I did a lot of editing on this one, which from the draft below, is probably obvious. The draft is a mess of things thrown together, so there was a lot of culling and combining I had to do. There was also a fair bit of rearranging to find where there was a clear path and flow. It took a while, and I’m not enamoured with the final result, but I am satisfied with it. It could be so much better, but I’m getting back on the wagon so I’m trying to not be too harsh with myself.

My main goal was to put forward that Kylie Minogue is an artist and her music is art. I’m often put off by how much praise I’ve heard quite a few people throw at some forms of music, whilst derision is so readily aimed at pop music by the same people. Then I hear the stuff that’s being praised and so much of it is people who have grown older but haven’t grown their perspective, and it’s stuff about getting dumped by someone years and years ago, or a real juvenile, uninterested look at subject matter, and unjustifiably angry. It feels so much like vapid posturing, and I feel a bit shit for saying that as I’m sure a lot of that stuff comes from a genuine place, but it doesn’t come across well.

But when it comes to pop, I hear the same people call it commercial, just marketing stuff, manufactured, and it doesn’t make sense to me. It feels like there’s a refusal to spend the time to try and understand it, but there’s such a rich world of it out there and there’s so much creativity. People are too willing to skim the surface and then go back to what they know as familiar, but then won’t be willing to admit that they don’t want to dig further. Pardon the rant.

In editing I tried to keep things a bit less angry and accusatory as I couldn’t justify it. I don’t feel I went far enough in exploring what makes Kylie Minogue an artist and why she should be considered as such, and admittedly I’m arguing against a small group of people. But again, I’m getting back on the wagon. I might revisit the topic again at some point down the track.

The final version of this essay was published today on From Somewhere out the Back. If you’ve been following my stuff here long enough, then you’ll recognise the name as the title for when I write about music releases in my music collection. I’d been intending to dedicate a space for those pieces for a while, and of course rather than hold to that, the space expanded to more than just music. The draft below is just to give an idea of progress. Please check out the final version.

I hope you enjoy.

—

Last year I decided to listen to most of the Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds studio discography. Skipped Kicking Against the Pricks. Never been that big a fan of the band, but I like some stuff here and there. Anyway, I was talking about it with Ewen, who is a big fan of Cave-related work, and I can’t remember around which album it was, but I told him that once I was done with Bad Seeds I was going to move onto Kylie Minogue, whose music was also about love and sex, but far less miserably so.

Today I’m working from home due to being sick. Pissy cold. Fun times. Decided to go for a walk in the sun to try and sweat it out a bit and I decided to put on Fever. I’ve never been that big a fan of Kylie Minogue, though there are some songs here and there that I liked. Gave some of her discography a try earlier this year and some of it I enjoyed and some of it I didn’t, but I did like most of Fever (or at least I think I did) and had been meaning to getting back around to it, but laziness.

But anyway, I decided to give it a spin whilst I was walking around and it made me think about things.

Fever wears its heart on its sleeve, and even when it seems to go for the metaphor, it can’t resist being as direct as possible about it. So much of it is light, bouncy pop with plenty of disco and electronica brought in for good measure. Often Kylie Minogue’s voice is sandpapered and lacking the grit it can convey, instead keeping things in a base form of expression. Whilst it is a bit of a shame to have such a voice so held back, it’s also quite befitting of the album, which is a sleek, refined and heavily designed thing.

So Fever came off the back of… Light Years? I think it was Light Years, and in some ways it feels very much like someone in the zone, looking to capitalise on the success of the former whilst also looking to keep growing. So you get these shimmery, direct songs that stick firmly to verse/chorus/verse, very much appealing to being in the club… or the arena. Or somewhere where you’re gonna have a good time. The songs themselves are, for the most part, fairly sleek, shiny, smoothed out bits of music that know enough about what they are and plenty about what they aren’t. Essentially, you’re not gonna be getting much, if anything, that’s deep here, and that’s okay. It would be easy to start digging deep into these songs, and you probably could if you really wanted to, but it’s not the point of the songs because they’re not meant to be deep. They have very specific aims and they achieve them well enough.

The sound isn’t so much the main attraction so much as it is Kylie Minogue’s voice, of which she, naturally, knows how to use well. There’s excitement and passion here, but most of the time Kylie sings… maybe not gently, but it’s a way of putting it, because there’s energy in there, but there are times when it sounds like she’s more exploring directness and considering it, thinking about what she wants to mean rather than just belting everything out at maximum. It’s almost introspective without the introspection, necessarily. But it is there if you want to dig. If you want to dig into desire and the meaning of it, and everything that can come from it, you’ll get there. You can draw meaning from most anything if you want to dig far enough, really.

But there is a softness here when Kylie needs it most; there’s hardness, energy at other times. And through it all, she reaches through the sounds around her. She reaches through the speakers and looks to speak into your ear and tell you something about what she is feeling and what should be expressed, and you hear it. She looks to you, our pop princess and locks her eyes upon your auditory organs and she cuts through it all, speaking, reaching, and then those sounds are branding themselves unto your mind.

Fever exists in an odd space where it’s both variable and uniform, which is great for the songs individually. It comes out swinging with “More More More”, “Love at First Sight” and “Can’t get You out of my Head”. From there, it slows a little with the sugary title track, gets a bit harder with “Give it to me” and slows a bit with “Fragile” and “Come into my World”. “Into Your Eyes” through to “Love Affair” brings energy back to the forefront, with the latter feeling a little like a blend between the mellower and more energised sounds prior. “Your Love” slows things down again, and relaxes a little. Then comes “Burning up”, which is a great way to end the album. The way the instrumentation meets the vocals and lyrics, and this strong passion and push to have fun that comes through is just great.

However, things kind of start to blur and it all gets a bit long in the tooth. Perhaps some songs didn’t need to be included, if only to keep things feeling a bit less monotonous. Don’t get me wrong; the songs are good and enjoyable, but things get a bit inflexible in a way that’s definitely of the era, but the sounds of it all don’t have enough in them to offer much in the way beyond, perhaps, background stuff to a gathering as it’s a slog to do much of anything to otherwise. No, it’s not constantly in your face, but Minogue’s voice, whilst fantastically used throughout, isn’t enough to diminish the gradual tedium.

That said, “Burning Up” is a great way to end the album. It doesn’t rescue it, but it breaks the patience testing.

The thing about Fever is that, whilst it is exploring, it also feels like a really refined, really sanded down Kylie. It’s sleek and smooth; you can slide right off of it, and that’s part of the issue. All the passion is there; all the joy and life-affirmation and fun, but it lacks a little roughness that it could do well with. I don’t want to be critical of the album as, in some ways I respect it. It’s very much an album looking to capitalise on momentum; to keep a streak going. This is someone who was very much ready to hit the studio and take advantage of her skills. She worked with a great team and everyone got right into it, and turned out a solid collection. They just went too far.

You could probably drop either “Fever” or “Give it to Me”, and “Dancefloor”, and the album would feel both tighter and punchier, and it’d help give the whole thing more .

For a while, I suspected that the album art was a reference to Grace Jones’ ISLAND LIFE. In writing this and looking for information, I found out that the cover is inspired by the album cover.

What makes Fever work so well is that Kylie Minogue’s voice lends conviction and earnestness to what she’s singing, but it’s also playful. It’s sanded far too far back, but the way it expresses and the way Kylie uses the lyrics makes what is sung easy to believe. Yeah sure, it’s pop, but that doesn’t make it any less legitimate as art. If people are willing to accept Nick Cave’s misery in music as art, then what makes Kylie less so an artist? Is it because her songs aren’t verbosely miserable enough? Is it because she hasn’t suffered the same way? Nick clearly understood her ability as an artist; if not, she wouldn’t have sung on “Where the Wild Roses Grow”.

Years and years ago a housemate of mine described my expressing my feelings as FEELINGS! : ) (hopefully that gets across the flamboyancy that he used), and one of our housemates as expressing theirs as feelings : (. Sometimes I want to feel like shit, and sometimes I really want to be down in it, among an intense abrasive blast washing over me, fucking me up. But sometimes I just want to feel like shit and dance and have fun, and the older I get, the more I want to enjoy that time. To feel something life-affirming. I don’t know if Kylie Minogue’s Fever is her best album. It probably isn’t, but it’s as moody as it is light. It’s tight, efficient; an upbeat set of songs exploring a few facets of life and experience. But the thing is, ultimately, is that it is no less art than, say, Nick Cave’s No More Shall we Part. But beyond that, it’s also no less art than any form of extreme music that anyone might want to defend.

If a bunch of middle class white dudes screaming about being hurt and psychological damage is justifiable as art, than so is anything that you might want to classify as facile, throwaway pop nonsense, and Fever can be classified as that. There’s pomp and cheese on Fever, and goddamn is it a solid, defined and warranted statement. It says something about the female condition in a way that’s genuinely fun. It also doesn’t sequester itself off into a corner for only a few people to appreciate whilst hissing at anyone who dares to enjoy something lighter.

Kylie Minogue is viewable as an entertainer, but I think that anyone who does is likely to deny that she’s an artist, as she is. Yeah, the lyrics can be viewed quite shallowly, and she says stuff that people were saying before her. It’s easy music to write off because it’s enjoyable. But at the end of the day, what I’m clumsily trying to get at is this: Fever is as warranted as being denominated as art, and Kylie Minogue as an artist. She works with people to make music she can get behind and believe in, and she works to make sure what she’s on works for her. Kylie’s voice is a bridge for her expression, and she does what she does well. Being an entertainer takes creativity and work with a team, and to get out on stage continuously for decades, to put that work in to keep creating, to keep developing her voice and working her sound… it takes time and effort. The music might be more shimmery and sleek; it might not be reaching for deep critical status, but if we are to call so many other people and bands out there artists, then we have to admit that Kylie Minogue is just as much.

I’ve seen too many people go into some form of conniption decrying pop as something to dismiss when most heavier, “extreme” stuff we show more respect and reverence for is significantly more shallow and trite. Spin Fever. Actually spend the time listening to it. Don’t just hear it. No guarantee it’ll change your mind or that you’ll enjoy it, but at least you’ll have experienced it.

Years and years ago I heard “Love at First Sight”, “Can’t Get You Out of my Head” and “Come Into My World”. I was a child and I dug two of those. Didn’t like “Can’t Get you Out of My Head”. I might have heard “In Your Eyes”, too, and actually I’m sure I did, as when I listened to Fever for the first time last year, I recognised it. Probably also has a lot to do with the music I was inuring myself to at the time, too, or something.

I don’t know. At the end of the day, I get older and I still listen to moody stuff, but I’ve always enjoyed lighter music. I don’t need to be constantly heavy; it’s draining. Sometimes I just wanna get down and dance and have fun and not give a fuck about things. Fever might be better as background music, but it’s pretty fun in parts, and Kylie makes me wanna dance.