Kylie Minogue - Fever (A PopEntertainment.com Music Review)

PopEntertainment
Apr 11, 2002
2 min read

Kylie Minogue - Fever (Capitol)

Kylie Minogue is a goddess in Europe and her native Australia, rating on the same level as Madonna (in fact, the Material Girl was known to wear Kylie t-shirts on her last tour.) But in the United States, she has just made a few blips on the pop culture radar since her 1988 debut album... helmed by then-Hi NRG hit gurus Stock/Aitken/Waterman... had three US top 40 singles, including the ecstatic dance floor twirler “I Should Be So Lucky” and a cover of the Little Eva/Grand Funk classic “The Loco-motion.” In fact, Fever is Minogue’s first album released in the US since her unjustly overlooked 1990 gem Enjoy Yourself.

In the time since then, Minogue has popped up on these shores once in a blue moon: doing a soundtrack single from a long-forgotten Richard Grieco film (is there any other kind of Richard Grieco film?); dating late-INXS front man Michael Hutchence; starring in the video-game film Street Fighter; dueting on the delightfully twisted alt-single “Where the Wild Roses Grow” with Nick Cave; portraying a good fairy on last year’s hit musical Moulin Rouge. But finally Minogue is back in the States with a vengeance.

Fever is a wonderful dance album, at once timeless and much more with it and up-to-date than I could imagine former S/A/W contemporaries Rick Astley and Dead Or Alive making. The album is previewed by the almost naggingly catchy smash hit “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” which rides an insanely propulsive “La La La” bridge into your heart and mind. And the wonderful thing is that this record isn’t just a one hit pony, there are several other songs here that deserve to be smashes on the same level, including the poppy “Love At First Sight,” the retro-disco “Dancefloor” and the techno-laced “Burning Up.” Best of all is the wondrous carbonated ambrosia of the title track. F. Scott Fitzgerald was wrong. Kylie Minogue is proof positive that there really are second acts in American life. (3/02)

Jay S. Jacobs