“Revolution 9” is a recorded composition that appeared on the Beatles' 1968 self-titled LP release (popularly known as The White Album). The sound collage, credited to Lennon–McCartney, was created primarily by John Lennon with assistance from George Harrison and Yoko Ono. Lennon said he was trying to paint a picture of a revolution using sound. The composition was influenced by the avant-garde style of Ono as well as the musique concrète works of composers such as Edgard Varese and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

The recording began as an extended ending to the album version of “Revolution.” Lennon then combined the unused coda with numerous overdubbed vocals, speech, sound effects, and short tape loops of speech and musical performances, some of which were reversed. These were further manipulated with echo, distortion, stereo panning, and fading.

McCartney argued against including the track on The Beatles. At over eight minutes, it is the longest track that the Beatles officially released.

Christina Amphlett and Mark McEntee, the core duo of the band Divinyls, wrote the song in collaboration with the songwriting duo Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg, who had penned big hits such as “I’ll Stand By You” and “Like a Virgin ”. It was unusual for both songwriting duos to collaborate, especially for Kelly/Steinberg to do so with a relatively obscure “alternative” act (more by default than design) with no previous U.S.-Top 40 single bragging rights.

This was the case in 1990, despite strong support from their former label, Chrysalis. But Divinyls were embraced with more enthusiasm by Virgin Records and the collaboration for “I Touch Myself” became a game-changing touchdown for Divinyls, being a smash-hit in at least five countries.

Billy Steinberg began writing the song, and Amphlett became immediately inspired by his first verse and chorus lyric. Within 24 hours the two duos (Amphlett/McEntee and Steinberg/Kelly) got together and finalized the writing, or so they thought:
The recording effort yielded more experimentation, from intense editing to songwriting changes (such as a new bridge added after, rather than before, the chorus).

In the U.S., despite controversy over the “touchy” sexual insinuation (or probably because of it, including the provocative MTV-award-nominated video, filmed in a Pasadena nunnery), peaked at #4 on Billboard’s Hot 100, and fueled the success of their fourth album eponymously titled Divinyls or “diVINYLS”.

The single relegated Divinyls to “one hit wonder” status in the U.S. But arguably, the bigger “wonder” was an unfair fluke, given (again arguably, of course) more commercially appealing songs in their 80’s repertoire which failed to catapult Divinyls into arena-rock stardom in the U.S. and other non-Austrailian countries.

In other words, their arena-rock-star caliber in Australia never quite developed outside of Australia …

Christina Amphlett as the frontwoman for Divinyls had far more depth and gravitas than this one-hit might invoke, both within the song itself and throughout Amphlett’s entire musical career. In 2013, Chrissy Amphlett died of breast cancer at the age of 53, in NYC.

In 2014, Chrissy’s friends, family, and co-songwriters, and the Cancer Council NSW initiated a campaign to raise breast cancer awareness, as desired and described by CHRISSY AMPHLETT’S DIVINE WISH

I Touch Myself is so appropriate
now, more than ever. You know, it
really should be the breast cancer
song.

And so in honor of Chrissy’s legacy and wish, in 2014 ten of Australia’s most famous chanteuses rendered a heart-touching version of “I Touch Myself”, first a cappella (with light strings added shortly after Olivia Newton John’s vocals), sung individually by, in order: Connie Mitchell; Deborah Conway; Kate Cerebrano; Katie Noonan; Little Pattie; Washington; Olivia Newton-John; Sarah Blasko; Sarah McLeod; and Suze DeMarchi. The video