The 1980s File Feature
This Time
This Time — INXS and the Slow American ArrivalToward the end of 1985, something was shifting in the American charts. A band from Sydney had been grinding awa…
01 The Story
This Time — INXS and the Slow American Arrival
Toward the end of 1985, something was shifting in the American charts. A band from Sydney had been grinding away at the US market for several years, filling mid-sized venues, getting college radio play, and slowly converting listeners who caught them in concert into devoted followers. INXS had the energy, the charisma, and the songs; all they lacked was the single stroke of fortune that turns a cult act into a household name. This Time, released late that year, arrived at an interesting transitional moment in that journey.
Where INXS Stood in 1985
By the time This Time appeared on the Hot 100, INXS had already released four albums in Australia and were building momentum with their fifth record, Listen Like Thieves. The album marked a sharper, more confident iteration of the band's sound: Michael Hutchence's vocals sitting deeper in the mix, the rhythm section tighter, the guitar work more purposeful. In Australia they were already stars. In America they were a band that music fans of a certain stripe loved passionately, while the broader mainstream had yet to fully catch up. INXS debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 with This Time on November 16, 1985, entering at position 91.
The Sound of Controlled Tension
What distinguished INXS from their contemporaries was a quality of musical tension that never fully resolved. Songs like This Time moved forward with an almost physical momentum, driven by Andrew Farriss's rhythmic sensibility and a production approach that let space and groove do the work rather than layering everything in synthesizer gloss. The track carried that characteristic INXS texture: percussive and propulsive, with Hutchence's delivery sitting somewhere between seduction and urgency. It fit the late-1985 radio landscape without sounding like it was designed by committee.
A Modest but Meaningful Chart Run
The Hot 100 trajectory for This Time was a gradual upward movement across six weeks. From 91 at debut, the single climbed through 86, 83, and then peaked at number 81 on December 7, 1985. It spent six weeks on the chart before slipping away, a showing that put it firmly in the category of album-track crossover singles rather than chart-storming pop events. For a band still establishing its American footprint, that kind of sustained presence mattered more than the absolute peak number.
The Bridge to Bigger Things
The significance of This Time in the INXS story is what it preceded. Listen Like Thieves and its associated singles gave the band a credibility platform they would convert spectacularly with Kick in 1987, the album that produced four Top 10 singles in the United States and turned them into one of the biggest acts in the world. Songs like This Time were part of the infrastructure of that breakthrough, evidence that the band could generate radio-worthy material consistently, not just occasionally. The chart run, modest as the peak number suggests, was another data point in a pattern of steady progress.
Listening Now
Pulled from the context of INXS's full arc, This Time stands as a vivid document of a band operating at a high level before the world fully recognized it. The production feels period-accurate without being dated; the groove still moves. Play it and hear a band in the act of becoming something larger, the ambition already present in the rhythm and the voice, the audience only partially assembled. That tension makes it worth revisiting.
“This Time” — INXS's singular moment on the 1980s charts.
02 Song Meaning
This Time — Urgency, Commitment, and the Stakes of the Moment
The title alone carries a particular weight. "This time" implies a history of other times, previous attempts or failures or incomplete gestures, and the insistence that the current moment will be different. It is a phrase freighted with emotional stakes, and INXS used it to center a song about the intensity of wanting something badly enough to commit fully to it.
The Grammar of Second Chances
Much of the lyrical energy in This Time circles around the grammar of resolution. The speaker is not declaring love for the first time; the declaration carries the weight of lessons already learned. There is an implied acknowledgment of past failures or hesitations, and the lyrics insist on forward motion over dwelling. That structure resonated with listeners precisely because it mapped onto a universal emotional experience: the moment when you decide that whatever held you back before will not hold you back again.
Hutchence and the Art of Controlled Emotion
One of the reasons INXS songs about longing and commitment tend to land harder than their surface simplicity might suggest is Michael Hutchence's delivery. His vocal approach was always more controlled than it appeared; the impression of raw emotion came from precision rather than abandon. On This Time, that quality shapes the meaning profoundly. The emotional stakes feel real because the performance holds something back, lets the listener feel the effort of control, which implies genuine feeling more effectively than pure release would.
Physical Momentum as Metaphor
The music itself participates in the meaning of the song in a way worth noting. The rhythmic drive of the arrangement, the forward press of the groove, mirrors the lyrical insistence on action over hesitation. You feel the song moving toward something. That convergence between musical and lyrical energy is one of the things INXS did consistently well, and This Time is a clear example of it working exactly as intended.
Late 1985 and the Cultural Moment
The song arrived at a moment when mid-1980s pop was beginning to search for more emotional directness after several years of ironic detachment. New wave's cool posture was giving way to something rawer in pockets of the mainstream. This Time fit that shift, presenting emotion as something to be acted upon rather than aestheticized from a safe distance. For listeners who wanted music with genuine stakes, INXS delivered that feeling with craft and economy, making each word count in a way that rewards close attention even now.
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