Do we like them?

Do we like Michael Hutchence?

Our score: 6 out of 10. Nothing harmful found and a lasting legacy, but I couldn't verify his good deeds or the messier episodes, so it sits in the middle.

Michael Hutchence was the frontman of INXS, one of Australia's biggest rock exports, and he died in November 1997. He's one of those people whose story got frozen at the height of the fame, which is why the myth keeps outrunning the facts.

The band's song Never Tear Us Apart was played as his coffin left St Andrew's Cathedral at his funeral, according to Noise11. That song still gets played and talked about across generations of Australians, which says plenty about how he's remembered at home.

The best recent look at his life is Richard Lowenstein's 2019 documentary Mystify: Michael Hutchence, which Salon reviewed in January 2020. It tries to separate the man from the legend, and it's the main reason his story keeps being retold.

On the harm test, nothing in the coverage I could read, or the searches I ran, shows him pushing harm against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet. He died in 1997, so there's no social-media slide or recent company to check. That's an absence of evidence, and I'd rather say so than dress it up.

Nothing new has surfaced on him lately beyond anniversary tributes and fan events. Stories that did turn up, about temper and a rough patch late in his life, came from sources I couldn't open this time, so I've left them out rather than guess.

So it's a lean yes from me. The music and the affection are real, the harm check came back clean, and the good-person side stays a close call until the heavier stories can be read in full.