As I mentioned before on several of my previous lists on this channel, I love Oasis.

I can’t wait to go over their hit songs of the nineties on future countdowns.  From 1994 to 1996, the Gallagher Brothers could do no wrong.  Their first two albums, Definitely Maybe and (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?, are perfect from front to back.  Songs such as “Live Forever,” “Rock & Roll Star,” “Don’t Look Back In Anger,” “Champagne Supernova,” and yes, “Wonderwall,” are among the greatest songs of the decade.  With these songs, Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher in particular established himself as among the greatest songwriters of his generation.  But don’t think I’m just a blind follower.

At the 1996 BRIT Awards, Oasis officially triumphed over their arch-rivals Blur with three BRIT awards, including awards for Best British Band and Best British Album.  Their first award was for Best British Video for “Wonderwall,” with their award being presented by INXS frontman Michael Hutchence.  With Oasis about to kick off a night where they acted like a bunch of imbeciles, Noel announced at the podium in reference to Hutchence, “Has-beens shouldn’t be presenting f**king awards to gonna-bes.” 

Yeah… Noel has always been known to say what is on his mind regardless of what others think, but I have to agree he went too far on this one.  At a time where INXS was facing reduced commercial success throughout the world and Hutchence was increasingly facing depression and personal demons after a taxi driver fractured his skull in 1992, insulting Hutchence was akin to kicking someone when he was already down.  Adding to that the fact that he committed suicide by hanging less than two years later in November 1997 just makes the altercation that much harder to watch.  And while I will frequently get frustrated at aging bands receiving success at the expense of younger, better artists throughout this countdown, recalling INXS’s downfall is just sad.

INXS was a good band.  Their first hit, 1982’s “Don’t Change,” is one of the best songs of the entire decade.  I refuse to take that statement back.  It’s epic, it’s anthemic, it’s clearly a band going for everything and achieving all their goals.  Five years later in 1987, they reached their commercial apex with Kick, providing a ray of hope during one of the worst periods in pop music history.  People obviously remember the sex jam “Need You Tonight” the best, but I personally prefer their follow-up singles, the menacing “Devil Inside,” the cool “New Sensation,” and the sappy “Never Tear Us Apart.”  With the album going six times platinum in the US, it was unlikely they would be able to replicate its success.  But the band’s hits not only dried up, they just lacked the element that made them special, and suddenly their singles just became boring.  And it is just heartbreaking to see a band devolve in five years, from one of the biggest rock bands in the world… to this.

“Not Enough Time” – INXS

Pop
#28 peak (October 10, 1992), 15 weeks on chart

Modern Rock 
#2 peak (August 29-September 26, 1992)
#14 year end, 12 weeks on chart

Mainstream Rock
#13 peak (September 26, 1992)
#86 year end, 12 weeks on chart

Most bad songs by good bands leave me startled or baffled as to how such a great band could release such a bad song.  But I can’t do that with INXS.  This page will sound less like me trashing an artist better than me and instead sound like I’m apologizing to Michael and his band.  “Not Enough Time” doesn’t sound like an artist showing contempt that he, she, or they have to continue writing and making music, it sounds like a band just completely exhausted and out of ideas.  I feel horrible for INXS that this song happened to them.

“Not Enough Time” was the second single from INXS’s eighth album, Welcome To Wherever You Are.  It was preceded by “Heaven Sent,” a single that charted high initially, but fell off the charts quickly and barely made the top 75 on both the Modern Rock and Mainstream Rock year-end charts.  Looking back on it, “Heaven Sent” was okay.  It was no “Don’t Change” or “New Sensation,” but at least it was energetic and tried to make an impression.  But from that, INXS lost all their energy when they released this as a single.  

The best way I can describe “Not Enough Time” to you is… it sounds like a car that started, and cannot shift gears out of neutral.  It is stuck in neutral, and flat out does not move for its entire 4 minute running time.  Garry Gary Beers’s bass is just three notes: A, F#, and B, and sounds so digitized in the production that I wouldn’t be surprised if the production just swapped out his bass for a synthesizer.  Andrew Farriss simply plays elongated whole notes of the song’s chords on his piano, before finally playing eighth notes in the chorus.  The guitar plays another simple pattern in the chorus, but easily gets buried by Farriss’s piano.  Guest vocalist Deni Hines tries to make an impact with some backing vocals on the chorus.  Her lines are well-sung, but all she ends up doing is adding to the song’s dated, early 90s feel at a time where music was changing dramatically.  Even when the song picks up in intensity near the end of the song and the synthesized strings come in with an interlude, no emotion is inspired.  Even here, the song continues to flatline.  INXS’s greatest songs, from the all-world conquering “Need You Tonight” to the amazing “Don’t Change,” were exciting.  Whether you liked them or not, INXS and their songs brought a quality that jumped out at you.  It is only fitting that for a band about to decline for the final five years with Hutchence, nothing stands out in “Not Enough Time.”  

And then there is Hutchence’s performance when combined with the lyrics.  Ugh… this part is not going to be fun to write about.  Hutchence is trying, I know that.  He is a better singer than me, this I also know.  But the way he is performing the song is a miscalculation.

As will become a running theme on this list, “Not Enough Time” is about sex.  It’s more subtle than most songs we’ll get to on this list, but the give away comes in the chorus:

Not enough time for every kiss
And every touch and all the nights
I wanna be inside you

The first problem is hardly anything in this song rhymes.  After the opening lines in the song, none of the lines rhyme.  None of the lines in the chorus rhyme, as “you” is not an acceptable rhyme for “you.”  The second verse rhymes “immortal” with “earth.”  Usually I’d rip this apart as the main thing I don’t like about the song, since it would normally indicate a lack of effort.  But that is not what I am going for here.  The problem is that in a song that is supposed to be about passion, Michael Hutchence sounds so exhausted.  He is so tired and listless on the verses, that my only possible explanation is that on the day INXS recorded this song, Hutchence had just run five miles and was completely spent by the time he got to the recording studio, where he found out he’d have to sing this song.  In a song that wants to be heartfelt and respectful to the protagonist’s love interest, Hutchence instead comes across as someone who desperately needs to go to sleep.  And in the end, you just don’t feel angry at him for his performance.  You just feel pity.  And that is the essence of “Not Enough Time.”  It is a song where you just feel bad for INXS.

“Not Enough Time” is a hard song to listen to and feel happy while you’re listening to it.  The vocals do not match the message of the lyrics at all, and the instrumentation is such a non-presence it may as well not even be there.  And it gets harder to listen to when you consider that it will never get better for INXS.  This song may have been successful at the time, but Welcome To Wherever You Are marked the beginning of a commercial downturn for INXS, with the album selling about half of what their previous album X did with 1 million copies sold.  Their follow-up album Full Moon, Dirty Hearts also failed to match INXS’s previous successes, with its lead single “The Gift” being another dud.  You know what, do yourselves a favor.  Don’t listen to this song, and instead check out “Don’t Change” or the songs from Kick.  Michael Hutchence and his band deserve to be remembered for those songs, and not “Not Enough Time.”  Noel Gallagher may have taken glee at Michael Hutchence’s shortcomings, but all I feel is tragedy.

UP NEXT: The band behind one of the dumbest songs of the decade gets even dumber at #9.

IMAGE SOURCES

Single cover from Discogs

Image of Oasis and Michael Hutchence at the BRIT Awards from FeelNumb.com

Photo of INXS from Classic Pop Magazine