Michael Hutchence. Largely forgotten?*

Was listening to Listen Like Thieves just today. Doesn’t sound dated at all. Sounds just as good as it always did.

 

Sunspot, how much INXS have you actually listened to by interest?

 

I was wondering when Spotify would come up. That one's problematic, because folks over 40 haven't adopted it as wholeheartedly as the younger set. Why should they? They already had a CD collection, ripped to iTunes or whatever. They don't really need Spotify the way a generation that never bought music does. So streams for older acts that haven't caught on with younger generations don't give you the full picture of just how popular some legacy acts are. On the other hand, they do give you some idea of which older acts have and haven't made the breakthru to some sort of immortality.

I got the monthly listener numbers for a bunch of the acts mentioned in this thread. Brace yourselves INXS fans, because this list ain't pretty.

Bruno Mars - 32,803,938
Lady Gaga - 30,701,932
Adele - 19,424,486
Guns N' Roses - 16,545,854
Bon Jovi - 14,396,242
Black Eyed Peas - 13,753,029
Oasis - 13,498,578
Nirvana - 13,327,867
U2 - 12,362,163
Pharrell - 8,955,181
George Michael - 8,892,439
REM - 8,525,477
Amy Winehouse - 8,358,246
Cyndi Lauper - 8.102,142
Nickelback - 8,056,646
The 1975 - 7,838,206
The Doors - 7,200,755
Eurythmics 6,969,511
Wham - 6,358,771
Depeche Mode - 6,652,921
Simple Minds - 5,538.089
Tracy Chapman - 5,269,717
Roxette - 5,157,172
Alanis - 4,744,163
Billy Idol - 4,470,360
* INXS - 4,232,746
Kylie - 4,009,717
Poison - 3.075,927
Twisted Sister - 2,973,954
Dave Matthews Band - 2,946,756
Sugar Ray - 2,740,278
Pat Benatar - 2,709,754
Fine Young Cannibals - 1,881,654
Hootie - 1,674,521
A Flock Of Seagulls - 1,631,422
Little River Band - 1,476,159
Dr. Hook - 1,277,598
Midnight Oil - 1,282,955

Sorry to say, but this list pretty much supports the assertion that INXS have been largely forgotten and aren't really part of the great rock canon. Billy Idol is bigger on Spotify, and he's a much older act who presumably appeals to Gen X'ers that have his discs already. And I'd consider Idol third tier, if that.

Amy Winehouse has double their streaming figures, and she has two albums and some outtakes.

Some songs also came up in the conversation, so I looked at their total number of plays:

Sweet Child O'Mine - 565,819,984
Don't You (Forget About Me) - 252,673,992
Need You Tonight - 106,439172

Again, Simple Minds dwarf INXS here, and deservedly so - "Don't You (Forget About Me)" is one of the great hits of the '80s. "Need You Tonight"? Not so much. (I'd say "Never Tear Us Apart" is probably their greatest single from an artistic standpoint, but its streams aren't that great, just 69 million. If any INXS song deserves to be rediscovered, it's that one or "The One Thing" in my opinion. Maybe someday...)

 

Kick, which I owned, and back in the day Listen Like Thieves and X, via friends. Which I liked, but not enough to buy at the time.

I've been spinning the rest the past two days. So far, finding them wildly uneven. The debut is the most interesting - a slice of New Wave I hadn't heard before, which always makes me happy. The rest are clearly striving for something (especially The Swing) but their reach exceeds their grasp.

Maybe they'll grow on me. I've chucked them all on my Spotify "I've always wanted..." playlist, so they'll be in regular rotation. Unfortunately The Swing isn't on Spotify, which is too bad because it's the one I'd peg as "most likely to grow on me"...

 

Pretty good figures for INXS to be honest. Let’s not forget how high Nickelback are on that list so the numbers are pretty meaningless. Not that far behind the the 1975 either, considering they’re 30 years older than them.

 

I agree that the albums are uneven and the 2cd greatest hits is all the INXS I’ll ever need, still there is 30 + songs there that can’t really be argued against. My favourite ones being from the Swing/Thieves era don’t really seem that dated to me at all and really deserve a lot more respect than what this forum is dishing out tbh. To say wham! are better is interesting to me but it takes all sorts .

 

I'd kinda disagree with this. He was no Boy George or Peter Gabriel or even Axl in terms of having a distinctive, flexible voice. But I'd give him an 8 for making effective use of his voice.

Yeah, they were too edgy to be a pop band that just skirted the grunge decimation, and too poppy to be a straight ahead rock band that could just plow thru it (or into it).

Maybe they just shoulda gone grunge. Probably would have just been seen as overaged bandwagon jumpers, but who knows. There are grunge touches on Full Moon, Dirty Hearts. They don't really work, but then it feels pasted on. On second thought, maybe they should have dropped the rock pretense and gone totally pop...

Yup, entirely possible.

I think a big problem is that they were either unwilling or unable to stray far enough away from the sound of Kick to get out of their own shadow. In spite of some tweaks to the formula, Elegantly Wasted ends up sounding way too much like Kick, a decade later. They needed a bigger trickbag.

 

Huh? The figures for INXS are awful. The 1975 have only three albums and have never had a Top 40 single in the US. They're critical darlings with - until 2016 - not much of a fanbase in America. I'm actually surprised their streaming figures are as high as they are. I'd imagine most of their streams are driven by the UK, where they're huge, but the UK has a much smaller population than the US.

 

I'm not a huge REM fan, but yeah. I mean, obviously. I wouldn't trade "Nightswimming" for the whole INXS catalog.

 

I completely agree. Boy George should be a far bigger icon than he is. He had one of the greatest voices of his generation. Even Freddie Mercury thought Boy George would have a long career.

 

Lauper has twice as many monthly streamers as INXS though, which is odd because her chart career was at least as abbreviated and came a half-decade earlier. She was arguably bigger when she was big, though.

Billy Idol outstreams them. That's a shocker to me.

Benatar has been largely forgotten, at least by the Spotify crowd. If anyone we've talked about in this thread deserves a rediscovery it's her. She was definitely a unique voice and several of her cuts - including some that are pretty obscure like the title track from Precious Time - kick ass. Also her singing makes Hutchence sound like Tiny Tim...

 

Dude...everybody has seen their streams increase over the past 5 years.

 

Burn level: K/T event

 

Burn level: Crab Nebula supernova.

 

Streaming popularity does not always equal quality, actually mostly it doesn’t. Silly argument.

 

Jokes about suicide. Yeah, what a sick burn.

 

For a band whose former members and management have trashed their legacy it's amazing how well they're remembered.

 

Do we need to get you a safe space? Post a trigger warning?

How un-rock can you get. I think I'm gonna skip INXS for the remainder of the evening and spin The Clash's "The Right Profile" instead...

 

I've always loved Benatar. She was such a strong presence during the 80s, so it's sad to see her reputation has faded. I count her as one of the great female rockers, although I also loved her post-'Love Is A Battlefield' career, which was more pop-oriented.

Haha! This did make me laugh!

 

Well, let’s hope you kill yourself instead.

That’s funny, right?

 

You’re a pretty cool dude sunspot

 

In a topic titled "Michael Hutchence Largely Forgotten About", I think streaming popularity is probably the #1 most useful metric to discuss at this point in the 21st century. It's the best indicator we've got of just how well an act is or isn't remembered.

 

Oooh, the toys are out of the pram now!

 

Not for every part of the community mate, Spotify does not represent every demographic. Maybe the under 40s.

 

I’m not upset. Just calling out a-holes who think suicide is joke worthy or a way of ridiculing someone.