After releasing 4 big-selling albums throughout the first half of the Nineteen Eighties, INXS ranked amongst Australia’s largest rock acts. The band needed one thing greater, although. And it lastly arrived with the discharge of 1985’s assured and completed Pay attention Like Thieves.
With hindsight, the indicators {that a} main breakthrough was imminent had been all too seen. INXS’ third album Shabooh Shoobaah (1982) had gone gold within the U.S. whereas its successor The Swing (1984) featured a minor U.S. hit (the Nile Rodgers-produced “Original Sin”) and solely narrowly missed the High 50 of the Billboard 200.
Order the fortieth anniversary version of INXS’s Pay attention Like Thieves now.
Conscious their subsequent album might take them to the following stage, INXS employed a pedigree producer, Chris Thomas, to supervise Pay attention Like Thieves. Famend for his work with Roxy Music, Intercourse Pistols, and The Pretenders, Thomas was impressed by INXS’ dwell performances and appreciated many of the materials readied for the brand new document. However he additionally knew it didn’t embrace the large hit track the band wanted.
“Chris pulled Michael [Hutchence] and I aside and said we were making a really, really good record, but it wasn’t good enough,” keyboardist/co-songwriter Andrew Farriss instructed American Songwriter in 2021. “[He said] we needed a song that’s going to kick everyone in the ass, something special.”
To extend the stress additional, Thomas supplied Farriss and Hutchence merely 48 hours to jot down this elusive hit. Happily, the band was sitting on a promising demo that appeared to suit the invoice. “My brother Tim [Farriss, guitarist] said ‘Andrew’s got this groove thing, I really like it, why don’t you work on that?’” Farriss instructed American Songwriter. “Michael heard it and liked it too. We messed around with that – and ‘What You Need’ was born.” A splendidly brash pop track driving a monster groove, “What You Need” soared into the U.S. High 5, considerably elevating the band’s profile within the course of.
To the band’s credit score, Pay attention Like Thieves additionally proved INXS had lots extra in reserve. “Kiss The Dirt (Falling Down The Mountain)” and the anthemic “This Time” additionally charted extremely on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart, whereas wonderful deeper cuts resembling “Good And Bad Times” and “Biting Bullets” discovered the band fusing sinewy funk with hard-edged rock seamlessly.
Followers and critics alike agreed that INXS had struck on one thing distinctive by melding these two supposedly incompatible genres on Pay attention Like Thieves. A suitably impressed Rolling Stone declared the album “rocks with passion and seals the deal with a backbeat that’ll blackmail your feet.” Pushed on by the success of “What You Need,” Pay attention Like Thieves duly rose to No. 11 on the Billboard 200, yielding multi-platinum gross sales and establishing the worldwide profile of the band for years to return.
“For us, Listen Like Thieves was a major shift in how we did everything,” Andrew Farriss instructed American Songwriter. “By the time we had come to the end of recording the album, we felt we had a record we could be really proud of and take out to the world. It was one of the defining moments of our career.”
Order the fortieth anniversary version of INXS’s Pay attention Like Thieves now.
