Creativity Quote by Michael Hutchence

A rock star insisting he never emulated anyone is already a little suspicious, and Michael Hutchence knows it. The line plays like a preemptive strike against the most boring question any musician gets: Who are your influences? Instead of paying tribute up the family tree of rock, he swerves to something less respectable and more revealing - “attitudes.” Not sounds, not technique, not even songs. Vibe. Stance. The unteachable part.

In the late-80s and early-90s, when INXS were both MTV fixtures and targets for “manufactured” accusations, this is a declaration of authorship in a culture that kept trying to reduce artists to inputs and outputs. “Idolized” is the key word: he’s not just rejecting imitation, he’s rejecting submission. Idols ask for worship. Attitudes ask for chemistry. You don’t copy an attitude; you catch it, wear it, test it against a room.

The bluntness of “get off” matters, too. It turns aesthetic preference into appetite. Hutchence frames inspiration as something physical and a little dangerous, closer to desire than study. That’s the subtext: the real engine of performance isn’t reverence, it’s charge - swagger, insolence, seduction, risk.

It also quietly admits how influence actually works in pop. Nobody is untouched by other people; the point is you’re choosing the energy you align with. Hutchence isn’t claiming purity. He’s claiming agency, and for a frontman whose instrument was presence, that’s the whole job.