Good Morning!
Today we’re listening to “This Time” by INXS
True story: In high school, a friend and I drove from Portland to the beach, and this song played almost the entire way. Also a true story: We’re still very much friends.
And really, there could have been worse songs to listen to over 72+ miles of 2-laned road (not that I was counting). The song builds slowly, but once rolling doesn't slow down. It’s the kind of track many bands listened to, realized they’d never compete with it, and packed it in.
“This Time” was the lead single off the band’s 1985 Listen Like Thieves record (in Australia & NZ, “What you Need” was released first) and cracked Billboard’s Hot 100, peaking at #81.
Not long after that trip, my friend went to school to learn something called “Information Technology.” I was hired by an airline and spent the next 2+ decades destroying my rotator cuffs, 1 flight at a time. Hutchence, of course, left us not too long after as well.
It’s definitely a song of its era, but it manages to sound as fresh being streamed in 2022 as it did in a tape deck all those years ago.
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What Thomas was implicitly advocating for over the course of three months in Sydney’s Rhinoceros Studio was an album built out of “Don’t Change.” The final track on Shabooh Shoobah and the band’s usual set-closer, it’s the kind of feel-good, brawny U2 anthem that U2 have spent decades trying to write. Still driven by Andrew’s keyboards, “Don’t Change” felt leaner and less fussed over, destined to be covered by, among many, many others, Bruce Springsteen, a man who also spent a lot of time in 1984 and 1985 thinking about what rock songs for the masses should look like.
The song’s DNA is evident in “This Time,” about as uplifting a breakup song as anyone will ever require, from the isolated-riff intro to the slow but cathartic build.
Read the rest of the review here.
Listen:
“This Time” by INXS| Listen Like Thieves, 1985
Click the record to listen on your platform of choice.
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this track!
Thanks for being here,
Kevin—
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Very eighties. Great song, and a good reminder of how sad it is that some of these great artists are so troubled.
A song put on many a mix tape...then, and now.