My day job is going to demand some extra attention from me for the next little while and then I am taking Mrs. Alternative Reality on a vacation. So, I will likely be taking off the entire month of September. I am sad about this and hope that all of you will stay with me and continue to support my site once I return. However, for my own sanity and some needed family time, I am taking a break. There is a small chance I will get one more band in mid-month for a week but I think it most likely that I will be back for October. Until then, reread some of the old posts and I’ll see you around.
INXS’s album X had sold well and produced hits, but it also had been a holding pattern of sorts, a near-replication of the sound and production of their massive-selling hit album Kick. The band likely knew they would have to (and perhaps wanted to) go in a new musical direction, but even if they had been content to keep making albums that sounded like Kick or X the release of Nirvana’s Nevermind and its massive hit “Smells Like Teen Spirit” had changed everything for INXS. Their sound, the embodiment of sexy cool and the blueprint for alt rock crossover success, suddenly sounded and felt dated and if INXS wanted to stay relevant they would have to change. To their credit they did and 1992’s Welcome To Wherever You Are is one of their best and most interesting albums, even if it didn’t produce the massive hits of its predecessors. Welcome To Wherever You Are is impressively eclectic, opening with the Eastern-tinged mantra of “Questions” before moving into the punky garage rock of lead single “Heaven Sent”. Wisely, INXS didn’t try to jump on the grunge rock bandwagon, but “Heaven Sent” is rough and ragged enough to at least feel of the time and is a solid song even if it didn’t become a hit. Elsewhere on Welcome To Wherever You Are INXS offers up the dance rock of “Taste It”, which feels like a 90’s update on their classic sound, the sexy pulse of “Not Enough Time”, and the pop rock of “Baby Don’t Cry”. All throughout Welcome To Wherever You Are INXS is given room to experiment and the production is stripped back enough to let the band have some rough edges. This approach perhaps works best on the quiet, melancholy “Beautiful Girl”. “Beautiful Girl” is allowed to be simple and intimate and this underproduced approach serves the song well by lending it a hushed beauty and quiet power that would likely have been glossed away on earlier INXS records. Like most of the singles from Welcome To Wherever You Are “Beautiful Girl” was only a middling hit, but it spotlights that INXS could have continued to be creative and successful in a new era with the right songs and production. From here INXS’s career became more erratic. When Welcome To Wherever You Are didn’t become another smash hit the band quickly followed it up with Full Moon, Dirty Hearts, an overcorrection that pushed INXS into full-blown 90’s sound bandwagon territory. Back to back commercial (and, in the case of Full Moon, Dirty Hearts, critical) disappointments led INXS to take some time off and their next album of new material, Elegantly Wasted, wasn’t released for four more years. Elegantly Wasted returned the band to more of its classic sound but it did not improve the band’s commercial fortunes much although the title track was a minor hit. Five months after the album’s release singer Michael Hutchence was found dead in a hotel room. Officially the death was called a suicide but there is some suspicion that a head injury Hutchence had received four years earlier may have also been a factor as Hutchence’s behavior and demeanor had been different and erratic since that time. Following the death of Hutchence the band took some time off before playing the occasional shows with guest singers. Eventually the band chose Jonn Stevens as Hutchence’s replacement and went on tour with him (I saw them on this tour and they were surprisingly excellent). Stevens however became frustrated that the band was so slow to work on new material and chose to leave the band. Ultimately, INXS found a new lead singer via the American TV show Rock Star: INXS. Canadian J.D. Fortune won the show and eventually recorded the album Switch with the band. Switch contained the minor hit “Pretty Vegas”. INXS had played music sporadically since that time both with and without Fortune on vocals but disbanded officially in 2012.
Kick had been a huge success and INXS toured behind the album extensively. The band then took a well deserved long break before heading back to the studio to record the follow-up album X. INXS chose to name their seventh album X because the album was released ten years after their debut and “X” is the Roman numeral for ten. Kick had been such a huge success that for the follow-up INXS decided to not shake things up too much. The band once again worked with producer Chris Thomas and INXS and Thomas decided to follow a similar writing and recording process as they had used for Kick. Following such a similar process meant that X, unsurprisingly, sounds and feels similar to Kick. On the one hand, this is a positive as Kick was a huge hit that brought many new fans to the band and therefore it is understandable that INXS would want to continue in that direction both to have more success and to keep those fans. On the other hand though, as good as X is, and it is very good, it is hard not to feel a little let down by it because it offers so few surprises and can’t help but pale in comparison to Kick, both because Kick did the same thing first and did it slightly better. X is a good record and a fitting follow-up to Kick, but it also feels like INXS played it just a little too safe. This is reaffirmed by the fact that the best songs on X are the ones that do offers something a little bit new and unexpected. One of these moments is the cinematic drama of “The Stairs”, which finds INXS trying out the type of epic storytelling that is usually the realm of U2 or Simple Minds and doing it very well. Another moment that has a surprising punch to it is the lead single “Suicide Blonde”. For the most part “Suicide Blonde” would have been right at home on Kick but the harmonica sample provided by noted American blues musician Charlie Musselwhite gives the song an edge it would otherwise be lacking; that harmonica sample serves as an aural hook for the song that draws you into Hutchence’s tale of desire (inspired by his then-girlfriend pop singer Kylie Minogue). “Suicide Blonde” was a hit, going to #11 in the UK and #9 in the US (#1 on the US alternative rock charts) and would be followed up by several more hits from X with “Disappear”, “Bitter Tears” and “By My Side”, although each of these singles charted lower than what came before. In many ways X feels like one of the last big alternative crossover albums of the 1980’s (even though it came out in 1990) and when INXS next released an album they would have to deal with a very different alternative rock landscape as Nirvana’s Nevermind will have rewritten the alt rock rules by then.
INXS’s album Kick was a massive hit on the back of the excellent “Need You Tonight/Mediate”. Unlike their previous album Listen Like Thieves, which stalled after the lead single “What You Need” faded from the charts, Kick continued to have hit singles. Both the grimy rocker “Devil Inside” and the new wave colored pop rocker “New Sensation” were nearly as successful as “Need You Tonight/Mediate”; both going Top 10 in the USA and having success in many other markets around the world as well. For the fourth single from Kick INXS released the ballad “Never Tear Us Apart”, which went on to become the fourth American Top 10 single from Kick. “Never Tear Us Apart” is driven by its synth/string riff that provides a steady, rhythmic pulse that allows Michael Hutchence to show off the emotional power of his singing. “Never Tear Us Apart” was INXS’s shot at creating their own masterpiece ballad of conflicted emotion, a song to stand aside other 80’s alternative ballads like U2’s “With Or Without You”, OMD’s “If You Leave”, Depeche Mode’s “A Question of Lust” or Alphaville’s “Forever Young”. In some ways “Never Tear Us Apart” was the capstone to INXS’s late 80’s domination as with the four big singles from Kick they proved they could have a hit with a wide variety of songs, including an emotive ballad. Indeed, the success of “Never Tear Us Apart” led to the release of a fifth single from Kick in some markets with “Mystify”. “Mystify” is another great song but the steam, at least in the USA, was finally running out on Kick and “Mystify” didn’t even make the Top 40 in America. However, in the UK where INXS had struggled to gain traction throughout their career, “Mystify” was the second highest charting single the band had ever achieved, only bested by “Never Tear Us Apart”.
An Artist A Week/A Song A Day – A History of Alternative Music:
4. “Need You Tonight/Mediate” – INXS
(From the album Kick)
1987
By 1987 INXS had made the hard, slow climb to international stardom. Their debut album INXS had earned them some attention at home in Australia while their second album Underneath The Colours had given them a real Australian hit. The third album Shabooh Shoobah made them one of the biggest bands in Australia and earned them their first international notice. INXS had built on that momentum and had a successful international hit song with their fourth album The Swing and were able to finally hit the big time with the success of “What You Need” and their fifth album Listen Like Thieves. Listen Like Thieves had been an inconsistent record though and the album had not had any true follow-up hits to “What You Need”. So for their sixth album Kick INXS made a conscious effort to not have any filler on the album. For Kick the band’s stated goal was to make every song different and to have every song be good enough to be a hit single. If they didn’t achieve that lofty goal they at least came very close. INXS worked with producer Chris Thomas and recorded the album in Paris and Sydney. While nearly every song on Kick does sound different than the others and across the album the band explores a wide range of genres and styles, it is also clear that the rock meets new wave meets pop meets funk formula of “What You Need” was the blueprint for the album. Shockingly, when INXS submitted the finished album to Atlantic Records the label was unhappy with it and offered the band one million dollars to redo the album. INXS refused and Atlantic reluctantly released Kick as it was. INXS’s bet on themselves paid off. Kick became a huge hit and one of the defining albums of the late 80’s, spinning off four US Top Ten singles (and several other songs that earned radio play). The first of these hits (and perhaps the song that best captures the sound associated with INXS) is the first single “Need You Tonight”. Built off a sexy, slinky riff and rhythm “Need You Tonight” combines the swagger of rock, the groove of funk, a glossy pop shine, and a vocal performance by Michael Hutchence that oozes sex. It went to #1 in the US, #2 in the UK (the one place INXS had not previously found success as their previous high chart position in the UK was #46), #2 in Canada, and #3 in both Australia and New Zealand. The band had not only followed up the success of “What You Need”, they had bettered it. On the Kick album “Need You Tonight” is sequenced to immediately flow into the next song, the rap/funk mantra of “Mediate”, which is built on the same basic beat. For the video for the single INXS combined the two songs and had them play continuously as “Need You Tonight/Mediate”. While different songs with different moods the two work together well, with “Mediate” serving as a thoughtful coda to the lust-filled pulse of “Need You Tonight”. The video for “Need You Tonight/Mediate” dominated at the MTV video awards (and other video awards) and combined the cool, hybrid real-life/animated video for “Need You Tonight” with a video for “Mediate” that is an homage to Bob Dylan’s famous pre-MTV era video for “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. All of the success and accolades given to INXS for “Need You Tonight/Mediate” were just a start though. Kick would have several more hits and help to make INXS, for a time, one of the biggest rock bands on the planet.
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