Forever and ever, and ever, and ever

Continuing my trip back through the 2001 album charts.

18/11/01 : Fever - Kylie Minogue


Our tenth visit with the pop poppet bringing her level with Madge and The Beatles and this is the one that kicked it all off again - but I'm not sure I've ever listened to it. I'm expecting to enjoy it in places, but suspect the whole album isn't going to be as great as it thinks it is.

Nah, this is alright. You can at times almost hear the evil geniuses in the background plotting the reincarnation of our Kylie, but there's no doubt they've served her up some pretty decent songs to achieve it. I like "Into Your Eyes" and "Come Into My World" but "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" is just a work of genius - it's not exactly drowning in content, but just they do so much with it. The whole album is also very well produced because it's got a lovely clean sound to it and the whole thing comes in at a very acceptable 45 minutes. They've also "only" used 14 writers across the 12 songs - positively minimalist compared to other offerings from the year.

We're at #8 in the chart this week on her seventh week of an impressive 69 week run, with it spending the first two weeks at #1 - it also came back for a week in '17 and again in '21. The top five this week were Westlife and best-ofs from Madonna, Gabrielle, Steps and Bee Gees, with all of them except for Steps being a new entry and we have two more best-of new entries in the top ten for Rod Stewart (#7 - his annual best-of nonsense) and The Beautiful South (#10). 

Wikipedia has loads on the album (402 milliPeppers) and it tells us it's her eighth album but considering how much text there is, there's remarkably little else of interest there. I knew "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" was written by Cathy Dennis and someone else, but I didn't know that Rob Davis, the someone else, was one of the founding members of Mud. Critically, the album was generally well received, although very few people went overboard on it with "it's a load of fun" being a common comment. Interestingly, "Love At First Sight" earned her her first Grammy nomination (which she didn't win) but "Come Into My World" won the following year, making her the first Australian artist to win a Grammy since Men At Work in '82. Commercially, it did OK, I guess, getting to #1 in Australia, Austria, Germany, Ireland and Russia (not a country we hear from often) and #3 in the US, selling six million copies globally. I won't be listing all the countries that "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" got to #1 though, because it made it to the top in 40 countries, selling five million copies globally.

Given the numbers involved, it's probably not surprising that discogs.com tells us this is another fifty pence album, but if you want an '18 limited editiion unopened red vinyl reissue from South-East Asia, it's going to set you back £420, making this a proper most expensive album of the year. And I reckon it's also the album of the year for this list so far - I won't be rushing back to it, but it was a pretty decent listen (and boy has she done well since).

11/11/01 - Very average (at best)
25/11/01 - Perfectly acceptable

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