Reaching For The Stars, Vol. 124

My Easter weekend extends through today, so I’ll save the weekend notes for tomorrow and instead get back on the Reaching For The Stars horse after too long of a break.

Chart Week: April 5, 1986
Song: “What You Need” – INXS
Chart Position: #6, 12th week on the chart. Peaked at #5 the week of April 12.

I’ve been writing this series long enough that there are several recurring themes. Today we will look at a single that was a last-minute addition to a nearly-finished album.[1] Not only did it become the album’s biggest hit, it is the song that launched the band into worldwide superstardom.

INXS were already a big deal in their homeland of Australia by 1986, with 11 charting singles including the #1 “Original Sin.”[2] But in the US, they barely scraped the Top 40 once; 1983’s “The One Thing,” peaking at #30.[3] In 1985 they were days from completing their fifth studio album, Listen Like Thieves. However, producer Chris Thomas felt the project lacked an obvious hit and refused to sign off on the final track list.

The band dug into a pile of demos they had set aside. Multi-instrumentalist Andrew Farriss zeroed in on one called “Funk Song No. 13.” He loved the groove and thought it had potential. The band agreed, went back to work, and within 48 hours had recorded “What You Need.”

Stories like that fascinate me. How can bands work for months, sometimes years, on an album, be told they are missing a radio hit, then crank out a monster in a matter of hours?[4] Like, why hadn’t “Funk Song No. 13” inspired INXS earlier in their process?

Obviously it was a good thing for both the band and the listening public that Thomas told the band to keep at it.

INXS were always a hard-to-define act. Although they came along in the early Eighties, they weren’t New Wave. While they landed on the alternative rock chart in the Nineties, they were never a true alt-rock band.[5] They had a unique amalgam of influences that seems like it could only come from Australia. Pub rock roots for sure. While not true funk, certainly a danceable side that had a connection to disco, useful when Duran Duran was selling millions of records. Straight down the middle rock guitars. And the honking saxophone that was the cherry on top of their sundae of sounds.

Although “What You Need” did well around the world, it was biggest in Australia and the US, where it peaked at #2 and #3 respectively. More importantly, it led INXS to a sound they refined and took to another level on their next album, Kick. That was when INXS became, briefly, one of the biggest bands in the world.

“What You Need” has a bit of an odd structure. But I think those unexpected elements contributed to its appeal. In the end, it was a no-doubter of a hit. It appealed to listeners across multiple demographic lines. Dudes liked it because it rocked. Girls liked it because you could dance to it. I don’t think Black radio played it, but it wasn’t too far removed from some other white music that made it on to Urban radio playlists at the time. Michael Hutchence was an incredible front man, with both a fine voice and incredibly magnetic presence. He also might have been one of the most beautiful people to ever walk this earth. His whole presentation – visuals and lyrics – was loaded with an undeniable and universal sexuality, but you could still listen to INXS songs with your parents and it not get awkward. Put all that together and you have a recipe for the archetypical mid-Eighties pop-rock track.

I loved the record because it was in constant rotation right when spring was blossoming my freshman year in high school. We had moved into a new house the previous fall and this was my first opportunity to enjoy our big deck on warm afternoons, or shoot hoops in the driveway after school. Regardless of what I was doing, my boombox was with me, tuned to either Q–104 or ZZ–99, and “What You Need” was definitely a song I turned the volume up a little higher for. I am 100% positive it was on the Spring of ’86 mixtape I made by recording songs off the radio, in there with Van Halen’s “Why Can’t This Be Love,” “Kiss” by Prince, and Force MD’s “Tender Love” among many, many others. It was a terrific spring for music.

Although “What You Need” was not the best song on Listen Like Thieves,[6] it was the song INXS needed in the moment. Good on Chris Thomas for pushing them to make it happen. 8/10