“Onion Skin” by Boom Crash Opera

"Onion Skin" was the first single off These Here Are Crazy Times!, the second album from Australian band Boom Crash Opera, and it went out in June 1989 with Peter Farnan's name on the songwriting credit. At home it climbed to 11 on the ARIA singles chart; a year later it crossed the Pacific and got as high as eight on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks that July.

Getting it finished was the hard part. Pete Smith produced the track, but the band weren't happy with how his mix was coming along; as Farnan remembered it, Smith kept grinding away at it and getting nowhere, until somebody floated the idea of letting Nick Launay take a swing. What survives is taut, restless antipodean pop-rock, all nervous energy and hooks.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.