Let's Rank All The INXS Albums!
I may say stuff like this frequently, but INXS was truly one of my favorite bands. They’ve meant a ton to me going back to when they first appeared sitting around that decadent banquet table with the hot chicks eating those figs on MTV in the video for The One Thing! Hehe… I remember seeing them first thing in the morning on MTV on the day of Live Aid as they performed via satellite from Australia and recording it on VCR.
And Michael Hutchence - as cool as a frontman has ever been. When he died that hit me really hard. Kurt Cobain, Prince, Layne Staley - plenty of artists who die young affect me, and Prince might have been the worst but Michael Hutchence was close - I still get sad when I think about it. They recorded 10 full length studio albums from 1980 to 1997 and then one more with JD Fortune on vocals (more on that later) in 2005 and these are the albums I’m ranking. No live or compilation releases. Let’s get into it:
See all INXS artwork at www.INXS.com
11. INXS - 1980 A little goofy & awkward. Good energy and decent sound quality but this is a young INXS who don’t have quite have the songs yet. It still sounds like them, but they just weren’t there yet. The opener On A Bus and Just Keep Walking are okay.
10. Switch - 2005 Is it blasphemy to rank an album with JD Fortune on vocals ahead of anything with Michael Hutchence? I mean maybe, but the “Rock Star” reality show with the band looking to pick their new lead singer was actually really cool and JD does sound a LOT like Hutchence. He turned out to be a bit…..troubled we’ll say. But meanwhile I think the creative release was good for the band and they were seasoned pros at this point. They still knew how to write a good song or two and there are a few highlights on this album. Pretty Vegas, Afterglow and Hungry are all pretty good songs. I really don’t listen to this album anymore but it was good to have the guys making music again at the time.
9. Underneath The Colours - 1981 The band starts to show some real signs on their sophomore effort in my opinion. The opener Stay Young and the title track are winners - the latter in particular is where they first start to sound like the INXS we all know and the album just sounds more substantial than the debut. Nothing stands out as a classic here per se but I do like this album. It just might not be for anyone who isn’t more than a casual fan.
8. Shabooh Shoobah - 1982 Same thoughts as Underneath The Colours with the exception of two of their very best songs ever in the aforementioned The One Thing and the anthem Don’t Change which would be their concert closer throughout their history. The videos for these two are classic and were played in heavy rotation on MTV - this is where they start to hit it big… The rest of the album is still good with To Look At You being another highlight.
7. X - 1990 The follow up to the mega blockbuster Kick, X looked like it would continue at that level with the opening blast Suicide Blonde - one of their best - but overall it’s the weakest of the albums that followed Shabooh Shoobah in my opinion. It follows the blueprint of Kick which frankly would be fine but eventually you realize it’s just not as strong. Maybe they were a little burned out? None of it is “bad” but too much of it is just not memorable. Disappear, The Stairs, By My Side, Bitter Tears and Know The Difference are all very good.
6. Welcome To Wherever You Are - 1992 Everything from here on out on this list is amazing. The final three albums INXS recorded starting with this one saw them slip back out of the Top 10 on the charts in the U.S. but it certainly wasn’t due to any decline in overall quality of the music. Taste It and Not Enough Time are classics in my mind and the whole album is solid. Definitely a stronger set of songs than on X even though X was a bigger hit as an LP. Beautiful Girl, Baby Don’t Cry, Wishing Well, Back On Line, Communication, Strange Desire - all great. At this point in their career INXS knew how to make great INXS albums.
5. Full Moon, Dirty Hearts - 1993 It was between Welcome To Wherever You Are and this album that Michael Hutchence was punched by a taxi driver in Copenhagen, fell and fractured his skull. The injury caused him to lose his sense of smell and taste. It changed him - always upsets me to think about it. From what I’ve read he struggled badly for a time when they started working on this album, eventually recovered to a degree but was never totally the same. Meanwhile the album is still fantastic though and includes duets with Chrissie Hynde on the title track and Ray Charles with Please (You Got That…) which are just so great. The band performed the latter on Letterman with Ray Charles - awesome. To me albums 2-5 are all pretty interchangeable in terms of quality - it actually pains me to rank this one 5th out of 11. The album didn’t sell that well and received mixed reviews which is a total joke.
4. The Swing - 1984 This is the album where the band really turned the corner creatively and released an album with really strong tunes throughout. The big tracks aren’t quite as special as The One Thing and Don’t Change from the previous Shabooh Shoobah, but overall this is a better album. Original Sin is the obvious big hit and a great way to kick it off with the great Jon Farriss drum blast - the youngest Farriss brother was an extremely underrated drummer in my opinion. Other highlights here are Melting In The Sun, Love Is (What I Say), I Send A Message and Burn For You, but really the whole album is strong.
3. Elegantly Wasted - 1997 The final album with Michael Hutchence and they went out with a great one. The title track is a slinky funky jam and very representative of the INXS sound. Not one dud on the whole album. Some really beautiful songs too including She Is Rising which is a tribute to the Farriss brothers’ mom who had recently passed. I haven’t talked about all of the individual band members much but INXS was definitely a BAND. Andrew Farriss on keys seems to have been the strongest songwriter, Tim Farriss the badass axeman who always exuded a ton of swagger himself, Kirk Pengilly kind of the Swiss Army Knife on guitar and sax - a key INXS element, and Gary Gary Beers holding down the bottom and bringing plenty of funk on bass. All of these guys had plenty of personality which was part of what made INXS so great. Don’t Lose Your Head is one of the best vocal performances I’ve heard Michael deliver, and Searching and I’m Just A Man are both really nice - deep introspection here without bringing down the vibe at all - beautiful stuff.
2. Kick - 1987 THE BLOCKBUSTER. This was THE album that put these guys over the top. Not that the prior three albums weren’t all progressively bigger hits that made them pretty well known, but Kick was the peak. And unlike R.E.M.’s Out Of Time, U2’s Achtung Baby or the Metallica Black album, this was no sellout. This is quintessential INXS and contains everything that’s great about this band. The videos were iconic and the songs are some of the best of the ‘80’s. Where to start? How about with the gut punch of Guns In The Sky to open it? What an incredible opening blast - as heavy as anything they ever recorded. Actually if there’s one thing you can count on with these guys is they’re going to LET YOU KNOW they’re here to bring the energy the moment the needle drops which they do on just about every album. New Sensation, Devil Inside and Need You Tonight / Mediate come next and at this point the album starts to sound like a greatest hits collection. And Need You Tonight / Mediate is in the conversation for best video of that decade. All the band members are featured in a collage of visuals even while Michael Hutchence steals the screen and puts all of his aura and front man magnetism on display, and then they wrap it up with the Bob Dylan Subterranean Homesick Blues tribute - just so incredibly COOL. Never Tear Us Apart is one of the most beautiful ballads ever and also a gorgeous video. Mystify, Tiny Daggers, Wild Life & Calling All Nations are also highlights. The only reason this album isn’t number 1 on this list is because to me the songs The Loved One and the title track are not quite as good - they are good, just not great. It’s a really minor complaint…
1. Listen Like Thieves - 1985 My desert island album from INXS. This is one of my favorite albums ever recorded by any band ever - not kidding even a little. So stay with me here - I’m a history fanatic - it’s all I read and I owe much of my love of history to the late great Jerry Maxwell who was my high school history teacher and mentor. He was the one who really set me on this course and I’ve visited about 70 battlefields - most of them from the American War Between The States (aka The Civil War). The very first one I went to was Antietam in Sharpsburg, Maryland which is one of the best ones to see and the single bloodiest day in the history of American warfare. I was visiting my brother Dan at law school in D.C. at the time and we drove to the battlefield. I’m pretty sure I was 15 and had just taken Mr. Maxwell’s Civil War class and I was so amped up and even a little nervous to see a real battlefield. We were listening to Listen Like Thieves as we pulled into the visitors center and as we headed out onto the battlefield. Now certainly it’s the association I have with that moment that made it memorable, but that album is now my battlefield album and I listen to it every single time I’m on a battlefield. I can’t explain why it’s so perfect for that vibe, and there’s a chance no one else would ever get that but me, but I encourage you to familiarize yourself with the album a little, visit a battlefield, and have it playing as you’re driving around touring it. It would make me so happy if someone actually did this. I actually limit how much I listen to this album so I don’t ever wear it out over my lifetime - I don’t want to mess with its power. Meanwhile let’s talk about the album itself. Another big time drum intro sets us up for What You Need which was the last song they threw together for the album on the last day because the producer was worried there was no “hit” on it. Perfect opener “Hey - here is the story. Forget about your troubles in life!” This is what we need to be sure, and it’s the first full realization of that INXS funky rock thing they do - the blueprint, and also their first top 10 hit, reaching #5. Also a very cool video. From there to the title track which is phenomenal, but it’s the next two that get me… Kiss The Dirt (Falling Down The Mountain) could be my favorite INXS song, and the video of them in their homeland way out in the outback is something else… That little “doo de doo” throughout the song is everything. Thing is, Shine Like It Does is next, and that song is also in the convo for my favorite. Just gorgeous. “Shine like it does into every heart and if you’re looking you may find it…” Shine Like It Does is also the title of a Michael Hutchence bio and a Greatest Hits collection of the band, and here’s a nice post from a blog about the '80’s written about that song over 30 years after its release. The next two tracks are also fantastic - I dare anyone to try to tell me Good + Bad Times and Biting Bullets are “filler”. Next is actually the first single from the album This Time, and I can remember loving it the very first time I heard it come on the radio in the North Farmington High School weight room. Somehow I feel this song has been a bit lost as an INXS classic - as good a single as they ever released. Here’s a great live performance of it from 1985. Next is the only instrumental that I can think of that they ever put on an album, Three Sisters and it’s SO cool. One of my favorite instrumentals by anyone. I wish they would have put one on all their albums. Same Direction is next and I think it’s bizarre that the producer didn’t think there was a hit until they recorded What You Need because This Time and Same Direction both sound like hits to me but Same Direction wasn’t released as a single. The LP closes out with One X One and Red Red Sun and I love them both - I guess you could say they’re a tad anticlimactic based on the sequencing but they are both still great in my opinion. So there it is… I guess I could have written a whole post on just this album haha… It just means so much to me. I hope you give it a shot if you haven’t before.
Please share your comments and/or your own ranking below and thanks for reading!
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