Official Charts Flashback 2003: Kylie Minogue – Slow

It’s a decade since Kylie was last at the top of the Official Singles Chart, with this trippy electronic number.

It’s 2003 and while they’re not yet turned on, the Christmas lights are up in the high street, and before the music biz fully embarks on weeks of festive madness, there’s just time for a very slick, sophisticated Number 1 from everyone’s favourite pop princess Kylie Minogue.

Kylie had the toughest of all acts to follow as she prepared to release her ninth studio album – herself.

The Antipodean songstress was just coming off the back of a huge-selling album Fever, which sold 1.7 million copies and contained the biggest single of her career. The classic Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, which topped the Official Singles Chart in 2001, sold over a million copies. So no pressure, Kylie. What do you do if you’ve had a massive hit record? Well, if you’re Kylie, you do something a little bit different – and it worked.

The moody, sexy Slow wasn’t a million miles away from its mega-selling cousin, but where Can't Get You Out Of My Head had sadness beneath its pop bounce, Slow was ultra-confident and calculating. If CGYOOMH, as pop-pickers like to call it,  was the song to tell you it had a crush on you, Slow was the one to rip your clothes off.

Slow was helped along by a brilliantly choreographed video, filmed in Barcelona at the Olympic swimming pool, geography fans. Kylie was at her peak here, stretched out on a beach towel while oiled-up bodies writhed and rolled around her.

Slow sold 128,000 copies and was Kylie’s seventh Number 1. To date, she hasn’t returned to the top of the Official Singles Chart since, but you should never rule Kylie out of a comeback. Her longest gap between Number 1 singles is 10 and a half years – from Tears On My Pillow in January 1990 to Spinning Around in July 2000 – so she’s still got time to squeeze one in.

Watch the video for Slow before we count down who was competing with Kylie in the rest of the Top 5.

Entering the chart at Number 2 was London boyband and experts at ‘keeping it real’, Blazin’ Squad. Flip Reverse was the band’s fifth Top 10 hit and was, we think, about the perils of double-sided photocopying. It had a bit in it which went “bow-ba-ba-bow-bow-ba-ba-ba-bow-ba-ba- bow-ba-ba-bow-bow-ba-ba-ba-bow” which seemed to go on for ever (in a really good way) and was a total earworm. They’d only have one more Top 10 hit after this – Here 4 One the following year.

At Number 3, former chart-topper Fatman Scoop slipped two places with Be Thankful, which sampled a slew of classic rap and R&B tunes and had been Number 1 for two weeks. It sold 240,000 copies, but there was only one more Top 40 hit in Scoop’s future.

Behind Scoop at Number 4, and falling two places, is Vincentian singer Kevin Lyttle with Turn Me On. The global surprise hit was perfect for lazy beach holidays and romancing in the heat. Shame, then, that it landed in the Top 5 in the middle of November, known for its bone-chilling drizzle and rotten leaves everywhere. Still, it certainly cheered us up.

Rounding off the Top 5, former Number 1 Where Is The Love, from Black Eyed Peas. It had a good run, spending six weeks sitting pretty at the summit of the Official Singles Chart. Read all about it in Where Is The Love’s very own Flashback.