Kylie Minogue, “All The Lovers” (music video still), 2010.
The music video of Kylie Minogue’s hit song, “All the Lovers” (2010) raises two questions for me: 1) What does love want? 2) What can we do about it?
Watch the video:
The video opens with a cup of coffee falling, splashing empty on the ground (and a man taking off his shirt); a container of milk drops, spilling out on the ground (and two more people take off their clothes), and white marshmallows light on the ground as Minogue sings to her beloved, to her love object: someone who is apparently skeptical of falling in (for) love.
She is the lover of a man who is rejecting movement. He is resisting her call to dance like a flame, to allow her to connect with him (to get inside his groove):
Dance, it’s all I wanna do, so won’t you dance?
I’m standing here with you, why won’t you move?
I’ll get inside your groove ’cause I’m on fire, fire, fire, fire1
Minogue sings “fire, fire . . . .” as a multi-racial, variously sexual group of people move, take off their clothes and let them drop to the ground. Each lover finds their beloved, and they start making out.
One lover’s briefcase opens, and the papers inside scatter to the ground. All the lovers seem to be doing the unbelievable: abandoning work, responsibility, respectability, and/or (financial) security in order to heed the summons of love. Risk is constitutive of love.
This sociality of love, Minogue acknowledges, hurts. Pain is a fact of falling, of loving, of intimacy or close proximity to an-other. Minogue does not redeem the character of love; she simply acknowledges it: “but baby it hurts.” Hurt is also constitutive of love.
Nonetheless, “[i]f love is good, you just want more.” We want more of the good, even if that means risking the pain of (the) fire(s of hell):
It hurts when you get too close, but, baby, it hurts
If love is really good, you just want more
Even if it throws you to the fire, fire, fire, fire
Now that we know love hurts, we are right to expect some indication of fear, some apprehensiveness about what is at stake for all the lovers. But we are surprised by images of joy and of peace (even of S/spirit): a black woman smiles, a multi-racial group lifts their hands in the air (as if in praise), and doves (symbol of peace and, for Christians, a symbol of the Spirit) are released as Minogue begins to be raised up, lifted by all the lovers below her.
“All the lovers” refers to all the people falling, spilling open, bouncing, scattering, letting go, and elevating one another and in the name love. “All the lovers” also names the reason that Minogue’s beloved is hesitant to move, to move even “a little bit more.”
Minogue’s beloved is hesitant to move, even just “a little bit more,” because he is all too aware of “all the lovers that have gone before.”
All the lovers that have gone before
They don’t compare
To you
Don’t be frightened
Just give me a little bit more
They don’t compare
All the lovers
We may read the blond-haired, white young man who takes off his shirt as Minogue sings, “Don’t be frightened / Just give me a little bit more,” as the object of her love. As she sings, “don’t compare,” he responds enthusiastically (like a sports fan cheering on his favorite team) to her encouragement to just keep moving, just a little bit more.
His doubts are somewhat allayed by Minogue’s alluring smile as she sings, “All the lovers that have gone before / They don’t compare / To you.” He seems comforted by the intensity of Minogue’s faith in him. Even so, he doesn’t take a single step toward her or the (Christmas) mass of all the lovers.
Why put everything on the line for what is not guaranteed? Is it reasonable to be an entrepreneur in the business of love? Is the risk worth the cost? What is the return on this kind of investment?
Minogue’s beloved seems to believe in monogamy. What he wants most of all is to be the one. And it his (and our) belief in monogamy that Minogue tries to re-think:
Feel, can’t you see there’s so much here to feel?
Deep inside in your heart you know I’m real
Can’t you see that this is really higher, higher, higher, higher?
Breathe, I know you find it hard, but, baby, breathe
You’ll be next to me, it’s all you need
And I’ll take you there, I’ll take you higher, higher, higher, higher.
Why does he (why do we) believe that the opposite of monogamy is openness, aliveness, feeling rather than closure, death, and numbness?
Why does he (why do we) believe monogamy is 1 rather than 1 + 1, more than 1?
Why does he (why do we) believe that the opposite of monogamy is unfaithfulness rather than faithfulness?
Why does he (why do we) believe that the opposite of monogamy is room to breathe rather than suffocating space? Maybe he is in the wrong song?2
Why does he (why do we) believe that the opposite of monogamy is in-dependence rather than dependance?
Minogue re-thinks monogamy both lyrically and aesthetically. Recall the resilience of the white, bouncing marshmallows. Think of the lightness of the floating white elephant. Remember the gallop of the white horse. We can’t forget the splashing white milk, the flying white doves, the wildy ascending white balloons. Each of these aesthetic choices call our attention to the hardness, heaviness, and immovability of his (and our) belief in monogamy.2
Love, Minogue contends, is soft. Love is light. Love is like liquid: un-predictable.
Love wants to dance. Love wants to take a leap of faith. Love wants to flow.
As the video suggests, we can look down at Minogue’s love. We can pray for “Love [to] lift us up where we belong / Where the eagles cry / On a mountain high / [higher, higher, higher] Love lift us up where we belong / Far from the world below / Up where the clear winds blow.”
We can, in other words, refuse Minogue’s love. We can hold firm in our belief in (suffocating) monogamy (can one breathe far from the world below, up where the clear winds blow?).
Or, we can come down to earth. We can enter into what Minogue offers: love’s undulations.
The melancholic vibe toward the end of the music video suggests that Minogue is unsure if her beloved (if we) will accept her love.
Is he (are we) so predictably faithful? Or, do we show signs of movement, signs of promise? And what does it mean to be(come) promising?
Consider the concluding aphorism (#121) of Adam Phillips’s book, Monogamy:
“Monogamy and infidelity: the difference between making a promise and being promising.”3
Is infidelity the opposite of monogamy? Perhaps.
It’s also possible to think the difference between them, a loving monogamy: a promise to an-other (“All the lovers that have gone before / They don’t compare / To you) that is always promising: a promise that moves, spills, bounces, responds to the pull of what is unpredictable, ungovernable, surprising, namely the presence of an-other.
Minogue may have been tempted to give up on her beloved (and on us). But she doesn’t give up on him (nor does she give up on us). Rather, Minogue gives him (and us) the Spirit.
Kylie Minogue, “All The Lovers” (music video still), 2010.
In the Christian faith, the Spirit pours out the lover’s love into the hearts of unsuspecting (undeserving even) beloveds. The Spirit is a promise that makes us all promising.
The Spirit makes in-fidelis of us all.
FOOTNOTES:
- Notice the QR codes on the falling objects. Some assert that when scanned, the word love is produced. There is no way of knowing if that is true, as we cannot scan the codes. I asked ChatGPT about the meaning(s) of the QR codes. According to ChatGPT, “the QR codes add to the video’s visual complexity and modern flair, enhancing the viewer’s experience through their design and the thematic associations they evoke.” ↩︎
- One way to understand the whiteness of the marshmallows, elephant, horse, etc. is as a kind of highlighter, enabling this critical theme to stick out from the multiracial, multisexual background of the sociality of love constructed by Minogue. ↩︎
- See a cool interview with Phillips re: Monogamy here: https://www.salon.com/1997/02/19/monogamy/
From the interview:
“[Q:] Here is the final aphorism from your book: ‘Monogamy and infidelity: the difference between making a promise and being promising.’ Why is this your exit line?
[Phillips:] Because I think that when one is writing about relationships between people, one is writing to some degree about promise. About possibilities for the future and predictions about the future. To enter into a relationship is a kind of prophetic act — it implies a future even though it is an unknown one. And it implies a future in which there are certain kinds of pleasures possible. So I suppose I am interested in what people can give to each other, and what people imagine others can give to them. It’s something about that — the idea of being able to make a promise, and the idea of being promising in spite of the promises one makes as well as because of them. That’s what I am interested in.” ↩︎