A Love Letter To Kylie Minogue’s ‘Fever’, The Album That Helped Me Find My Queerness

By the time Kylie Minogue sings “Come, come, come into my world”, halfway through her critically-misunderstood 2001 album Fever, the listener is already well immersed in the world the pop icon is singing about.

I still remember being four years old; clutching my Fever CD and feeling like I was free to truly be myself for the first time. For me this album was, and still is, a haven; a safe place I can go where it’s just me and Kylie — who seemed to understand me more than I did myself at the time.

This young childhood obsession and fondness for Fever isn’t uncommon among young queer people around the world. For a generation, the one-two punch of Light Years and Fever by Minogue in just a year at the turn of the century is entrenched in their earliest memories of feeling a sense of self and queerness.

The singer herself was even aware of the impact at the time — telling talk show host Jonathan Ross of two, three, four-year-olds being obsessed with ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’, which Music Junkee just named the greatest Australian song of all time.

Fever was responsible for rekindling Kylie’s career in the USA, won her a Grammy, and is looked back on as one of the most influential pop albums of the noughties. In 2001 however, music critics around the world labelled it as a boring, uninspired album of so-so pop tracks, with some going as far as questioning whether it would be the end of her career.

Clearly, that was ridiculous — history has told another story. Revisiting the album now, I wanted to explore what made it so special to me and other young queer fans — and exactly why Kylie Minogue is just so, so gay.

Give It To Me Like I Want It

It seems foolish to have ever thought Kylie’s career could be over, but at the turn of the century even Minogue herself thought so. “I thought my career was, if not over, very much clinging on,” she told Paper last year.

Yet after another reinvention and the roaring success of ‘Spinning Around’ and Light Years, by the end of 2001 everyone had Kylie Fever — the melody of ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ was appropriately inescapable.

My mother and I both recall me dancing beside the TV every time the video came on TV in New Zealand, and me being inseparable from my Fever CD from the second I unwrapped it on Christmas day.

I wasn’t alone in my young obsession. “I was four when Light Years came out, five when Fever came out,” a friend of mine, Oscar, recalled recently. “I don’t know why but one of my earliest memories was being in the lounge and Fever was playing. My grandma was over and asked ‘Is this the album with ‘Spinning Around’?’ and I was just like ‘No. That was Light Years, and THIS is Fever!’”

“At the end of grade three we had to bring something special to you to share with the class, I brought my Body Language CD.”

before i am an australian i am a kylie minogue fan pic.twitter.com/Bb2SmhhkyY

— oscar (@osc__ar) September 25, 2020

Why we both share such similar memories of this attachment to Kylie, and why she meant so much to us at such a young age came down to the same thing; the safety we felt in her music.

“I wanted to be her friend,” Oscar says, when we discussed the safety and understanding we felt listening to her music. “Kylie has always had a softer and gentler persona, which she has tried to shed a bit, it’s been a recurring theme in her career.”

That soft, gentle persona made her feel more approachable and open than other popstars at the time. It made the music feel so personal to us, even as young listeners.

Don’t You Feel The Fever Like I Do?

Nearly two decades after I first danced next to the TV for my family, I am dancing around my lounge alone to Fever.

For the first time in a long time, I feel like myself. Nearing 100 days in lockdown in Melbourne, it takes a lot to make me feel okay enough to get out of bed most days, but listening to Fever in full for the first time in years, I feel like I did when I was four. The music feels fresh, and the lyrics — still all there in my memory — have taken on new meaning. She is singing about me and to me.

Listening to the album has almost become part of my daily ritual again at this point, an escape back to that freedom and innocence before I was ashamed of my love for Kylie and the unwavering branding of “faggot” that came with it growing older.

At the turn of the century Max Martin had begun cornering the pop market — his signature bombastic pop songwriting and sound and style was everywhere. Fever was unlike anything else on the charts, drawing inspiration from ’90s club music and ’80s disco, doubling down and pushing further into the soundscapes of Light Years.

Fever’s influence on pop music can be seen everywhere — from Britney Spears’ 2003 hit ‘Toxic’, to Dua Lipa’s incredible Future Nostalgia released earlier this year. However at the time, like most pop music, it wasn’t given a chance by critics.

The music feels fresh, and the lyrics – still all there in my memory – have taken on new meaning. She is singing about me and to me.

“As effervescent as a foot spa, and with about as much depth” the NME review reads, while Pitchfork contributor Dominique Leone wrote: “Fever works well as an icebreaker for grown-up parties and the Sunday mornings after,” in her review as part of their April Fools 2002 Edition.

This critical response to Minogue’s music — and most pop music at the time — was not unusual, and still isn’t. “People have this double standard for Kylie,” Oscar says. “People have this idea that ‘Kylie is cute, Kylie is the girl next door.’ You can’t be that and be sexy at the same time.”

The safe gentle persona that invited us into Kylie’s world and made us feel so free and comfortable to be ourselves was putting her at odds with critics and the media. The reviews of Fever lay bare the critics’ inability to approach the album from any angle, outside of questioning whether Kylie was sexy enough to be singing these songs.

“A robot could deliver the lyrics to the come-hither title track more passionately,” Alex Petridis wrote for The Guardian at the time, ending the piece by saying her career would likely be over before the year was through.

It’s disappointing no one really bothered to actually ask her much about the music at the time, but it’s not surprising. The entertainment industry is misogynistic and sexist — it was back then and it still is. While the writing and production of Fever was making waves in the music industry behind the scenes, most interviewers were more interested in the gold hot pants.

Petridis is now The Guardian’s head rock and pop critic and still regularly writes about Minogue. Last month, almost 19 years to the day since his infamous review was published, Petridis compiled a list of Kylie’s best singles in which he writes that Fever “may well be the pinnacle of what Neil Tennant would call Kylie’s second imperial phase: an album almost preposterously overstuffed with potential hit singles.”

Hindsight…it’s wonderful.

I’m High Up On A Tightrope And It Always Leads To You

“The moment transition begins is when you realise the version of yourself you have been denying,” Oliver Reeson wrote last year in their essay ‘Body Language: On Kylie Minogue, Cancer, and Coming Back to Life‘.

“That is also the appeal of pop…When a pop career truly takes off it’s such an ecstatic release. When Kylie released Light Years. When Beyonce released I am… Sasha Fierce. When Carly Rae Jepsen released E•MO•TION. It is the epitome of queerness. It is why queerness and pop have long been linked.”

In this modern world, where even Pitchfork takes pop music seriously and I don’t live in fear of schoolyard bullies, Reeson’s words ring true for me. I’m no longer afraid of what my love for Kylie Minogue may mean about me in a larger sense. The beauty of my relationship with Fever and Kylie Minogue is that it doesn’t define me, but it gives me the freedom and comfort to see the version of myself I want to be.

When I listen to Fever I am my four-year-old self, I am dancing with my eyes closed, free of my fears and the judgement of others. Because I know Kylie won’t judge me. I know she won’t call me a faggot, but I’d let her.

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Patrick Campbell is a writer and DJ based in Melbourne. They are on Twitter. 

All this week, Music Junkee is exploring the music of Kylie Minogue. See more Kylie stories over here.