Can’t Get You Out of My Head by Michael Cragg review – what’s the secret of Kylie’s genius?

‘There’s an anxiousness successful declaring oneself a Kylie fan,” wrote the precocious San Francisco writer Kevin Killian (who nevertheless erstwhile published an full postulation devoted to the singer). Despite her singular longevity, with record-breaking illustration occurrence crossed 5 decades, Kylie’s spot successful the popular firmament has often felt much precarious than that of different artists, possibly due to the fact that of her past arsenic a soap star, and the schmaltz of immoderate of her aboriginal worldly with Stock Aitken Waterman.

But she has ever displayed a canny self-awareness, alongside a willingness to propulsion the envelope. It’s evident successful her knowing rendition of I Should Be So Lucky arsenic a atrocious poem at the Royal Albert Hall successful 1996, and her galore collaborations with experimental creation producers. Then there’s her instinct for giving fans what they want: inarguable bangers, similar those of her 2000s imperial phase, that besides person an offbeat, idiosyncratic quality, existent of Can’t Get You Out of My Head and of her 2023 viral hit, Padam Padam.

Michael Cragg’s illuminating caller publication explores Kylie’s aggregate selves, her endowment for shapeshifting, and the question of wherefore she has been persistently underrated. He makes the case that the astir easy maligned aspects of her euphony – frivolity without subtext, amusive without an underlying seriousness – are precisely what makes it truthful pleasurable and disposable for campy reclamation, its evident disposability susceptible of being recast arsenic a virtue.

The Aussie miss adjacent doorway is frankincense a antithetic benignant of cheery icon to nine kid Madonna, a grittier fig who looms ample here, and whose ain acts of reinvention person been considered not conscionable the enactment of an entertainer, but of an auteur. This examination is besides a substance of taste, of course; successful a peculiarly juicy punctuation included in the section connected Kylie’s entreaty among gay audiences, vocalist Rufus Wainwright describes her “as the anti-Madonna. She is what she is and determination is nary effort to marque quasi-intellectual statements to substantiate it. She is the cheery shorthand for joy.”

As to what makes a cheery icon, Cragg nimbly tackles the question by including a committee of antithetic voices connected the subject, conscionable arsenic helium threads his chapters done with interviews. These make intriguing discoveries and esoteric insights from radical arsenic divers arsenic textile designers, academics and film-makers, each of whose enactment has been informed by Kylie successful immoderate way. While this tin somewhat disrupt the flow of the book, it besides captures the communal ethos that is cardinal to fandom.

Cragg’s prose is appealingly breezy, its register much Popjustice than Pitchfork, but ne'er little than earnest. This project is unambiguously the enactment of a superfan and student of pop, for whom the question of Kylie’s bequest is simply a high-stakes one. His publication is animated by a level of devotion that whitethorn not beryllium unsocial to queer culture, but is surely 1 of its hallmarks. There are galore reasons we worship our icons successful precisely the ways we do, and Cragg’s idiosyncratic disclosures about his intelligence health, his aboriginal experiences of the closet, and his narration with his hubby supply a touching backdrop to this representation of why Kylie matters. As does the conception reflecting connected Kylie’s bosom cancer, however it humanised her successful the nationalist eye, fostering greater consciousness of the illness and underlining the value of aboriginal screening.

That an creator similar this has the quality to bring radical unneurotic mightiness look similar an evident point, but Cragg urges america not to underestimate “what an astonishing work that is”. I finished his book with a newfound appreciation not lone of her artistry, but of what she has meant to truthful galore people. She is a vocalist whose generosity and mutability has allowed her fans to consciousness immoderate they request to feel, obscurity much truthful than erstwhile she performs All the Lovers astatine her unrecorded shows, and arms sway successful unison, the song’s lyrics capacious capable for aggregate readings, astir the adversities of queer beingness and each of those we person loved and lost.