Songfacts®:

• One thing Australia has in abundance is dirt. In this song, Michael Hutchence sings about our primal urge to be connected to the earth.
  
  Hutchence wrote the song with INXS multi-instrumentalist Andrew Farriss, who told Songfacts the meaning behind the song. "The lyric of 'Kiss The Dirt' is about how it doesn't matter how big you get as an actor or an artist or whatever field or endeavor you are involved in," said Farriss. "Eventually, whether it's age or the tyranny of time, there's a myriad of things that can happen to you, and none of us really knows where we're really going in the end. It's not supposed to be a depressing lyric. The idea is, everybody falls off the mountain eventually, doesn't matter how high you get."
  
  "What Michael wrote is really beautiful poetically," he added. "When you're a little kid, you play in the dirt. If you've got some dirt to play on, a bit of earth, you might build a sandcastle or you might just dig a hole in your backyard, just messing around. But, you're always going to kiss the dirt in the end. Everything reverts back to the earth in the end. Everything."
• The music video, directed by Alex Proyas, was shot in the Australian outback in various locations, including some where the movie Mad Max was filmed. According to INXS guitarist Tim Farriss, the band almost met their doom on the flight back to Sydney. He says the pilot fell asleep and he had to wake him up.