Michael Cragg's illuminating new book, Can't Get You Out of My Head: In Search of Kylie, explores Kylie Minogue's multiple selves, her talent for shapeshifting, and the question of why she has been persistently underrated. The pop star emerges as a great unifier in this in-depth yet heartfelt portrait of an Aussie icon.
A precarious place in pop
Despite her remarkable longevity, with record-breaking chart success across five decades, Kylie's place in the pop firmament has often felt more precarious than that of other artists, perhaps because of her past as a soap star, and the schmaltz of some of her early material with Stock Aitken Waterman. As the late San Francisco poet Kevin Killian wrote: "There's an anxiety in declaring oneself a Kylie fan" (who nonetheless once published an entire collection devoted to the singer).
But she has always displayed a canny self-awareness, alongside a willingness to push the envelope. It's evident in her knowing rendition of I Should Be So Lucky as a bad poem at the Royal Albert Hall in 1996, and her many collaborations with experimental dance producers. Then there's her instinct for giving fans what they want: inarguable bangers, like those of her 2000s imperial phase, that also possess an offbeat, idiosyncratic quality, true of Can't Get You Out of My Head and of her 2023 viral hit, Padam Padam.
The case for Kylie's genius
Cragg makes the case that the most easily maligned aspects of her music – frivolity without subtext, fun without an underlying seriousness – are precisely what makes it so pleasurable and available for camp reclamation, its apparent disposability capable of being recast as a virtue.
The Aussie girl next door is thus a different kind of gay icon to club kid Madonna, a grittier figure who looms large here, and whose own acts of reinvention have been considered not just the work of an entertainer, but of an auteur. In a particularly juicy quote included in the chapter on Kylie's appeal among gay audiences, singer Rufus Wainwright describes her "as the anti-Madonna. She is what she is and there is no attempt to make quasi-intellectual statements to substantiate it. She is the gay shorthand for joy."
A communal ethos
As to what makes a gay icon, Cragg nimbly tackles the question by including a committee of different voices on the subject, just as he threads his chapters through with interviews. These generate intriguing discoveries and esoteric insights from people as diverse as textile designers, academics and film-makers, all of whose work has been informed by Kylie in some way. While this can slightly disrupt the flow of the book, it also captures the communal ethos that is key to fandom.
Cragg's prose is appealingly breezy, its register more Popjustice than Pitchfork, but never less than earnest. This project is unambiguously the work of a superfan and scholar of pop, for whom the question of Kylie's legacy is a high-stakes one. His book is animated by a level of devotion that may not be unique to queer culture, but is certainly one of its hallmarks.
A touching backdrop
There are many reasons we worship our icons in precisely the ways we do, and Cragg's personal disclosures about his mental health, his early experiences of the closet, and his relationship with his husband provide a touching backdrop to this portrait of why Kylie matters. As does the section reflecting on Kylie's breast cancer, how it humanised her in the public eye, fostering greater awareness of the disease and underlining the importance of early screening.
That an artist like this has the ability to bring people together might seem like an obvious point, but Cragg urges us not to underestimate "what an amazing service that is". The book concludes with a newfound appreciation not only of her artistry, but of what she has meant to so many people. She is a singer whose generosity and mutability has allowed her fans to feel whatever they need to feel, nowhere more so than when she performs All the Lovers at her live shows, and arms sway in unison, the song's lyrics capacious enough for multiple readings, about the adversities of queer life and all of those we have loved and lost.
