1984Released
5:17

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Original Sin. By Songfacts®.

INXS was on the rise when they toured America for the first time in 1983. On that trek, they listened to a lot of music Nile Rodgers created, especially his solo album released that year, Adventures In The Land Of The Good Groove. They convinced Rodgers to produce a track on their next album called "Brand New Day," which INXS primary songwriters Andrew Farriss and Michael Hutchence had written. The band had done all their recording in their native Australia, but Rodgers had them work at Power Station Studios in New York City. The song was re-titled "Original Sin," and infused with Rodgers' signature funk. It also featured a special guest: Daryl Hall, who Rodgers brought in to bolster the vocals. It was a taste of the big time for INXS, who rose to the challenge: the song was their first #1 hit in Australia, and it made an impact in America, charting at #58.

In a 1986 interview, Hutchence said the song was about "kids and conditioning. Growing up. How you grow up through other people's ideas or your own." It was producer Nile Rodgers' idea to give the lyrics an interracial spin, though. He said: "The original lyrics were 'Dream on white boy, dream on white girl.' I said, 'Why not make it 'black boy white girl?' I come from an interracial couple. Psychologically that makes it a bigger statement." It was a bold move for the '80s, when many kids were still clinging to their parents' views of segregated relationships. Daring to tell a white boy and black girl to "play with fire" and "dream on, the name of love" got the song banned from some US radio stations.

Regarding the lyric, Andrew Farriss told Songfacts: "Michael realized how important it was that we had the right kind of lyrics for that song, and he came up with the idea when we were sitting on the tour bus and we were looking at kids playing in a schoolyard from different cultural backgrounds and maybe different nationalities. He was looking at them all and he said, 'We should all just be like kids.'"

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Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Original Sin.
AKey
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
131BPM

Album

The album Original Sin is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Original Sin.
Petrol Records
© 2011 Universal International Music BV, under exclusive license to Mercury Records Limited
℗ 2011 Universal International Music BV, under exclusive license to Mercury Records Limited

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