FEATURE:
Groovelines
Kylie Minogue – Can’t Get You Out of My Head
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ALTHOUGH I am a big fan of the song…
it is also coming up to its twentieth anniversary. Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head was the first single taken from her 2001 album, Fever. Can’t Get You Out of My Head was released on 8th September of that year. As it is approaching its twentieth anniversary, I want to shine a light on the number one hit. Written by Cathy Dennis and Rob Davis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head is one of Minogue’s best-regarded songs. It marked the continuation of a new phase of her career. 1997’s Impossible Princess is a great album, though some critics were a bit mixed. It marked Minogue moving from Pop and experimenting more with Electronica and Trip-Hop. It is an album that has been re-evaluated and reassessed since its release. 2000’s Light Years signalled a modern return to a ‘classic Kylie’ sound: catchy Pop music that got in the head and was distinctly her. Tracks such as Spinning Around marked the start of a new era. 2001’s Fever continued that. The album has many great songs – including Come Into My World and In Your Eyes -, though Can’t Get You Out of My Head is the one that stands out. I want to delve deeper into the track. I am going to bring in an article relating to the song. I am interested in the Wikipedia article regarding the writing of the track:
“In 2000, British singer-songwriter Cathy Dennis and English songwriter Rob Davis had been brought together by Universal Publishing to work on new music. The session for "Can't Get You Out of My Head" began with Davis generating a 125 bpm drum loop using the computer program Cubase. Dennis improvised with the line "I just can't get you out of my head", which later became the song's lyric. After three and a half hours, Davis and Dennis had recorded the demo for "Can't Get You Out of My Head" and the vocals were recorded the same day; the pair said the recording process was "very natural and fluid", and did not rely on heavy instrumentation.
Prior to pitching the song to Kylie Minogue, Davis and Dennis unsuccessfully offered it to S Club 7 and Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Davis then met with Minogue's A&R executive Jamie Nelson, who was impressed by the song's upbeat production and thought it would appeal to clubgoers. Nelson booked the song for Minogue to record. Although Davis thought the recording session would later be cancelled, Minogue wanted to record the song after hearing 20 seconds of the demo. The song was recorded at Davis's home studio in Surrey, England. The music, except the guitar part, was programmed using a Korg Triton workstation via a MIDI interface. Tim Orford was the mix engineer for the song. In a 2011 interview Dennis stated, "even though Kylie wasn't the first artist to be offered the song, I don't believe anyone else would have done the incredible job she did with it".
In 2001, Minogue embarked on the On a Night Like This tour to promote her seventh studio album Light Years (2000).[6] She premiered "Can't Get You Out of My Head" on stage during the tour. It was later chosen as the lead single from Minogue's eighth studio album Fever and Parlophone Records released it on 8 September 2001 in Australia and on 17 September in the United Kingdom and other European countries”.
There are many classic Kylie Minogue singles that people are attached to. Whether it is early material like I Should Be So Lucky, Hand on Your Heart or Step Back in Time, or the later tracks like All the Lovers, even the most casual fan will have their favourite – for me, Step Back in Time is her best track.
For many, Can’t Get You Out of My Head is the one they love the most. Whether they are entranced by the hypnotic video, the insanely catchy chorus or the fact that it arrived at a particular time. It is shocking to think that the single was released a few days before the terrorist attacks in the U.S. There is no relation (obviously), though songs like Can’t Get You Out of My Head mark a joyous period in Pop (the attacks, I think, affected artists and music after 11th September). The 1990s had the best Pop and music in general, though the quality continued after that. 2001 was a terrific year for music. I always though it was quite bold having Can’t Get You Out of My Head as the third track on Fever. It seems like a natural album opener. As it was, it followed More More More and Love at First Sight. In 2011, PRS published an article about the writing and creation of one of the decade’s best songs. Cathy Dennis and Rob Davis discussed their creation of Can’t Get You Out of My Head:
“Released in September 2001, Kylie Minogue’s Can't Get You Out of My Head went on to become the Australian Popstress' biggest hit and one of this century's most popular and influential hits.
Amazingly, the song was written by Cathy Dennis and Rob Davis during their first-ever songwriting session together. Can't Get You Out of My Head became the first song in UK radio history to have 3,000 radio plays in a single week, it went to number one in every European country bar Finland, it gave Minogue her first US top-ten single in more than a decade and has sold more than four million copies. The track won three Ivor Novello Awards for 2001.
M spoke to the award winning songwriters Cathy Dennis and Rob Davis about how they wrote this enduring pop hit.
‘We wrote the song at home, in my old house in the autumn of 2000. I think it was Simon Fuller who put us together via Universal Publishing,’ says Rob. ‘It was the second song I wrote with Cathy. We had two days together and on the second day we wrote Can’t Get You Out of My Head.’
‘It was a very natural and fluid process,’ remembers Cathy. ‘The whole thing - and it does annoy me, as it will annoy others - was written in about three and a half hours.
‘We know how hard we work sometimes to write songs and then spend months picking them to pieces, but this was the easiest process, the chemicals were all happy and working together.’
Rob explains that they started off using Cubase software on a Mac computer, running a 125 bpm drum loop and playing along with an acoustic guitar. ‘Then Cathy started singing, “I just can’t get you out of my head” to a D-minor and we just built the track up as we went along. The demo was done in about three hours, the vocals all laid between about 12pm and 7pm.’
'Rob and his late wife were very hospitable during the session, with a near-constant stream of snacks served up', says Cathy. However, mental images of a sleek state-of-the-art studio environment are dispelled as Cathy reveals that they used ‘the most primitive set-up you could imagine! Different producers work in different ways. But it’s good to be reminded you don’t have to be reliant on equipment. A song is about melody and lyrics and being able to take something away in your memory that is going to haunt you.
IN THIS PHOTO: Cathy Dennis/PHOTO CREDIT: Ben A. Pruchnie/Getty Images
‘We had the “can’t get you out of my head” bit and we had the bridge, but it needed another hook and that was the “la-la’s”. We knew it didn’t need another lyric, so I just went “la, la, la…”’
Can’t Get You Out of My Head revived the electro-pop style song, which had fallen out of vogue for about a decade. ‘Rob had an off-beat guitar idea and I had a drum production idea of something like Jason Nevins’ mix of Run DMC's It’s Like That. Then Rob came up with more chords and I had an idea which was kind of Kraftwerk-y and we just carried on like that,’ she adds.
Rob explains that Cathy sang the whole song on the demo, including harmony vocals, and some of her vocals were kept in for the Kylie version too. ‘The Kylie version is basically the demo, same key and everything. It wasn’t mixed and mastered but the parts were all there. I think I added a little bit of guitar and strings when we mixed it,’ he says.
‘None of the sections in the song conform to the typical verse-chorus structure,’ Cathy explains. ‘They’re misplaced sections that somehow work together, and that’s because we didn’t try to force any structure after the event. The seeds were watered and they very quickly sprouted into something bigger than any of us.’
‘It breaks a few rules,’ Rob agrees, ‘as it starts with a chorus and in comes the “la’s” – that is what confused my publisher when he first heard it.’
Simon Fuller heard it and decided it wasn’t right for his group S Club 7. Then Sophie Ellis-Bextor turned it down, confides Rob. Shortly after he met Kylie’s A&R man Jamie Nelson and sent him a demo cassette. He loved it and wanted it for Kylie, and just a month later he had booked her in to record the vocals later that year. Rob was convinced the appointment wouldn’t be kept, but it was.
‘Even though Kylie wasn’t the first artist to be offered the song,’ admits Cathy, ‘I don’t believe it was meant to go to anyone other than Kylie, and I don’t believe anyone else would have done the incredible job she did with it, with the video, looking super-hot!’
After the pair had finished the song, Rob recalls: ‘We thought it was good, but obviously we didn’t think it would be as massive as it turned out to be.’
Watch Kylie's live performance of Can't Get You Out of My Head from Aphrodite Les Folies, Live in London”.
I wanted to publish a feature ahead of the twentieth anniversary of a song that is not only one of Kylie Minogue’s greatest moments; it also rans alongside the best Pop songs ever written. One can feel the confidence in Minogue’s performance. With incredible production from Cathy Dennis and Rob Davis, it is a song that I remember fondly. I was just about to start university. Having been a fan of Minogue since childhood, it was great to hear this song that was similar to the more mature and experimental sounds on Impossible Princess, yet it was more accessible, punchier and glossier. The irony of Can’t Get You Out of My Head is that the song, once heard, is almost impossible…
TO dislodge from the brain!