65. Kylie Minogue – Spinning Around (2000)

Oh, how happy this video made me when it came out. Throughout the nineties I had a thing for Kylie, the funkiest, foxiest, jolliest, sweetest, funniest chick around, but I was frustrated by everything she put out. Instead of bringing her delightful personality into music and films, she seemed bent on making things of "quality", which neutered her funkiness. She had some good output here and there, but none of it showed the Kylie I knew from interviews. And then, in 2000, she hooked up with disco, and finally found the beat that brought out her cheerful essence to life.

What is the secret of this beat? Let's go backwards again. In the middle of the sixties, the dominating styles were rock'n'roll and soul, and they relied on the backbeat: the second, fourth, sixth and eighth beat in every bar. This creates a propulsive feeling that pushes forward, and these styles make you feel like your soul erupts out of your body and breaks free into the outer world. But funk, which was born right then, moved the emphasis to the first beat, and treated all the instruments as percussive: the guitars are pinched, the brass and the singing come out in short sharp outbursts. This creates a feeling that all the energy remains in the body and explodes inside, resulting in an inner razzmatazz that makes you want to dance. That brought a change in the attitude towards sexuality as well: in rock'n'roll, sexuality is eruptive, something that bursts out of your loins and drives you to conquer an outer subject of desire; in funk, sexuality is first of all something that flows within you and fills your being with pleasure, and the funk/soul of the seventies produced lots of sensual records. For those who grew up on rock (which was most white kids in the seventies), funk sounded like something that leaves you rooted in one place, and was very hard to comprehend. But the gays did get it. The gay culture in the seventies revolved around their secluded discotheques, where they created a world of their own. And since what brought them together was their sexual identity, sex was a big part of that culture, and the preferred music was naturally the most sensual music around: funky soul records. In time, this culture affected record making as well, toning down the polyrhythmic nature of funk and adding the technology of the discotheque, but maintaining the steady beat and the funky sensuality. By the middle of the seventies, it was possible to define a new style: disco.

To rock fans, disco was a complete travesty, and sounded to them like soulless, robotic music. Not to mention its campy elements, which disgusted the homophobic psyche that was still very prevalent at the time. Following disco's big break in the late seventies, it was viciously oppressed by the rock establishment, and in the eighties it was sent back underground, where it spawned the electronic dance revolution, and returned triumphant in the nineties. But even the dominant culture of the eighties took some things from gay culture - for instance, it was the gays who began the fad of going to gyms to build up your body, and in the eighties it became popular with the masses as well. During that decade it was mainly the shaped male body that got the attention, but in the nineties the focus shifted towards the female body, and the ones who led the way were the supermodels. The supermodels were the biggest pop icons of the nineties not just because they were a new level of cool, women who didn't even have to open their mouths but could make the whole world fall at their feet with just one glance, but also because they shaped their bodies to perfection, and proudly displayed it. By the end of the decade, they influenced women from other fields. Kylie, who was always a scrawny girl, suddenly reemerged here with a knockout body, stuffed into the hottest hotpants ever, and with her singing and dancing, and the funky personality that bursts out of every smile and look, she elevated the hotness bar to a new level.

The record itself was a little weak, but it didn't matter. Kylie finally found herself, and from here on the sky was the limit. Later on she became more interesting musically, and lived up to my expectations of her. Her movie career is still a disappointment, but who cares – there's always video.