Mystify

In "Mystify," a woman has lead singer Michael Hutchence under her spell. It's one of his most poetic and romantic lyrics: In all that exists None have your beauty I see your face I will survive It's similar in subject to a later INXS track, "Disappear," where no matter what's going on around him, he finds comfort in this special girl.

INXS had three brothers in the band and didn't split songwriting credits equally, which usually spells disaster. By 1986, they were the biggest band in Australia, but had only made a dent in America, mostly with "What You Need," a track from their fifth album, Listen Like Thieves. That one was written by Hutchence and Andrew Farriss (one of the brothers), who showed a knack for writing songs that could connect with listeners. For their next album, Kick, the band agreed to let Hutchence and Farriss handle all the songwriting, which eliminated any squabbles about whose songs made the album. The pair wrote most of "Mystify" at a studio in Chicago. Their bandmates loved the demo and recorded it for the album, which ended up being one of biggest of the '80s, selling six million copies just in America and many more worldwide.

This song has a rather unusual structure. It opens with the vocal, followed by a bed of piano and finger snaps through the first chorus. It's not until the second verse that the rest of the instrumentation comes in. In a Songfacts interview with Andrew Farriss, he explained: "What we were trying to do with that song was just keep it feeling immediate. It doesn't have that normal pop song structure, and it's very unusual actually. The way Michael and I worked as songwriters, I like to think that we did things quite often that weren't natural or normal pop structures in our songs." Farriss and Hutchence complemented each other very well as songwriters: Farriss could play just about any instrument and knew the nuts and bolts of music theory, while Hutchence worked by feel - he had no formal training and didn't play any instruments. They developed a level of trust where they felt comfortable sharing ideas.