“Need You Tonight” by INXS

This was the song that turned me on to INXS. The video is pretty great, too. It’s just the band playing, but they’re being playful, and the visual effects, the musicians sliding into and out of the frame in collage-like isolation, holds one's attention. 

The album featuring “Need You Tonight,” Kick, was on my Christmas list. We always put a few things on the Christmas list — so we could be surprised but still get what we wanted — “Oh! You got me that one!” I don’t remember what I didn’t get in lieu of Kick. I was happy to get Kick!

I felt like I was on the cutting edge, man. 

“Need You Tonight” was one of those songs that I would rush to the record player to repeat, picking up the needle, eyeing the shiny line between songs, and settling the needle back to where it would pick up those opening clicks. It’s just that light percussion for the first several seconds, then Michael Hutchence stage-whispers, “Come over here.” 

Seductive! Michael Hutchence is pretty! I would have come to his command. Of the other band members, Tim Farriss, who appears in the video in a black baseball cap, always caught my eye. Those dark brows and big eyes. 

Finally, a guitar strums, sharp and jangly, at 20 seconds. The riff is repeated. A few seconds later the warm throb of the rest of the music bumps up and carries you along through the rest of the song. “All you’ve got is this moment,” Hutchence says, though, as I often do, I had trouble picking out the words. Something about a garden? “The twenty-first century's yesterday.” It is? Well, I like lyrics that are a little odd. 

While I want the lyrics of a song to please me, the lyrics are rarely what first get into my ear. If I don’t groove to the music, I don’t much care what they’re saying. Sadly, you’ll have to forgive me in regards to critical analysis of music. Beyond the lyrics my analysis isn’t much better than the old American Bandstand rate-a-record standby, “It’s got a good beat. You can dance to it.” And “Need You Tonight” passes that test!

When Hutchence gets to “Slide over here / And give me a moment,” I’m ready, I’m dancing, I’ve been dancing, what? does he want me to stop dancing? But it’s the refrain, “You’re one of my kind,” that stuck with me. As one searching for his kind, it’s something I wanted to be able to say. Not to mention, “I’m lonely.” As an intermittent insomniac, I identified with “I’m not sleeping, whether or not it was because I was really hot for somebody.

I like the question / answer part of the lyrics, especially the answer to “Whatcha gonna do?” “Gonna live my life!”

Yes, Hutchence is addressing this to a “girl,” but the best those of us with same sex yearnings could hope for in pop music (until very recently) was a genderless “you.” And, you know, “girl” just becomes punctuation after a while. “I need you tonight,” I sang along. “I need you tonight.”

source: Live 105's Cool 105.3 for 1987