“Perfect”: Josh Homme on the best bubblegum pop song ever

Posted On October 11, 2024October 11, 2024

No one is looking to someone like Josh Homme to be a connoisseur of the next pop smash. His work with Queens of the Stone Age is certainly miles ahead of anything that any other rock band is doing, but there’s a reason why he’s designated to the desert rock style of rock and roll while someone like Lady Gaga is better suited to making over-the-top pop music. Homme did know a good hook when he heard one, and decades after her time in the spotlight, Kylie Minogue checked all the boxes for what the frontman considered to be an ideal pop song.

Looking at where Minogue had been, though, no one would be expecting her and Homme to have that much overlap. They both may have had airtime on the charts, but there was a reason why certain stations were playing tunes like ‘Step Back In Time’ and the harder stations played ‘Feel Good Hit of the Summer’.

But Minogue did have her darker side when she wanted to make something sinister. No one really gets away with doing a duet with Nick Cave without having at least some darkness in their hearts, and ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’ was at least proof that she could work outside of her normal wheelhouse.

And right when Queens were bursting onto the charts with Rated R, ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ was the start of Minogue’s own career renaissance. She had already started jumping on the dance-music train and made great attempts at nu-disco, but if you look at the lyric sheet of this tune for more than a few seconds, it seems those dark lessons she learned from Cave hadn’t gone anywhere.

Whereas most people saw it as the standard pop song, Homme saw someone who seemed dependent on one person. Even though it’s meant to be good-natured fun, hearing her talk about a dark secret could either be one of the cheapest attempts at innuendo ever written or could have sinister connotations based on how you look at it.

Given that he was the same guy who wrote tunes like ‘Better Living Through Chemistry’, it didn’t take a brain surgeon to realise that Homme would take things in that direction, telling Rolling Stone, “I love Kylie Minogue. That song ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ is the perfect bubblegum pop song, but it’s dark as fuck. Totally dark.”

Homme even seemed to have a certain affection for the production as well. Though the idea of Queens of the Stone Age going disco was never going to happen, hearing the four-on-the-floor stomp of ‘In My Head’ is enough to get someone dancing, and ‘The Way You Used To Do’ was a better indicator that Homme could at least make body-shaking music when he wanted to.

More than anything, ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ is a good reminder of what the best pop songs are made of. Most people can just throw random chords together to get what they want, but the true artistes know how to slip in just a little darkness between the musical sunshine.

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