Need You Tonight

1987 single by INXS
the JP Cooper and Ray BLK song

"Need You Tonight" is a song by the Australian rock band INXS, released as the first single from their 1987 album, Kick, as well as the fourth song on the album. It is the only INXS single to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also achieved their highest charting position in the United Kingdom, where the song reached number two on the UK Singles Chart; however, this peak was only reached after a re release of the single in November 1988. On its first run on the UK charts in October 1987, it stalled at No. 58. It was one of the last songs recorded for the album, yet it would arguably become the band's signature song. In February 2014, after the Channel 7 screening of the INXS: Never Tear Us Apart mini series, "Need You Tonight" charted again in Australia via download sales. It peaked at No. 28 on the ARIA Singles Chart.

The music video combined live action and different kinds of animation. Directed by Richard Lowenstein, the video was actually "Need You Tonight / Mediate", as it combined two songs from the album. Lowenstein claimed that the particular visual effects in "Need You Tonight" were created by cutting up 35mm film and photocopying the individual frames, before re layering those images over the original footage. For "Mediate", it segues into a tribute to Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues". The members flip cue cards with words from the song; the last one displays the words "Sax Solo," at which point Kirk Pengilly starts a saxophone solo. Beneath the lyric "a special date" in the "Mediate" portion of the video, the cue card shown reads "9 8 1945" which in Australian date format is 9 August 1945, the date which the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. The video won five MTV Video Music Awards including 1988 Video of The Year and was ranked at number twenty one on MTV's countdown of the 100 greatest videos of all time.

RegionDateFormat(s)Label(s)Ref. (Reference)Australia21 September 19877 inch vinylWEAUnited Kingdom (re release)31 October 19887 inch vinyl, 12 inch vinylMercury Records, Mercury, Phonogram Inc., Phonogram14 November 1988CD

Rogue Traders covered and remixed "Need You Tonight" and released it as a single in Australia. The song was renamed "One of My Kind", where it reached No. 10 on the Australian Top 100 Singles Chart, becoming their first top 10 hit. "One of My Kind" is the second single released by the Rogue Traders for their debut album We Know What You're Up To. The music video is set in a dance party where the lizard on the single cover wanders around looking for a girl of his kind. He finds one looking lonely. The two sit together and he sings the line 'you're one of my kind' before the video ends. The Sam Bennetts and Rising Sun Pictures directed music video was nominated for Best Video at the ARIA Music Awards of 2003.

Australian singer Kylie Minogue performed the song as part of the setlist of her Kiss Me Once Tour. Minogue, a one time romantic partner of the late INXS frontman Michael Hutchence, considered her performances of the song to be a tribute to him. In March 2010, UK rapper Professor Green released a song based entirely on the song called "I Need You Tonight". Bonnie Raitt covers the song as the second track of her 2016 album Dig in Deep. English singer and songwriter Dua Lipa's 2020 single "Break My Heart" interpolates the song's guitar riff.