let me share this with everyone! I think you’ll dig it, too. When you’re done here, please be sure to check out more of his work at Lavender Sound and his interview series over at the Creative Independent!
KA—
Even shimmering gold hot pants couldn’t break Kylie Minogue in the United States. After the Australian pop icon ditched everyday pop lyricism and production for sleeker, more trip-hop-indebted introspection on her sixth album, 1997’s Impossible Princess, she pivoted back hard to highly accessible pop with 2000’s “Spinning Around,” kicking off the cycle for her seventh album, Light Years, with the music video with the legendary hot pants. And yet, despite Kylie dominating the U.K. and Australian pop charts from her 1987 debut album Kylie onward and “Spinning Around” handily going to #1 in both countries, it didn’t even touch the Billboard Hot 100. It had all the musical ingredients necessary to be her first big U.S. hit since Kylie’s “The Loco-Motion,” which went to #3 here in 1988 (though two prior covers of it, by Little Eva in 1962 and Grand Funk Railroad in 1974, both went to #1): Kylie rides a disco-funk arrangement into pure ecstasy and sounds equally commanding whether she’s singing into the skies or coming on all sultry. It’s basically the platonic ideal of a pop song, and yet, nothing. Nada. Zilch.
Something shifted when Kylie’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” arrived the next year to introduce her eighth album, 2001’s Fever. Not only did “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” reach #7 in the U.S., but it also went to #1 in every other country where it was promoted. From the wordless “la, la, la / la, la, la, la, la” chorus to the playfully cyborgian beat and Kylie’s enraptured yet close-to-the-chest vocal performance, it’s about as hypnotic as pop music gets. With one song, she finally had the world under her spell, so much so that Fever went on to sell over a million copies stateside.
I think there was a hunger for music like Fever by the time it arrived on October 1, 2001. About seven months prior, Daft Punk’s Discovery brought French house, a clear influence on “Spinning Around,” to the masses, and at points, Fever is steeped in the genre too. Two of its greatest highlights, “Love at First Sight” and “In Your Eyes,” might as well be Bangalter/Homem-Christo productions, what with their flickering guitars and glorious choruses that explode forth from their tightly wound verses. But if Fever were just a repeat of territory Kylie had traversed, it would’ve been uneventful. Instead, the album abounds with silky, computer-perfect beats that both gradually seep and vigorously hammer right into the cerebellum. The music’s robotic energy only emphasizes the humanity in Kylie’s smooth, sensual vocal performances, and the rich production and hook-packed melodies won over even some rockist skeptics in 2001. Poptimism was a few years away, but Fever was helping to plant the seeds.
And how could it not? The joyously brash thump and shuffle of “Give It To Me,” with a euphoric chorus awash in massive vocal harmonies, is sugar in song form. The title track’s Neptunes-like low-end is as menacing as it is alluring, with the fever Kylie sings about inevitably infecting your ears, mind, and body too. (The song’s metaphor of a crush as a fever is about as lyrically innovative as Fever gets, and the fact that the album goes so hard despite its merely passable lyrics is a reminder that pop music’s effectiveness can sit entirely in its sound if what’s being sung isn’t full-on cringe.) “More More More,” which opens the album, latches on right away with synthetic toms that sound like they’re a tad on the fritz, only locking in further with a slinky bassline, gleaming synths, and Kylie’s liberated vocal performance.
And these aren’t even the singles! Seriously, the run of singles from this album is just insane, as are the music videos released to promote them. “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” is, of course, Kylie’s signature song, but just as iconic is the mega-cleavage hoodie-minidress she wears in the video full of humanoid-looking dancers in tracksuits pulling off all kinds of striking choreography. Few people have looked as genuinely joyous as Kylie does while she dances throughout the “Love at First Sight” video in which, even though she’s just wearing a simple white tank top (and, wildly, cargo pants). Her aura jumps out from the arrays of brightly-fashioned, brightly-wigged dancers who are, yes, dressed like cyborgs. A similar enthusiasm and commitment to her performance radiates from everything she does in the humanoid-heavy “In Your Eyes” video, even though its lighting is much darker.
“Come Into My World,” both in terms of its visuals and its music, is something else entirely. I still can’t quite figure out how Michel Gondry made the video happen even though he previously directed at least two videos with similar special effects. It’s just Kylie walking the same circle in Paris four times, but it’s also so much more: Each time she completes a lap, another version of her, wearing the exact same outfit, appears, and with each lap, the chaos around her — bikers brawling, a mattress thrown out of a window — swells further, elevating the drama and hilarity. I’m tempted to read the video as a commentary on how, when things recur, they often intensify, because that’s the magic of so many pop songs and especially “Come Into My World.” Its verse-chorus-bridge song structure, with each refrain bursting brighter than the last, is nothing new in its form, but as the synths plink and tremble and Kylie breaks out her innermost seductress, she achieves irresistible pop perfection.
From its videos to its actual music, Fever was cutting-edge pop in 2001, and it still sounds distinct today. Its impact was clear in the years to come: Without it, Madonna probably would’ve avoided the DJ-set feel of 2005’s Confessions on a Dancefloor, and Britney Spears’ 2007 pop bible Blackout might have sounded too strange for mainstream acceptance. All kinds of pop musicians today cite Fever and Kylie in general as an influence, especially Dua Lipa, whose nu-disco sound on 2020’s smash-hit Future Nostalgia is a direct heir to “Love at First Sight.” I mean, hell, its 2021 reissue even has a track named “Fever.”
And yet, for all Fever’s impact and innovation, not everyone agrees with me that it’s Kylie’s best album. Depending on who you ask, that’s Light Years, Fever’s R&B-infused 2003 follow-up Body Language, 2010’s Aphrodite (think Fever if Stuart Price, who produced Confessions on a Dancefloor, worked on it), or 2023’s Tension, on which Kylie embraced the nu-disco genre she helped birth and found a whole new legion of young fans some 35 years into her career. “I’m a star, babe, babe, babe / Do this all day, day, day,” she chants at the outset of Tension’s title track. She’s always found endless elation in her music.
On Fever, for the first time, the whole world got to feel it.
Bottom Line: I think many people might be surprised to learn that I am unironically and unabashedly a Kylie Minogue fan. From the S.A.W.- fueled debut record through the more refined sound in the mid-90s and beyond, I’ve always found something I like on each of her records. Fever has the added bonus (?) of my associating it with one of my favorite trips overseas. Visiting Malta in early 2002, “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” was literally everywhere (Natalie Imbruglia too, for that matter, but that’s a story for another time). Listening now, 25 years on, I’m surprised at how well it holds up. Kylie for the win.
Thank you again to Max for today’s post! Please be sure to check out more of his work over at Lavender Sound! Any thoughts on this record? Agree/disagree with Max’s take? Sound off in the comments!
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Kevin Sent 