Beautiful Girl

Grunge killed sincerity. By 1992, you couldn’t just say something beautiful was beautiful without an eye-roll, a caveat, a knowing smirk. Everything had to be deconstructed. Nothing could be earnest. And then Michael Hutchence walked into a studio with a 60-piece orchestra and recorded a song called “Beautiful Girl” that did exactly what the title promised.

Welcome to Wherever You Are was INXS refusing to repeat themselves. Kick had made them superstars—“Need You Tonight,” “Devil Inside,” all that sleek, sexy funk-rock. They could have made Kick 2. They could have played it safe. Instead, they hired an orchestra and started experimenting.

“Beautiful Girl” is the softest thing they ever recorded. Hutchence, who built a career on raw sexuality and stage presence that could melt speakers, spends this song being almost shy. His voice floats above the strings, reverent, wondering. He’s not trying to seduce anyone. He’s trying to describe what it feels like to be genuinely stunned by another person.

The orchestration is lush without being saccharine. The strings don’t swell dramatically like a John Hughes movie—they breathe, they hover, they create space for the song’s simple message to land. It’s the kind of arrangement that trusts the melody enough to let it shine.

This song wasn’t a huge hit. By 1992, INXS was starting to fade from their commercial peak, and Hutchence had five years left to live. But it’s one of those tracks that the people who love it really love. A secret handshake for romantics in a cynical decade.

Some songs are too cool for their own good. This one’s too genuine, and that’s exactly why it works.