The Alternative Number Ones: INXS’ “Suicide Blonde”

In The Number Ones, I'm reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart's beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. Book Bonus Beat: The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music.

Officially, Michael Hutchence died by suicide. In 1997, the INXS frontman was found dead in his Sydney hotel room. Hutchence was going through a custody battle at the time, and he was reportedly depressed, drunk, and high. He strangled himself on his door with his snakeskin belt. Given all that, you'd think that the existence of an INXS song called "Suicide Blonde" would come off as an act of grim foreshadowing, like Nirvana's "I Hate Myself And Want To Die." But that's not how people tend to feel about "Suicide Blonde." I just had lunch with a couple of friends and mentioned that I was about to write a column about this song, and nobody got bummed out. What they said was: "Oooh. Good song." They were right. That was the correct response.

How can you expect anyone to get sad about "Suicide Blonde"? You can't. For one thing, plenty of people refuse to believe that Michael Hutchence really died by suicide. There's a persistent theory that his death was an autoerotic asphyxiation accident. When you're dealing with someone as sexy as Hutchence, maybe it's hard to believe that his untimely passing was anything other than a sex thing. And then there's "Suicide Blonde" itself, which is not a sad song. It's not about suicide at all. Like so many other INXS songs, it's about being horny. For that reason alone, "Suicide Blonde" must've stood out in the relatively sexless environs of circa-1990 modern rock radio. There were plenty of other reasons that "Suicide Blonde" would've stood out, too.