You Know the Wrong Divinyls Song
+ Michelle Zauner on Identified
When I was a kid, people didn’t know as much about the bands they liked. The majority of bands weren’t covered in the mainstream music press or played on commercial radio, and even college radio stations and independent record store clerks who knew cool shit still had limited information. That changed when MTV debuted in 1981: the VJs actually talked about (and often directly to) the artists they played. We first got MTV in the summer of 1982 when I moved to Salt Lake City at ten years old, and I watched the channel voraciously, discovering new artists and learning more about the ones I already knew. Sometime during that 1982-1983 school year, something became clear: there were some very good bands from Australia.
INXS led the pack of Australian MTV bands. Their video for “Don’t Change” was on constantly, and I loved the simplicity of watching the band have an amazing time performing the song. There was Midnight Oil, whose singer Peter Garrett jerked like a zombie robot in “Power and the Passion.” Men At Work felt the most mainstream—the only Australian band that I also heard on the radio, and the only one to sell out the 12,000-capacity Salt Palace in the spring of 1983. Soon they’d fade away, Midnight Oil would get pretty big, and INXS would eclipse them all. But there was one Australian MTV band who never seemed to earn the respect they deserved: Divinyls.
When my MTV bands were clearly on one side or the other of the rock (Judas Priest, Motley Crue) vs. new wave (Duran Duran, Human League) argument, Divinyls straddled the line between the two. They had new wave haircuts, but “Boys In Town” was a heavy, driving song with a loud guitar solo like the rock songs I liked. The band had 2 guitarists and nobody played a synth or a sax.
“Boys In Town” was on MTV all the time and I was fascinated with its subtle, dark creepiness, mostly due to the band’s singer, Chrissy Amphlett, who holds a light saber microphone stand. You never really see her eyes, even when she screams into the guitar solo. There’s a pulsing urgency to the track, which is a mere 2:44 long. And at the end of the song, after Amphlett desperately sings “Get me out of here” over and over, she takes a breath that you don’t hear on the album but that I felt every time I saw the video. The video captured the perfect storm of directness and mystery: I could see the members of Divinyls—how they looked and what instrument they played—but those cursory bits of information did nothing to tell me who Chrissy Amphlett was. The singer was captivating with a powerful, raspy voice, and her performance actually scared me, an emotion that to this day is my favorite in music. “Boys In Town” is also still a killer song.
Divinyls went on to release What A Life in 1985, which, thanks to Salt Lake City having an alternative radio station by then, felt like a hit to me with “In My Life” and “Pleasure and Pain.” 1988’s Temperamental didn’t have a hit, but I was lucky enough to see that tour with my uncle Alan at The Ritz in NYC that summer, and his loving the show confirmed that Divinyls was a real band, not some MTV schlock.
Then finally, when I was in college in 1990, Divinyls had a proper hit with “I Touch Myself” from their fourth album. It wasn’t easy to be an 18-year-old music enthusiast and have a band that you’ve loved for 7 years suddenly be new and known to everyone—to hear them playing on the radio and hear my classmates singing their song. “I Touch Myself” is catchy, but when it made Divinyls everyone’s band, I tuned out. They only released one more album in 1996 and later disbanded, relegated by many to one-hit-wonder status. But I will always consider Divinyls a 4-hit wonder band, with “Boys In Town” at the top of that list.
I recently did a Divinyls deep dive, and I learned that Amphlett sadly died in 2013. If you’re not satisfied by the regular “Boys In Town” video, HERE is a live clip from the massive US Festival in 1983, and THIS CLIP of the band walking like rock stars straight from the limo to the stage in 1993 is quite rock & roll. But the best live version is THIS ONE from Perkins Palace in Pasadena in 1983.
Season 3 of my podcast, Identified is live now. In this week’s episode, Crying in H Mart author / Japanese Breakfast leader Michelle Zauner explores family, mixed-race identity, and more. It’s on YouTube and all podcast platforms.
My memoir is called My Life in the Sunshine. You can order it here, or listen to the audiobook on Spotify. Upcoming events are always listed HERE.
I was only barely aware of them from the "Boys in Town" video and didn't really know much else until "I Touch Myself" which didn't really move me. I think you and I were on a parallel deep dive recenly, though, because I've been obsessively watching any of their live performances I can find. You just can't take your eyes off of her. This performance of "Elsie" is great: https://youtu.be/QUiQxUvPrsU?si=7XSKeD9I6GxRILWE
Divinyls and Chrissy were woefully underrated. I also saw them at The Ritz, so good live. Was recently amazed to learn that Benmont Tench from Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers played on “I Touch Myself”!