Almost every song on this album is iconic. It went 6x platinum in the U.S. and 7x platinum in Australia, and eight of its 12 tracks were technically singles — and four of those were top 10 hits in the U.S. The video for “Need You Tonight/Mediate” won five awards at the 1988 MTV VMAs. Suddenly, with an album that their record company initially hated, INXS were the massive success they had been hinting at becoming since the breakthrough of their third album.

Nine of the album’s 12 songs were written by Andrew Farriss and Hutchence. “Guns In The Sky” is Hutchence’s doing alone — a simple but effective opener, with lyrics characteristic of Hutchence’s political sensibility, that establishes a level of sonic excitement that barely lets up until the album ends. With “New Sensation” and the command to “live, baby, live,” they continue to set the listener up for a string of powerful songs without stepping too far into new territory — it’s a clear sibling of “Original Sin,” just stripped of new-wave pretensions. “Devil Inside,” “Need You Tonight,” and “Mediate” is the trio that firmly establish Hutchence as the sex symbol and INXS as the band you don’t know how to categorize. As Rolling Stone wrote in another 1988 feature on the band, their songs “are received as favorably in dance clubs as they are on rock radio.”

The album is broken up in the middle with a cover of the Loved Ones’ “The Loved One,” a song they’d released as a stand-alone single in Australia in 1981. Its bluesy vocals and groove are suited to the tone of the album as a whole, and here it reboots it for its second half. “Wild Life” is a sibling of Listen Like Thieves’ “What You Need,” again proving that on KICK, what INXS did correctly was take everything that worked on their prior five albums and distill it into songs that showcase their unique talent for funk-rock in a pop package. One feels like “Wild Life” would’ve been a single on another of their albums, but here it works as a bridge among much stronger songs, leading us into “Never Tear Us Apart.”

Shot on a cloudy day in Prague, the video for “Never Tear Us Apart” is as iconic as that of “Need You Tonight.” With his curly hair in his face and his long, brown coat, Hutchence is a portrait of the wounded lover. This song has one of his strongest-ever vocal performances, colored by a touch of theatricality — necessary to making us believe this is a man who would truly try to make wine from your tears. And because this is an album that won’t let you rest, next is “Mystify,” with more powerful vocals and a breakdown during which you can almost hear the stadium audience clapping along.

The urgency of the first two songs truly returns on the title track and continues in “Calling All Nations” — another of Hutchence’s prayers for a better world, this one asking all nations to “come on down to the party,” which he makes sound moderately not-corny by virtue of his magnetism — before ending with one of their most American-sounding songs ever, “Tiny Daggers.” It’s a huge closer, calling back, maybe, to the decision to put “Don’t Change” at the end of Shabooh Shoobah, another dare to keep you interested, to keep you eagerly awaiting their next move.

The incredibly popular video for “Need You Tonight/Mediate” is an encapsulation of the major tension that plagued INXS throughout their run. In “Need You Tonight,” Hutchence is at the forefront, shirtless, with the word “SEX” literally pinned to his leather jacket. The drummer, Jon Farriss, wears the band’s own shirt. Then “Mediate” is a play on Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” Always, they were torn between being an elevated boy band and serious musicians. Maybe only now can we believe that these things don’t need to be mutually exclusive.