So why is INXS’s X on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
The very late 1980s and very early 1990s were a strange and unique time for music generally.
It was before grunge and alternative rock took over mainstream rock music and radio, and it fell during a phase when the dominant forms of popular music – hair metal, power ballads, and pop-infused hip-hop and R&B – were starting to fade from a quality if not from a popularity standpoint.
When you look at the weekly list of top selling albums from the year 1990, it’ll give you some flavor pretty quickly. Some examples:
- Milli Vanilli – Girl You Know It’s True
- MC Hammer – Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em
- Vanilla Ice – To the Extreme
But even as MTV was dominated by Poison’s “Unskinny Bop” (which I hated at the time but kind of dig these days) and forgettable power ballads like Damn Yankees’ “Come Again,” there was a bunch of great music percolating all over the musical map, with great albums coming out in 1990 alone from the likes of Depeche Mode, Bad Religion, Living Colour, The Black Crowes, L7, Public Enemy, Midnight Oil, and many others.*
* Check out all of the 1990 albums that the best 1,000 albums ever project has covered. I promise you it’s a good time!
And then there was some really fun stuff going on under the hood of what I generally term “dance music.” Gonna Make You Sweat, by the very much of its era C+C Music Factory, came out in late 1990, and X, INXS’ follow-up to the massively successful Kick, came out in September of that year.
X was seen by some as a relatively good but ultimately disappointing follow-up to Kick, but I adore it for a few different reasons.
Let’s start with the trio of absolute smashers: “Suicide Blonde,” “Disappear,” and “Bitter Tears.”
I’ll start with “Suicide Blonde,” which may be the perfect song that bridges the ’80s into the ‘90s while spanning rock and slinky/funky synth pop. The bass and rhythmic groove is super infectious, and Michael Hutchence sounds fantastic. It’s a compulsively catchy track and depending on the day might be my all-time favorite INXS song.
The driving bass line of “Disappear” leads into a drop-dead gorgeous melody that’s also catchy for days. And that’s all before its powerhouse, rocked up chorus.
“Bitter Tears” effectively brings horns into the mix, and you can almost imagine Elton John crushing this one earlier in the 1980s.
“Faith In Each Other” is an example of a groovy and slinky album track that makes the entirety of X super enjoyable.
And “By My Side” is a gentle and sweet number, just beautiful.
Pop culture stuff that has something to do with INXS’ X
Unfortunately, in a modern context, the letter “X” has been taken over by Elon Musk and his rebranding of the social media platform that used to be known as Twitter.
Maybe this best 1,000 albums ever piece will be one small but important step in reclaiming X for the people?
We gotta start somewhere, right?
Some stats & info about INXS – X
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock Music, Dance Music, Pop Music, Australian Bands
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 3.5 out of 5 stars
- When was X released? 1990
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #126 out of 1,000
INXS’s X on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from INXS’s X that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
Love devastation, suicide blonde.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.