POLL: "Never Tear Us Apart" (INXS) vs. "Everybody Hurts" (R.E.M.)

This thread is beginning to bum me out. AFTP is REM’s best album, or at the very least the best of their albums that feature enunciation. I think it is one of the unassailable classics of the decade.

yes! AFTP is definitely a classic, their best album since their debut full-length imo, but their earliest "mumble & kudzu" records (Chronic Town EP, Murmur) are also classics and will always be my favorites because I heard them first

I'm going Never Tear Us Apart because of the whirl of memory it stirs up with me and Claire Eldridge at the centre of it, dancing at the swimming club disco.

I like Try Not to Breathe, Find the River and NIghtswimming. Drive is fine. Man on the Moon was overplayed and it wasn't good enough to withstand that. Plus, I hate Andy Kaufman. The rest of the album is completely meh.

Star Me Kitten gave 11-year-old-me the fear

They should've gone full on Santo and Johnny on that song. Instead it bores the shit out of me.

I've never understood the "best album" thing. I may have thought about AFTP more than any other record over the years, so perplexing is this notion. I almost sold my copy early on. Previews on radio suggested a serious decline, but I was still pretty loyal in 1992 and bought it anyway. But the endless bars of thin, nothingy guitars going around in circles really bummed me out. The string arrangements were welcome but still insufficient to make certain tracks add up to much. I eventually took to programming a 25-minute album I did kinda like if I could avoid the rest. (I may have included "Man on the Moon" once, but it hasn't proved especially durable.)

Try Not to Breathe / The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite / New Orleans Instrumental No. 1 / Sweetness Follows / Nightswimming / Find the River

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

*sad montage of frowning Buck/Berry/Mills/Stipe*

When your day is long... and the night... the night is yours alone...

Wow. Everybody Hurts pulled in a lot more than expected.

^^^

I was expecting an even more brutal stomping.

Sometimes you kick... sometimes you get kicked.

"But if I hurt you
I'd make wine from your tears"

my whole life i didn't know what he was singing there, just looked it up

I also couldn't parse those lyrix for a long time (but eventually learned them somewhere).

terrible line lol

https://66.media.tumblr.com/11c3aac1f638a12bb36635d5eba52177/tumblr_oh1vghbW3c1r4poono1_250.gif

AH TOLD YOU

(it's a great line obv in the context of this big dumb dramatic awesome song that isn't even sure what it's about)

lol

I guess I can understand people not liking AFTP that much today

I remember the fever for the album at the time though

It was buzzbin popular when it came out. It seems a lot more popular now.

Well it’s 4x platinum

I think I bought a Dig album around that time. It was like, the height of MtV alternativeness. I was obsessed with REM in jr high/hs, but gah this album sucked.

I don't remember that. I remember loving Night Swimming, Man on the Moon, Try Not to Breathe

Why is no one ITT reminiscing on their relationship w/“Kick”?

because we are gracious & REM fans seem to need the toom

*room

BUT IF YOU WANNA KNOW

My best friend brought me back a bootleg cassette of Kick from her family holiday in Bali when I was in sixth grade (or maybe seventh?). we listened to it over and over

It still sounds exactly like my memory of 1987/88

Especially “New Sensation” — THAT sounds like summer to me

<3<3<3

and Never Tear Us Apart reminds me of these hardboiled sweets i loved at that time...i ate a whole bag in one sitting & i had a stomachache & i must have been listening to this song bcz i always think of those sweets now whenever I hear it

Kick is a baller album, probably my favorite in the INXS catalog

I bought the cassette shortly after hearing "Need You Tonight" and getting super obsessed with it, and then completely bugged out when I heard how good the rest of the album was.

I remember being really super into Guns in the Sky my first few listens, i liked the sound of it

My summer camp had a low-power radio station where campers took turn DJ’ing, and “Kick” was one of the main LPs we would grab off the shelf to play cuts from... pretty much everyone liked it, and almost every song was a hit.

Kick, Sign o the Times, Appetite for Destruction, Joshua Tree, Hysteria, Document, Lion and the Cobra, what a year

totally!

inxs was not big in pittsburgh-area high schools circa 1987 -- we'd heard some of it, of course, but it was neither g'n'r nor poison nor, for the edgy kids, the joshua tree

even 30 years later it all pales beside my need for more DJ fuckin P

otm

Just came across this precedential thread (pre–poll era?):

TS: INXS "Need You Tonight" Vs. Nine Inch Nails "Closer"

from memory INXS were already massive from The Swing & then Listen Like Thieves even moreso
older girls I knew in primary school had full size wall posters of Michael Hutchence in 84-85

Like, it was Duran Duran, Nik Kershaw & INXS

But Kick was when INXS’ manager started hitting US college radio super hard & that was how the album ended up being massive for them in the US.

poor colin hay

i’m sure he was on someone’s wall too

(citation needed)

nah serious though prob a dude’s wall
they kinda had a lot of guy fans iirc

Think Listen Like Thieves was the breakthrough album in the UK but then Kick took it to another level

in America too

"the one thing" --> "what you need" --> "need you tonight" ~ three killer singles, three albums in a row, was massive

You're missing something from The Swing, and I hope the something is "Original Sin."

Yeah, this outcome is undoubtedly one of those "only on ILM" things. No way on Earth or any other planet do INXS have a song that is better than R.E.M. at their worst, and 'Everybody Hurts' is far from R.E.M. at their worst.

*removes earrings*

He's right about the other planets thing, I looked into it.