Dose of Minogue: “What Kind of Fool” A.K.A. Life After “Better The Devil You Know”

Last week’s Dose featured 1990’s Better The Devil You Know, a song whose lyrics reluctantly embrace blind forgiveness of a (devilish) partner. After all, as the old adage goes, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Yet I’m treating this week’s Dose, 1992’s What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before) as a sequel to Better The Devil You Know (BTDYK).

As lyrics in BTDYK state: “I’ll take you back again/No more excuses, no, no/’Cause I heard them all before/A hundred times or more/I'll forgive and forget/If you say you’ll never go.” Now, two years later, Kylie sings: “You would change white to black/If I took you back/But I heard all that before.” Kylie has decided she’s ready to forget the devil she knows, no more foolishly taking him back again and again.

The video, according to Wikipedia, features several scenes inspired by the film, And God Created Woman, starring Brigitte Bardot, a woman to which Kylie has long paid homage, most notably the artwork for her 2003 CD, Body Language and the styling for the subsequent one-off concert show at the London Apollo. The And God Created Woman references: the silhouette scenes of Kylie lounging behind a hanging sheet, as well as the scene where Kylie dances on a kitchen table. And for the heart-shaped glasses featured at the beginning of the video—unmistakably from the film poster for the 1962 Stanley Kubrick film, Lolita. BSo