INXS songwriters Michael Hutchence and Andrew Farriss get billion streams payday thanks to pop star Dua Lipa

This is how global pop star Dua Lipa helped get the worldwide INXS hit Need You Tonight into music history books.

Enduring rockers INXS have joined the illustrious club of Australian artists to achieve one billion streams for a song, thanks to English pop superstar Dua Lipa.

The band’s chief songwriting duo of the late Michael Hutchence and Andrew Farriss were given a songwriting credit on Lipa’s global top 10 smash Break My Heart because its guitar riff bore a striking similarity to the funky signature hook of the INXS hit Need You Tonight.

Hutchence and Farriss are the first heritage artists to land on The 1,000,000,000 List, determined by the Australian songwriter’s body APRA, since it was launched in 2019.

Dua Lipa won a Grammy for her Future Nostalgia record. Picture: Getty

Farriss said he felt “fortunate” for the recognition of his contribution to Break My Heart and “I thank Michael and INXS for believing in my songwriting.”

The Dua Lipa track is the latest reinvention of the Australian rock band’s enviable catalogue of hits and no doubt partly responsible for Need You Tonight now being the band’s most streamed song, with more than 220 million plays on Spotify alone.

Neither Lipa nor the other four credited writers of Break My Heart initially recognised their accidental appropriation of the iconic INXS riff from their only American No.1 single.

“It was one of those funny things where you write something and you think it’s so cool and then you leave the studio and suddenly think ‘F …! You didn’t come up with this first,” she told NCA last year.

The accidental meeting of music minds across the decades perfectly matched the aesthetic of her second album Future Nostalgia which has been one of the biggest selling records of the past year.

So instead of leaving it off the record when the penny dropped about the similarity between the two tracks, her team negotiated with those who look after Michael Hutchence and Andrew Farriss’ publishing rights to give them a songwriting credit on it.

“So obviously we contacted their team and came to an agreement to sample the track which is really cool. That’s really bringing the future and the nostalgia together,” Lipa says.

“I feel like a lot of young people don’t necessarily pick up on it — when I played it to some of my friends they didn’t get the reference. But I think some people would even though it’s not exactly the same.”

APRA’s billion streams club currently features artists, writers and producers who have released global hits in the streaming era, from Gotye’s 2011 chart-topper Somebody That I Used To Know through to our most recent breakthrough artist, rapper Masked Wolf and his Astronaut In The Ocean viral track.

Other artists on the list include Sia, Vance Joy, Dean Lewis, Troye Sivan, Flume, Tones and I and 5 Seconds of Summer.

The Kid Laroi would have to be next in line with his Stay duet with Justin Bieber well over the billion streams mark.

APRA has yet to recognise older hits which have achieved the milestone, such as AC/DC’s Back In Black or Highway To Hell.