Communication
by INXS

Album: Welcome To Wherever You Are (1992)
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Songfacts®:

  • Opening with the static of a radio dial, "Communication" deals with the way news has been corrupted, turned into an entertainment product to keep viewers tuned in. INXS frontman Michael Hutchence explained the song's inspiration: "It ended up being more about this guy, a crazed journalist not wanting to leave a scene he was reporting from in the Persian Gulf War. I mean, these people were standing there with gas masks on, reporting history as it happened. I don't think it has been done before, quite like that. And then the ads would come in between, 'Buy this and that,' Weird stuff."
  • This was written by the INXS core songwriting team of Michael Hutchence and Andrew Farriss. It was included on their eighth album, Welcome to Wherever You Are, but not released as a single.
  • An influence on this song was the first Gulf War, which took place in 1990 and 1991. This was a war for a new age of technology where viewers could see footage of air strikes soon after they happened. This inured those watching on TV to the suffering on the ground; the whole thing felt a bit like a video game, seen from a distance. In Hutchence' view, this was a distraction from the financial motives of the war, the "blood money" he sings about.

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