Songoftheday 10/7/15 - All you got is this moment, the twenty-first century's yesterday...

"Need You Tonight" - INXS
from the album Kick (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 17

Today's SOTD is by the Australian new wave band INXS, who scored their first top-10 pop hit in America in the spring of 1986 with the ultra-funky "What You Need". They also teamed up with fellow Antipodean rocker Jimmy Barnes for the Lost Boys soundtrack cut "Good Times" which was a top-10 rock/top-50 pop hit as well. After their successful tour, the group recorded their sixth studio album Kick. A more soul and rock leaning than their previously synth-rock beginnings (but hinted on with "Good Times"), their record company foolishly attempted to reject what would become one of the biggest and best albums of the decade. The first single from the record, "Need You Tonight", was a slice of a different style of funk, with the bass line and guitar hook unencumbered by a wall of synth noise, allowing lead singer and co-writer Michael Hutchence's voice to snake around it with a winning set of come-ons that no woman could refuse. The music video combined "Need You Tonight" into the album track "Mediate", which had the band recreating the classic clip for Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" from 1965...

Despite that record exec's pessimism, "Need You Tonight" became INXS' first #1 pop hit in the U.S. in January of 1988, going on to spend 17 weeks in the top-40 (the most of any single in 1988). The single also climbed to #12 on Billboard's rock radio chart, while landing them their sole appearance on the R&B list at #73. The extended version (with "Mediate") claimed their best position on the Dance Club Play chart at #7. Internationally, the song stopped at the runner-up position in Canada, the UK, and Ireland, while peaking at #3 in their native Australia as well as New Zealand, and top-10 in France, Belgium, and Italy.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


Both Julian Mendelsohn and Ben Liebrand remixed the song for the clubs and the track hit the top-10 on Billboard's dance chart. Here's Ben's take...

Here's the band live in 1988...

...and again at Wembley Arena in 1991...

...and over to Japan in 1994...

...lastly for them in 1997 before Michael's sad death....

In 2003, the Australian dance act Rogue Traders interpolated the song into their single 'One Of My Kind' which climbed to #10 in their homeland...

New remixes of the song were released in 2006 from Static Revenger, and the track re-entered the Dance chart at #16...

Five years later, the "b-side" "Mediate" got the remix treatment from Ralphi Rosario featuring trip-hop king Tricky and climbed to #5 on the club list in Billboard in 2011...

In 2010 British rapper Professor Green incorporated the song into a new creation, "I Need You Tonight", featuring singer Ed Drewett, which went to #3 on the British singles chart...

Lastly, here's fellow countryman (and former lover of Michael Hutchence) Kylie Minogue, who covered the song in her most recent tour Kiss Me Once, mashed up with INXS's video...

Up tomorrow: A decade-old tribute to a fallen movie angel becomes a live hit for a dramatic piano man.