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Syllabus
That these silly middlebrow hacks should hang in long enough to become stars is the usual biz fable. That they should do so with danceable rock and roll that sounds smart in the background is one more sign that the world is coming to an end.
—Robert Cristgau
- Kick (affiliate links)
- Lyrics
- Wikipedia: INXS, Kick
- Reviews: Cristgau
- Tuner Podcast
- Always Already Podcast
I feel like the specific combination of elements in INXS, if they came out today might be a band that was best known for having a song in an Apple commercial. And that combined with your mentions of clip art and rocking with the machine, and earlier, listening on a Walkman gave me this thought: this is the beginning of Macintosh Rock.
Also, the brief discussion of Australia makes me very much hope that you’ll do The Church’s Starfish once you get to 1988.
Oh, and to elabotate on the rocking with the machine thing: I have a Pandora station called “Music for Querying Databases”. The original seed for it was Ratatat, specifically the song “Loud Pipes” whixh syncs up perfectly with the little spinning loading ring in SQL Server Reporting Services.
I was in high school when this album broke. There were two people who had the INXS cassette in their collection. Yes everyone I knew that has INXS had it on cassette. The first were people who had Duran Duran and Wham in their collection. It seems in that same kind of dance-electronic rock in their collection.
It was also in the collection of people who liked hair metal, but not other metal. It was almost the outer limit of that collection.
There is a song on this album where you can do the dance from the movie Can’t Buy Me Love. It went over well with my group of friends at High School Dances.
https://youtu.be/3gG0KlxZvGA
Side Note: You talked about the status of Punk in 1987. In my corner of the world, in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia, Punk was a thing of the past. It was something that had happened and kids dressed up like for Halloween. The only kid in my high school with a mohawk was a kid who also did close in magic. Hardcore had replaced Punk for the guys I knew. Yes they were almost all guys. The kids who went to Hardcore shows would never listen to INXS. No one I ever knew asked the question if INXS had anything to do with Punk or Hardcore.