INXS and Chantale Daigle, not the same fight

In the fifth episode of the miniseries Disobey: Chantale Daigle’s choicethe protagonist Chantale (Éléonore Loiselle) orchestrates, in the most opaque secrecy, her escape to Boston, where she will undergo a late abortion.

She styles her hair, which she dyed green and black, into a mohawk. His mother burns his eyes. Chantale puts on a leather biker jacket and burns her white veil, which Jean-Guy Tremblay (Antoine Pilon) “wasn’t supposed to see before the wedding”.

In the background, the song Devil Inside of the Australian group INXS gives rhythm to this sequence of approximately 60 seconds filmed by the director and co-producer Alexis Durand-Brault. The editing of this episode – the fifth of a total of six – was completed, with all the necessary authorizations, and it was due to be released on the Crave platform on April 5.

Except that you won’t hear the singer Michael Hutchence sing there, in his suave and seductive voice, ” Devil inside, the devil inside, every single one of us, the devil inside “. After authorizing the use of the part, INXS changed its mind at the last minute and demanded the withdrawal of Devil Inside of the fifth episode of Disobey: Chantale Daigle’s choice.

Official reason: “INXS management team feels sensitive about the song and decided to pass on this TV project. »

Unofficial reason which was communicated to the co-producers of the series, Sophie Lorain and Alexis Durand-Brault, of the company ALSO: the subject of abortion would be too divisive.

“Both arms fell off me. INXS takes away the rights to the song from me because the show is about abortion. I find that scandalous,” thunders Alexis Durand-Brault in an interview.

Yet Canadian rights to Devil Inside had indeed been obtained for Disobeya month ago, by the Ray-On box, owned by Iohann Martin and Mitsou Gélinas.

“We had made the request and the request had been accepted by the publishers of the INXS catalog [Universal]. They even gave us the price,” confirms Iohann Martin, of Ray-On, a Montreal company that specializes, among other things, in the release of musical rights.

Estimated bill: $15,000 for the 60-second extract of this song popularized by INXS in 1988.

When an artist or band receives a request to use one of their songs on TV, they know what the show is about and they know the context in which their piece will play. “They had all the necessary information, they had also received the summary of the series”, recalls Alexis Durand-Brault.

Nobody therefore tried to trap INXS by hiding the nature of Chantale Daigle’s – very public – fight. I saw the scene from the fifth episode which included Devil Inside and it is harmless. We see Chantale Daigle disguise herself as a punkette to sneak incognito through American customs, that’s all. There is no blood, no tears or big drama.

How then to explain this volte-face by INXS less than two weeks before the broadcast? Alexis Durand-Brault believes that an article in the influential American magazine variety about Disobey reportedly alerted the INXS management team, which is not necessarily involved in the use of the band’s songs anywhere in the world.

The paper, published on March 17, on the sidelines of the European Series Mania festival, spoke of the big impact of the true story of Chantale Daigle, who guaranteed Canadian women the right to abortion^⁠1. A few days after the posting of the article varietyAlexis Durand-Brault’s phone rang and the contract was torpedoed.

The INXS group, however, has not been recognized for its conservative positions.

The room Devil Inside was co-written by Michael Hutchence, who died by hanging in 1997, and INXS keyboardist Andrew Farriss, still alive at 64.

In a July 2022 interview, Andrew Farriss revealed that he’s always struggled a bit with Devil Inside because Michael Hutchence had written lyrics about the devil and he had “beliefs about life and what comes after”.

We may have an answer here on INXS’s fallback from the soundtrack of Disobey: Chantale Daigle’s choice. A spokesperson for Universal in Quebec did not respond to an interview request.

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