1990
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INXS (a phonetic play on "in excess") were an Australian rock band, formed as the Farriss Brothers in 1977 in Sydney. [4] [5] The founding members were bassist Garry Gary Beers, main composer and keyboardist Andrew Farriss, drummer Jon Farriss, guitarist Tim Farriss, lead singer and main lyricist Michael Hutchence, and guitarist and saxophonist ...
- The Farriss Brothers
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- 1977–2012
- Max Q
Learn about the history, achievements and legacy of INXS, one of the world’s greatest rock bands with over 70 million records sold worldwide. Explore their discography, awards, tour dates and more on their official website.
- Bitter Tears
- Kiss The Dirt
- What You Need
- Disappear
- I Send A Message
- Beautiful Girl
- Mystify
- New Sensation
- Suicide Blonde
- By My Side
A Rolling Stones-lite rock and soul workout, the fourth single from X still shimmied and shook, although the tide was beginning to run out on the band by the time of its release as a single in February 1991 – the song peaked at No 36 on the Australian charts, 30 in the UK and 46 in the US. But as a live act, INXS were at their peak: a few months la...
The third single from INXS’s fifth album Listen Like Thieves showcases the group’s command of space, with its clanging opening chords followed by silence. What follows is lean, taut rock, with only a brief rave-up towards the end breaking the tension between Andrew Farriss’s keyboards, which lift the song up, and Garry Gary Beers’s bass, which cont...
The beginning of INXS’s imperial period was kicked off by a leftover. At the end of recording sessions for Listen Like Thieves, producer Chris Thomas didn’t hear the international hit craved by the group and their US label Atlantic. Trawling through demos, Andrew Farriss brought back a groove called Funk Song No 13. The eventual result was the band...
The “do-do-do doo-do-do” introduction is one of those melodies that feels like it was always there – it just took Hutchence until 1990 to sing it. It’s so obvious and innately human that if that was all Disappear was, it would probably still have been a hit. The rest is just scaffolding: the churning chorus is almost superfluous by comparison, with...
INXS’s fourth album The Swing was well-named: it’s the hinge-point demarcating the band’s early, skinny new wave from the more assured amalgam of pop, rock and funk that followed. It was also a great booty-shaker, with four singles peeled off. The second, I Send a Message, has endured despite its affectations, including Hutchence’s call of “Hey Tim...
INXS’s last flash of greatness, from 1992’s Welcome to Wherever You Are. By then, Nirvana had blown the superstars of the 80s off the map, and INXS found themselves chasing the pack with a notably harder rock sound. But on this lovely, delicate homage by Andrew Farriss to his baby daughter, the band sounded unabashedly themselves. It was the fifth ...
The fifth and final single from Kick, with finger-snaps accompanying Andrew Farriss’s barrelling piano chords. Those snaps demonstrate the unshakeable arrogance of a band at the top of its game: everything INXS tried was working, with every part contributing to the incredibly tight whole. The song’s title was taken by the band’s longtime video coll...
Kick begins with an anomalous song called Guns in the Sky, but that’s really just a scene-setter for New Sensation, which introduces the true sound of the album: relentless Prince-style funk riffs, anchored by a hard four-on-the-floor rhythm. It’s also all about the singer, more than the song. Hutchence is the maximum rock’n’roll star here, his voc...
After the jaw-dropping success of Kick, INXS weren’t about to mess with the formula, and the follow-up, X, rehashed it, with diminishing creative returns. It was late 1990, and they wouldn’t have the world’s ear for much longer, but for the time being it was still their oyster. The Stones would have killed for X’s lead cut Suicide Blonde, with its ...
The lyrics stand out here, as Hutchence stares down the contradiction of incomprehensible stardom and loneliness: “Rooms full of strangers / Some call me friends / But I wish you were so close to me.” Here, he made the best use of his lower register, recalling the croon of Iggy Pop circa The Idiot. But the chorus of this big piano ballad was made t...
- 4 min
- Andrew Stafford
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One Of The Greatest Bands Of All Time
