New Sensation

Michael Hutchence sings “New Sensation” like a man who has never once been told no. In the video he walks into frame, leather and cheekbones, certain you’re going to fall for him before the song even starts. He was right.

The song is about desire, but not the desperate kind. It’s desire as confidence. As something already decided. Live, baby, live / Now that the day is over. There’s no pleading in it. He sings the way a man sings when he believes the day will keep handing him things.

Andrew Farriss wrote the music — the guitar riff, the synth stabs that punch in and get out. Kick was the album that made INXS global, and this was the engine that pulled it. Hutchence supplied the words, sex without crudeness, the feeling that you’re getting away with something just by listening. The production is clean. Every part sits in its own space, dense but never crowded. When the chorus arrives and the backing vocals come up under it, the whole thing lifts off the ground.

What carried it wasn’t the voice, though the voice was extraordinary. It was the belief. He sold every line like it was the only thing he had, in the video, in the takes, in the live shows. Complete commitment, no daylight between the man and the song.

That’s the part that’s hard to listen to now, knowing what the certainty didn’t know. The voice on this record belongs to someone sure the day keeps going. We lost him too young. He was the most alive man in any room, and the song is three minutes and thirty-nine seconds of that aliveness with nothing held back.

So you let it run, and for the length of it the day isn’t over, and the man at the front of the band is exactly as sure as he sounds.