Pop

942. ‘Dirrty’, by Christina Aguilera ft. Redman

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Louder, for the people in the cheap seats: If you ain’t dirty, You ain’t here to par-tay…

Dirrty, by Christina Aguilera (her 3rd of four #1s) ft. Redman

2 weeks, 17th November – 1st December 2002

Enter Xtina. Although last time we met her was in a boudoir in the Moulin Rouge, and although she’d always been the naughty one compared to rival Britney, I remember seeing the video to ‘Dirrty’ for the first time and being, as the kids say, shook.

Backing up my idea that 2002 was the moment the 21st century started, musically speaking, this is very modern pop. Gone are the staccato beats of millennial R&B. Gone is the bubblegum of the late ‘90s. In are clanking industrial chords, a scuzzy bassline, and huge vocals. This is the pop music of Rihanna, of Gaga, of a hundred other wannabes in the past twenty years. Pop music turned up to 11.

And yes, lyrically, it’s filth. I need that (uh) to get me off, Sweat until my clothes come off… Xtina announces before each chorus. It’s a classic good-girl-gone-bad song, in which a previously (semi)innocent pop princess launches headfirst into her slut era. Britney did it with ‘I’m a Slave 4 U’. Holly Valance made #1 with her debut single using the same trick. But nobody has done with as much as gusto as Christina. In previous posts I’ve taken issue with her over-singing, but here her belting works. This is no time for subtlety.

It’s also modern in its female singer plus guest rapper dynamic. Again, this is the format that many pop songs, and many number ones, will take over the next decade. I’ve no idea who Redman was, and doubt I’ve ever heard another song by him, but he’s a big part of this one’s success, from the If you ain’t dirty… call, to his line about being blessed and hung low, to him punching a giant rabbit in the video. In fact, the entire song is based around his 2001 original ‘Let’s Get Dirty’.

Ah, the video. As great as this record is in audio, it needs to be seen for it to have its full effect. Christina writhes, grinds, simulates masturbation, and invents the slut-drop, all while wearing some iconic, red leather, ass-less chaps. There’s foxy-boxing, mud-wrestling, female weightlifters, and signs in Thai that read ‘Young Underage Girls’ (a step too far, I will admit, and one which got a lot of criticism at the time).

Is it all a bit much? Is it vulgar? Is it pandering to straight male fantasies? To which I’d say: Yes, but who cares. Definitely, but who cares. And I’m not an authority on such matters. I will say though, a close (straight male) friend at the time spent hours a day requesting this video on music channels, waiting breath-baited on the edge of his bed for it to come on. He eventually recorded it onto a VHS… Which is a very hard to imagine scenario post-YouTube, but it was how we teenage millennials had to get our kicks. As for me, as much as I loved this song at time, it pretty much confirmed my homosexuality, as all I could think was how much Christina lived up to the song’s title, looking like she hadn’t showered in days.

I’ll end with the end, the final beat of the song after almost five minutes of writhing and grinding. In which Christina turns to the audience and asks Uh… What? As if daring you to criticise this gloriously inappropriate, slutty masterpiece.

936. ‘Just Like a Pill’, by Pink

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God, I haven’t heard this song in years. But within three notes of the intro, I am sixteen again.

Just Like a Pill, by Pink (her 2nd of three #1s)

1 week, from 22nd – 29th September 2002

September 2002, and I had just started my final year of high school, where Pink’s (sorry, P!nk’s) ‘Missundaztood’ (sorry, ‘M!ssundaztood’) was one of three albums that seemed to be on constant rotation, along with Red Hot Chili Peppers’s ‘By the Way’, and No Doubt’s ‘Rock Steady’.

And I can see why it appealed to us teens. It’s moody, it’s got big beefy chords, it’s got lyrics about bad trips, and morphine, and a ‘bitch’ nurse (is Pink the first woman to curse in a #1 single?). It’s emo-pop, a couple of years before that was an actual genre. But it’s still very much a pop song, crammed with hooks.

Listening to it now, ‘Just Like a Pill’ feels both slightly lightweight, and slightly too polished; but has also held up pretty well over the intervening two decades. The chorus is one of Pink’s best, and her voice suits this sort of pop rock much more than the R&B she started her career off with. It frustrates me that the middle-eight, setting up a soaring final chorus, is just a repeat of the bridge, though. It leaves something lacking.

Not that it should matter, but Pink wasn’t just cosplaying as a drug addict for credibility, having had a near-fatal overdose at sixteen. Although she was often lumped together with the other female pop stars of the day, she always had an edge to her, which for me made her one of the more interesting, but also slightly overlooked, singers of the ‘00s. And yet… having just checked her discography, colour me surprised to see that Pink has had twenty-one Top 10 hits in the UK, across twenty-one years! I’d guess that’s way more than many of her contemporaries.

I need to do a Pink deep-dive, because looking down her singles discography there are some great tunes which – like this one – I haven’t heard in an age (including one more classic pop-rock #1 to come). And actually, the fact that ‘Just Like a Pill was her first solo number one is surprising, given the ubiquity of the album’s two earlier singles – ‘Get the Party Started’, and the even more emo ‘Don’t Let Me Get Me’. So why do I overlook her? Is it because she never quite fit in with the female pop star image? Because she went her own way? Because she was, dare I say, m!ssundaztood?

935. ‘The Tide Is High (Get the Feeling)’, by Atomic Kitten

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The Kittens are back, and so is that tacky, pre-set drumbeat. Seriously they should have patented it, so that it could only ever have been used to announce a new tune from Britain’s favourite Scouse likely lasses.

The Tide Is High (Get the Feeling), by Atomic Kitten (their 3rd and final #1)

3 weeks, from 1st – 22nd September 2002

Last time out they were desecrating the memory of the Bangles, with their truly criminal cover of ‘Eternal Flame’. Now it’s the turn of an iconic act from the other end of the eighties to act as a scratching post: Blondie. However, despite being much more a fan of Blondie than the Bangles, I can’t get so worked up about this take on ‘The Tide Is High’…

Maybe because this is, by far, my least favourite of Blondie’s six chart-toppers? Maybe because it’s a cover of a cover, Blondie having taken The Paragon’s sixties original? Maybe because it’s an upbeat track, which is much more in Atomic Kitten’s wheelhouse, and not an emotional ballad?

Not that I’m going to argue that this record is particularly good, either. But it washes over me, putting me in a late summer kind of mood. They remain limited singers, but this far into Atomic Kitten’s career that is no surprise. You knew what you were going to get. Plus, they add a new middle-eight – an original composition called ‘Get the Feelin’’ – so it feels slightly more than just a straight cover.

Still, the fact that it stayed at number one for three weeks – a long stretch by early ‘00s standards – is surprising. In fact, it should be noted that none of the Kitten’s three chart-toppers were one-weekers, which is impressive, and suggests that they had a casual, widespread appeal rather than a devoted fanbase. For purely circumstantial evidence of this theory, I can confirm I have never met anyone who would confess to being an Atomic Kitten fan.

We bid farewell to Liz, Tash and Jenny here, but they were good for six more Top 10 hits through to 2005, when they went on hiatus. In total they enjoyed thirteen Top 10s across six years: an amazing achievement for a group that couldn’t sing all that well and relied on that bloody drumbeat. Some will take that as evidence of slipping societal standards. But I take it as evidence of Atomic Kitten having something, whatever that something is, to elevate them above the many other similar groups of the time who also relied on pre-set beats and couldn’t sing all that well. I will, one final time, also bemoan the fact that none of the fun, innovative pop tracks from their first album made #1, and that we were left with their three, largely meh, chart-toppers.

933. ‘Round Round’, by Sugababes

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In which Sugababes cement their sudden rise to becoming Britain’s biggest girl group, with another cool chart-topper.

Round Round, by Sugababes (their 2nd of six #1s)

1 week, from 18th – 25th August 2002

The energetic Spice Girls were a big exception to this rule, but generally the best girl groups are the ones that make it seem effortless. Like they don’t have to try, and can just conjure classic pop songs out of thin air. Watch great sixties groups like the Supremes and the Ronettes performing live: no wild dance routines, just sparkly dresses and a knowing smile. By the ‘90s the US rap-pop girl groups like TLC and En Vogue had the same haughty spirit, while All Saints turned looking like they couldn’t be arsed into an art form.

Sugababes were firmly in this camp. Listen to the way Mutya almost whispers her opening verse. Calling it husky, or sultry, can’t quite tell the whole story. She sounds like she’s just gotten out of bed, three hours late to the studio. It drips in attitude. I think the kids today might call it cunty. Whatever, it works.

I like that the beat scythes like a huge blade – one of those big wind pylons – swooping ‘round round’ every couple of seconds. The entire song spins as the title suggests it must. It’s the perfect follow-up to the great ‘Freak Like Me’, enough of a similar vibe – same tempo, same attitude – but sufficiently different to suggest they weren’t turning into one-trick ponies. There’s no sample, no cover version, here. Or at least, not an overt one. The backing beat is based on a track called ‘Tango Forte’, which in turn is based on ‘Whatever Lola Wants’, a song from the 1955 musical ‘Damn Yankees’.

Which is another great argument for sampling not just being lazy snatching of someone else’s ideas. For who could listen to that mid-fifties showtune and hear a pop song from forty years in the future? But for all this bigging up, I have to admit: I don’t think it’s as good as ‘Freak Like Me’. It’s good, very good even, but just not as ear-grabbing as its predecessor. Apart from, that is, the middle eight. In which a completely different song, a piano ballad, is transplanted in right into the heart of this record. It jars, but it works, and the way it slowly morphs back into that ‘Tango Forte’ beat is great.

This chart-topper confirmed that Sugababes Mk II were off and away. Three years of solid hit making were in store, until Mutya left the group in late 2005. Two of them we’ll cover as #1s in the not too distant future. But I should also point you back in time, to Sugababes Mk I, and the singles from their ‘flop’ first album: ‘New Year’, ‘Soul Sound’, and one of the best from any stage of their careers: ‘Overload’.

931. ‘Anyone of Us (Stupid Mistake)’, by Gareth Gates

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Well, here’s a surprise. ‘Pop Idol’ runner-up, and one of the clearest cases of pop puppetry ever unleashed on the world, Gareth Gates’ second single is… pretty good?

Anyone of Us (Stupid Mistake), by Gareth Gates (his 2nd of four #1s)

3 weeks, from 14th July – 4th August 2002

It starts off unpromisingly. A piano riff that brings to mind Westlife at their most maudlin leads us in. But soon Westlife are discarded for an intro that sounds more like peak Backstreet Boys (it flirts very heavily with ‘I Want It That Way’). Then bang: a chorus that could have competed with anything on Britney Spears’ first couple of albums.

Of course, these references were three years old by 2002, which perhaps gives away the fact that this is an already somewhat dated pop song. But that’s all forgiven as the chorus washes over us: It could happen to anyone of us, Anyone you think of… I think this is a fine song, one that would be better remembered if it had been recorded by somebody else.

It loses its way a bit in a meandering middle eight, but it gathers itself for a mid-line key change, and soaring finish. My only other complaint would be that it sounds perfect for a festive-ballad release, not for the height of summer. Not that it was hurt by its release date, with three weeks on top and 600,000 copies sold; but imagine this with added sleigh bells and tell me if it doesn’t scream Christmas number one.

With singing contest winners/runners up it was all about the second single. The debut single was guaranteed to be a huge hit; and also guaranteed to be crap. But once that obligation was fulfilled, it was always interesting to see what direction they would go in. I’d rate this ahead of Will Young’s cover of ‘Light My Fire’. But sadly Gareth Gates wasn’t given many more singles of this quality, as his upcoming #1s will attest.

I also have a soft spot for love-songs-that-aren’t-really-love-songs, and this is a classic of the genre, with Gareth rather smarmily admitting to an affair. The situation got out of hand, I hope you understand… Whether or not this song came before, during, or after Gates’ famous, virginity-robbing romp with Katie Price, I do not know. But I like to imagine him singing it to his pre-fame girlfriend, presumably a homely Bradford lass. Though I’m not sure if “it could happen to anyone of us” is ever the best way to open an apology…

I’m going to crown this as the best of the reality TV number ones so far (this is the seventh), narrowly ahead of Liberty X. And I’m going to try and keep ranking them for as long as possible. Which will be difficult, as there’s so bloody many of them. Including our very next chart-topper…

927. ‘Just a Little’, by Liberty X

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Our 5th singing contest chart-topper in just over a year. The X Factor Age is well underway…

Just a Little, by Liberty X (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 19th – 26th May 2002

And of the five, this is definitely the best so far. I might go so far as to say that it remains one of the best. It’s upbeat, modern, and fun – a world away from Will Young and Gareth Gates’s syrupy attempts, and Hear’Say’s dated efforts. Its opening line – Sexy, Everything about you so sexy… really seemed to enter the public consciousness (or at least my school playground consciousness), while the chanted chorus enters the brain and remains there for some time.

Musically it’s nothing too out the box – in claiming it’s the ‘best’ reality TV #1 so far we have to remember how low the bar is – with lots of early-noughties pop touches, but keeping a great pop sensibility in the chorus and the middle-eight. It’s a bridge between S Club’s bubblegum and the Britney Spears’ classics of the era. And is it too much to suggest that Britney’s songwriters were listening when they came up with something that sounded quite similar, lyrically and melodically, to gimme just a little bit more… a few years later?

Liberty X were made up of contestants who had been rejected during the auditions for Popstars winners Hear’Say. It is perhaps this distance, and the fact that they were picked up by a record label not under the whip of Simon Cowell, which gave them the freedom to release something not beholden to reality TV schmaltz. Their first two singles, including their #5 debut ‘Thinking it Over’, had been released under the name Liberty, but after a legal challenge from a ‘90s R&B band of the same name they were forced to add the ‘X’. It did them no harm, as their first release as Liberty X brought them this huge smash, the 8th biggest seller of the year.

There’s an argument to be made for not winning TV singing contests if you want to have lasting musical success. Plenty of non-winners have gone on to massive popularity, One Direction being the ones that spring to mind first. Liberty X never managed 1D levels of success, but they were regulars in the British charts between 2001 and 2005, with eight Top 10 hits in that time, stats that Hear’Say could only dream of.

They split in 2006, after their third album bombed. They reformed a few times, and now exist with only the three female members. One of the two original male members, Kevin Simms, has been the lead vocalist for Wet Wet Wet since 2018. Imagine telling someone in 2002 that one of the token blokes in Liberty X would go on to become the new Marti Pellow…

925. ‘Kiss Kiss’, by Holly Valance

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Two raunchy pop records trade places at the top of the charts. At first glance they’re pretty similar tunes, sung by women, all about getting jiggy… But therein lies the mystery of music. What makes the Sugababes sound, to my ears, sublime, but this next #1 ridiculous?

Kiss Kiss, by Holly Valance (her 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 5th – 12th May 2002

I mean ridiculous in the best possible way, though: trashy, catchy, OTT. It also has a distinctly Middle Eastern feel, with Arabian strings and flourishes not usually found in Western pop. It had originally been released, under the title ‘Şimarık’ by Turkish star Tarkan, in 1997, before being turned into ‘Kiss Kiss’ by Greek-American singer Stella Soleil in 2001. This extended journey to becoming a British hit had left Holly Valance with pretty distinctive debut hit on her hands.

Given how love and lust has inspired so much of the pop canon, it’s mildly surprising that this is the first number one single to use the classic kissing sound as a hook. The song title doesn’t feature in the lyrics, instead it’s represented, over and over, by either a mwah or a kissing-your-granny-on-the-cheek kind of sound. It’s very camp. But as good as the Arabian strings and the kissing are, my favourite part is the break, where the strings and the kisses are chopped up and topped off with a heavily vocoded aw yeah. My biggest complaint though, is that the ending is all set up to end on a big smacker… yet doesn’t.

Holly Valance had been familiar to Brits for a few of years as Flick Scully in ‘Neighbours’. (As an avid Ramsey Street aficionado through the late-nineties and most of the noughties, it’s my personal favourite ‘Neighbours’ era.) And in the tradition of Kylie, Jason, Natalie Imbruglia and Stefan Dennis, the pop career was never far away. This record actually puts ‘Neighbours’ clear of ‘Eastenders’ as the most successful soap on the singles chart, by three (Kylie, Jason, Holly Valance) to two (Nick Berry, Martine McCutcheon). However, we could also accept Wendy Richards, who featured at #1 in 1962, albeit many years before she started playing Pauline Fowler in Albert Square, to make it a tie.

Flick may have been helped to the top of the charts by the video in which she appeared naked but for some accurately applied strip-lighting. It’s a classic ‘the nice girl you thought you knew is all grown up’ move. And, hey, sex sells. I can confirm it was quite the hot topic in the school playground at the time. In fact, the boy I was in love with, aged sixteen, was obsessed with Holly Valance. It’s taken me until today, listening to this trashy classic of its time, to make my peace with her. I’m less willing to endorse Holly’s post-pop career. Her Wiki page now lists her as singer, model, right-wing activist…

Like I said at the start, Sugababes gave us pop to stand the test of time. Holly Valance gave us pop that stands the test of its three and a half minute run-time. But both are great in their own ways. Valance also struggled to have the longevity of the Sugababes, but scored two further Top 3 hits from her debut album, ‘Kiss Kiss’ being followed by ‘Down Boy’ and ‘Naughty Girl’ (I’m noticing a theme…)

924. ‘Freak Like Me’, by Sugababes

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Back in my post on All Saints’ ‘Pure Shores’, I crowned the ‘00s as the decade of the girl group. All Saints, as great as they were, were a bit of a false start (and they were technically a ‘90s group, anyway) but we’re finally off and away. Forget Destiny’s Child, forget Atomic Kitten. The two greatest girl groups of the decade (of all time?) score their first #1s in 2002, starting with…

Freak Like Me, by Sugababes (their 1st of six #1s)

1 week, from 28th April – 5th May 2002

No more covers of ‘Eternal Flame’, or songs about well you’re ‘surviving’. The Sugababes grab a sample from Tubeway Army and have their wicked way with it, whipping it into a whirlpool of echo, churn and industrial synths, while singing about how they want it every which way with a bad boy. This is what I want from my girl groups. Filth!

I wanna freak in the morning, freak in the evening… I need a roughneck brother who can satisfy me… The lyrics are nothing revolutionary, even if they are a world away from the kid-friendly Spice Girls. Though the Spiceys are there in spirit, in terms of their Girl Power message. This is girl group pop for the 21st century, in which the women are in charge, and parading their men around like dogs, apparently. Come on and I’ll take you around the hood, On a gangsta lead…

As fresh as All Saints’ hits sounded, I don’t think we’ve heard anything like this on top of the charts before. I’m going to use the word ‘original’, despite the fact that the Gary Numan sample is so front and centre. And despite the fact that the song itself is a cover of a US #2 hit from 1995, by Adina Howard, which itself samples and interpolates snatches from Sly & the Family Stone and Bootsy Collins. DJ Richard X had created a mash-up of Howard’s version and ‘Are “Friends” Electric’, but couldn’t secure Howard’s permission to use her vocals. Instead, he turned to desperate-for-a-hit Sugababes, who had been dropped by their label following an underperforming debut album, and who had lost founding member Siobhán Donaghy a few months earlier. For what it’s worth, Gary Numan claims that this song is better than his original.

So, a girl group. A DJ. A bootleg mash-up. Is this the #1 which officially announces the ‘00s as up and running? I probably claimed the same thing when Hear’Say became the first reality TV winning group, but I much prefer this version of the noughties. This reminds me of university, of the decade’s indie revival where pop and guitars collided, of the hits to come, of the days when I’d go out four nights a week… (nowadays, four nights a year is more likely…)

How much my coming-of-age influences my opinion of this record, and pretty much every #1 between now and 2008, is a good point to raise. But also, it’s a pointless question. Music is memory. The charts are one way of recording the soundtrack to our lives. Had I been born a decade earlier and I might have dismissed this as a gimmicky nothing, but I hope not. I hope the quality of this record can exist beyond my nostalgia.

Like Atomic Kitten with ‘Whole Again’, Sugababes were in danger of being consigned to the dustbin had ‘Freak Like Me’ not been a hit. Thankfully it was, and it set the MK II (and III, and IV) versions of the group up for sixteen further Top 10 hits between now and 2010, five more of which will make #1. And, as good as this record is, I think at least one of their later chart-toppers is better.

920. ‘World of Our Own’, by Westlife

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I approach this next number one nervously, slightly creeped out, as if I’ve come across a talking cat, or a dog that can walk on two legs… A Westlife #1 that… isn’t… a ballad?

World of Our Own, by Westlife (their 10th of fourteen #1s)

1 week, from 24th February – 3rd March 2002

This uncanny feeling is perhaps unjustified, as they had topped the charts with ‘Uptown Girl’ just a year earlier. But that was a cover, for charity. This is an original, with no ulterior motive. You can imagine them looking up at Louis Walsh when he suggested this upbeat song, half hopeful, half terrified that he was playing a nasty trick on them. A sort of musical Ramsey Bolton – Reek scenario.

But lo, it wasn’t a trick. They were allowed to not only record this peppy track, but release it as a single and name their third album after it! It is nothing revolutionary, nothing special even, other than the fact that it is not a ballad. It is still ballad-adjacent, with a chest-thumping chorus, and a crashing key change (of course), but it’s up-tempo and generally likeable.

I find the vocals on this record a little shouty though, but that’s probably just the lads’ excitement at getting to record it, or rustiness from singing tear-jerker after tear-jerker. It has the wide-eyed exuberance of contemporary Christian music, and the shouty sincerity of mid-career Elton John.

And it led to Westlife reaching double figures, in terms of chart-toppers. Alongside Elvis, the Beatles, Cliff (and the Shadows), and Madonna, you’d have to say that Westlife look hopelessly out of place. They benefitted massively from the high chart turnover at the turn of the century, and only three of their ten #1s so far have spent more than a week on top. ‘World of Our Own’ was another case of their management cleverly choosing the right day to release, squeezing its week between Enrique Iglesias’s mega-hit and the biggest-selling song of the decade. At the same time, it did sell over 100k to make number one, so clearly the fanbase remained undiminished.

They have four chart-toppers left to come, spread out over close to five years. Perhaps we should use this post to mark the end of Westlife’s imperial phase (or reign of terror). Or maybe I’m just being snide because the ultimate Westlife non-ballad – the banging ‘When You’re Looking Like That’ – was never released as a single in the UK.

910. ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’, by Kylie Minogue

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After a fairly underwhelming run of boyband fluff and novelty covers, we finally arrive at a number one record worthy of its exalted position…

Can’t Get You Out of My Head, by Kylie Minogue (her 6th of seven #1s)

4 weeks, from 23rd September – 21st October 2001

This is sophisticated pop by the standards of any era, not just when compared to the trash that it regally swept aside to spend a month on top of the charts. Pop to sit with the likes of ‘Dancing Queen’, or ‘Heart of Glass’, or ‘…Baby One More Time’ (not to give away my next Very Best award, or anything…)

And like the best pop songs before it, it has layers. Yes, ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ is catchy, and has a la-la-la hook which lodges itself deep in your brain. But it’s actually quite a sinister record, almost a dirge, with a hypnotic marching beat setting the foundations of this tale of obsession. There’s a dark secret in me, Don’t leave me locked in your heart… Perhaps the most telling line is when Kylie breathes the Set me free… Feel the need in me…

It straddles that fine line of being strange enough to be interesting, yet catchy enough to be a huge hit. You can dance to it, sure, but you can also think about it, and analyse it. You couldn’t do the same with ‘Hand on Your Heart’. And it hasn’t actually got a chorus. Or does it? Are the lalalas the chorus? Is it the Set me free…? Or is it one big chorus? This fluid, hypnotic element means that the song could potentially be played on a never-ending loop and not grow old…

I can remember hearing this record for the first time, on a radio in my old Scout hut. That same night (unless I’m mixing two memories here) I had also been clobbered over the head with a hockey stick and knocked unconscious. I’d like to claim that I came to with the sound of Kylie’s new single in my ears, but I think that really would be stretching things. Anyway, concussed or not, it sounded like the biggest-sounding hit I’d ever heard. My love for Kylie, which had been bubbling away since the early nineties, now came to the boil. She remains an icon, a legend. She is, and always will be, the moment.

Many would claim that this is Kylie’s signature song, but that’s not a simple claim to make. Has any other pop star released their signature song a full fifteen years into their careers? So I’d definitely agree that this the signature song of her post-comeback career, proving that her return the year before, with ‘Spinning Around’, wasn’t going to be a one-album flash in the pan. And Kylie of course remains active, and dare we say relevant, a quarter of a century on. But she also has one final #1 to come, so we won’t wrap things up for her just yet.

‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ was a final number one, though, for one of its songwriters, Rob Davis (alongside Cathy Dennis). Davis had an incredible career in music, from his early-sixties debut in a Shadows tribute band, to his role as lead guitarist in Mud, to his three classics of the early ‘00s: ‘Toca’s Miracle’, ‘Groovejet’, and this.

Having waxed lyrical about this record for seven paragraphs, I will spoil it all by admitting that ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ is not my favourite Kylie record. I will never not enjoy it, but like ‘Dancing Queen’ and ‘…Baby One More Time’ before it, copious airplay has taken the edge off. Nowadays I’d rather hear it in the brilliant New Order mash-up ‘Can’t Get Blue Monday Out of My Head’, which Kylie debuted at the 2002 Brit Awards, and subsequently released as a B-side. Get your ears around that, if you never have before…