"Need You Tonight" is the fourth song on INXS's 1987 album Kick as well as the first single from the album. It was also the only single of the band's to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It also peaked at number two on the UK Singles Chart. While it would arguably become the band's signature song, it was one of the last songs recorded for the album.

In INXS's Official Autobiography, INXS: Story to Story, Andrew Farriss said that the famous riff to the song appeared suddenly in his head while waiting for a cab to go to the airport to fly to Hong Kong. He asked the cab driver to wait a couple of minutes while he grabbed something from his motel room. In fact, he went up to record the riff and came back down an hour later with a tape to a very pissed-off driver. This riff was later described as sounding like a cross between Keith Richards and Prince.

The song is a much more electronic track than most of the band's material before or after, combining sequencers with regular drum tracks and a number of tracks of layered guitars. To approximate the sound on the recorded track, the band often utilizes click tracks for a frequent synthesizer chord as well as rim shots heard throughout the song.

On the Kick album, the song is linked to the next song, entitled either "Mediate" or "Meditate" depending on the pressing of the album. On some compilations, the two tunes appear together and on others, only "Need You Tonight" appears (rarely, if ever, has "Mediate" appeared on its own).

The song is also notable for its promotional music video which combined live action and different kinds of animation as well as black and white and color images. As on the album, it segues into a video for "Mediate" (the two are sometimes counted as the same video) which is a tribute to Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues". The video won five MTV Video Music Awards including Video of The Year and was ranked at number twenty-one on MTV's countdown of the 100 greatest videos of all time.