Andrew Farriss Clocks Up Over 1 Billion Streams For Dua Lipa’s ‘Break My Heart’

‘Break My Heart’, the Dua Lipa hit based around Andrew Farriss and Michael Hutchence’s INXS classic ‘Need You Tonight’ has been streaming over one billion times earning Farriss a round thing from APRA.

‘Need You Tonight’ was a number one hit for INXS in 1987. Farriss said the song came to time while he was waiting for a cab to go to the airport one day.

Andrew says,

With songwriting for the KICK album, whilst on a tour bus in Germany, INXS made a decision for Michael and myself to write all the songs for the KICK album, as our songwriting collaboration had so far been the most successful.

There were two separate songwriting blocks – scheduled breaks whilst recording – to write songs – wisely suggested by record producer Chris Thomas.

Along with other KICK album songs, I was working on a new funk song and riff using a Roland 707 drum machine loop I programmed, my old ’56 Fender Strat and an Emulator keyboard bass sample on my 8-track analog tape recorder.

I called a cab to catch a flight from Sydney to fly to Hong Kong to meet Michael to show him the song and lyric ideas I had. The cab arrived and I suddenly found myself caught in an anxious situation as I had literally just written the riff for ‘Need You Tonight’ and I knew what I was writing was somehow important. I asked the cabbie to wait but he was like, “Mate, I’ve got other people waiting, I’ve gotta go.”

So, I ran off a mix onto a cassette tape with other KICK songs, grabbed the cassette and half-packed suitcase, locked the door and climbed in the cab. I flew to Hong Kong, caught a cab to the studio within the Watson estate building, where Michael was waiting and he said, “What have you got?”

I played him the songs, including Need You Tonight, Michael looked excited and he said to the studio engineer, “Have you got a pad and a mic?” scribbled a lyric and sang the song known as ‘Need You Tonight’.

When we returned to Sydney to meet the band in the studio, Chris Thomas really liked the songs, and he used the original demo of ‘Need You Tonight’ (and ‘Mediate’) that we worked on in Hong Kong.

It was crazy good how ‘Need You Tonight’ – and indeed the whole KICK album came together. I’m forever grateful to the other INXS band members for believing in our songs…”