‘INXS Day’ Dawns With Special Releases, Streaming Event (EXCLUSIVE)

Forty-five years after INXS kicked off with its first-ever show, the great Australian band today (Aug. 16) celebrates its milestone with a slate of releases, activities and a special streaming event.

Among those INXS birthday gifts, a TikTok streaming event where Kick gets the deep-dive treatment; the release of a fresh, Dolby Atmos remix of INXS – The Very Best; and the promise of more to come.

The new wave legends took the long road to the top.

Starting out in Western Australia, the earliest incarnation of INXS formed as The Farris Brothers, performing for the first time at a house party in Whale Beach, Sydney, on Aug. 16, 1977.

Later, the band would take the name INXS. Hits would follow, as would fans around the globe.

For a time in the ‘80s and ‘90s, INXS was among the biggest alternative rock outfits on the globe, selling-out stadiums and 70 million records, and creating the soundtrack to the lives of a generation, with “Never Tear Us Apart,” “Original Sin,” “Need You Tonight,” “Don’t Change,” and more.

INXS Day (Aug. 16) is an initiative of INXS, in association with Petrol Records, Universal Music Group and Rhino Records.

Headlining the festivities is an hour-long live stream on TikTok, timed around the 35th anniversary of Kick, and boasting a track-by-track feature, and interviews with the bandmates and their executive music producer Giles Martin, son of iconic Beatles producer George Martin.

Arriving in 1987, Kick was the album that separated INXS from the rest. The set spawned five singles, four of which hit the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart — “New Sensation,” “Never Tear Us Apart,” Devil Inside” and “Need You Tonight,” with the latter going all the way to No. 1 in the United States. 

Kick peaked at No. 3 on the U.S. Billboard 200 albums chart, and came in at No. 2 on Rolling Stone Australia’s list of The 200 Greatest Australian Albums of All Time.

Martin is also behind the desk on a Dolby Atmos remix of The Very Best, INXS’ blockbuster 20-song career retrospective.

Originally released in 2011, the evergreen collection recently celebrated 500 weeks in the ARIA Albums Chart and has been awarded “Diamond” status, for combined sales upwards of 500,000 units.

What Martin has done with the Atmos remix, enthuses founding guitarist Tim Farriss, “is to not only recreate the original mixes, but now you’re blown away because you hear all this stuff that you just didn’t hear before.”

Martin adds, “Nowadays, we hear music too much we don’t listen to it enough. I think the great thing about Atmos is it makes people listen in a different way and it will be new again, and let’s face it INXS are an amazing band”.

Also this month, five INXS videos will be upgraded on YouTube to HD for the first time: “Heaven Sent,” “Baby Don’t Cry,” “Taste It,” “Beautiful Girl,” and “Not Enough Time”.

Then, in October, a 40th anniversary edition of Shabooh Shoobah. INXS’ classic early album will be issued on streaming services as a deluxe digital boxset spanning 15 songs, along with a vintage t-shirt, and “a very limited” clear vinyl edition exclusively via INXS.com.

Also that month, the band’s breakthrough north American performance, 1983’s Live At The US Festival, will get its official release.

UMG’s executive VP international marketing (UMe) Andrew Daw paid tribute to the band, its late “visionary manager” Chris Murphy, and his team for creating a “legacy and influence” which is “still seen every day around the globe.”

Led by the charismatic Michael Hutchence, the rockers scored six U.K. Top 10 albums (including a No. 1 with Welcome To Wherever You Are from 1992) and five U.S. top 20 albums. 

Induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame came in 2001, four years after Hutchence passed, in 1997.

After experimenting with a rotating cast of lead singers, the surviving members of INXS announced in Nov. 2012 they were hanging up their instruments.

With Murphy back on board in a creative position, a handful of catalog projects reignited interest in the band.

One of those was the the free-to-air 2014 mini-series Never Tear Us Apart, which powered six INXS albums back into the ARIA Top 10 including the top two spots in the same week.

The Very Best went on to be the best selling album of the year.

Just last year saw the arrival of Original Sin – The 7 Sins, a short-film soundtracked by INXS’ music.