Duran Duran

One Liner: Classic 80's power pop rock band with amazing videos

Wikipedia Genre: New wave, synth-pop, pop rock
Home: Birmingham, England

Poster Position: Headliner!

Both Weekends.

Sunday at 8:30 on the Honda Stage

Thoughts:  Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!  This is just flipping amazing.  I, like many people, was bummed to see that Stevie Nicks pulled out of the Festival (and all of her 2021 shows), but if you would have given me 1,000 guesses about who would replace her, there is absolutely zero chance that I would have picked Duran Duran.  None.  Nada. Never. Freaking awesome.  And I fully mean that.  Duran Duran has some fucking bangers.

The weird thing about Duran Duran is that there has been no second-wave love for them (that I have noticed).  Like, Journey found a second life off the back of "Don't Stop Believin'" with that track being re-purposed for Glee and blasted out of summer camp speakers nationwide.  When The Cure and Depeche Mode came back to ACL, it didn't seem like a stretch - you still hear their songs on 101X today.  Guns N Roses have old people fans, plus young rockers who have discovered them.  Paul McCartney and his Beatles connection are still cool with the Urban Outfitters kids.  Bands like Def Leppard, Motley Cure, and KISS continue to do big package tours and get fans.  Quiet Riot had like a GEICO commercial I saw the other day.   But I literally haven't even thought the words Duran Duran in absolute years.  No commercials using them, no scandals involving them, just radio silence.  I guarantee if I asked anyone 15 and under if they had heard of them, I'd get crickets.

Because I'm a curious person (nerd), I asked my 15-year-old boy this question - he texted his friend group, and I was mostly correct.  Their responses were as expected - no one had any clue.  BUT, after they did some research, they all agreed that they had heard "Hungry Like The Wolf" in movies and video games and stuff.  Oh, and also one boy said his mother foamed at the mouth when she heard they were coming to the Fest.

Out of further curiosity, I dug in to the top artists of the 80's.  Like, if you just think right now who was the biggest artist of the 80's, who do you think of?  My top three off the top of my head were Michael Jackson, Madonna, and The Police. Others on this random website that claims to have mashed the numbers to figure this out: Prince (#2), U2 (#4), and Springsteen (#5).  Duran Duran come in on the list at #29, right after R.E.M. and right before Motley Crue. (and incidentally, before The Cure (31), Journey (32), Queen (39), and a bunch of other highly famous artists like Aerosmith, Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Stevie Wonder, and Fleetwood Mac.  But I feel like those other artists mentioned there are more in the spotlight of the popular culture.  Some don't exist anymore - The Police, R.E.M. - or are dead - Michael Jackson, David Bowie, Prince - but they still seem more a part of the popular culture conversation than Duran Duran.

Anyway, what does it matter?  It doesn't!  If they can get their old asses up there on stage and jam the hits, then I'd 100% be there to wriggle right along with them.  

I thought this was an interesting section of the Wikipedia: "During the 1980s, Duran Duran were considered the quintessential manufactured, throw-away pop group. However, according to the Sunday Herald, "To describe them, as some have, as the first boy band, misrepresents their appeal. Their weapons were never just their looks, but self-penned songs." As Moby said of the band in his website diary in 2003: "... they were cursed by what we can call the 'Bee Gees' curse, which is: 'write amazing songs, sell tons of records, and consequently incur the wrath or disinterest of the rock obsessed critical establishment.'""  That is pretty good.

It looks like four of the original members are still with the band - singer Simon Le Bon, bassist John Taylor, keyboardist Nick Rhodes and drummer Roger Taylor.  Roger Taylor had left the band after a big Live Aid show in 1985, but has been back with the band since 1994.  Which begs the question - have they been releasing new music since 1985?  A look at their discography provides an emphatic YES to that question.  2015's Paper Gods, 2012's A Diamond in the Mind, 2011's All You Need is Now, 2007's Red Carpet Massacre, 2004's Astronaut, 2000's Pop Trash, 1997's Medazzaland, 1995's Thank You (oh God, it's an album of covers, and includes "911's a Joke," oh God), 1993's Duran Duran (this one had a few hits), 1990's Liberty, 1988's Big Thing, and 1986's Notorious would show me that I was wrong about doubting their longevity.  Also, read this is you have a few hours - their website definitely thinks they continued to be very important.

Their major hit albums were their first three.  1981's Duran Duran, 1982's Rio, and 1983's Seven and the Ragged Tiger.  The first album has "Girls on Film," "Planet Earth," and "Is There Something I Should Know," which are all hits.  The top one there is "Girls on Film" with 55.1 million streams.

I forgot how hot their videos were.  Like, as a kid stuck in his living room in 1982, sneaking a look at MTV while his parents were gone at choir practice on a Wednesday night, seeing models dressed like this, showing maybe potential nips, falling into water, being resuscitated, flashing an up the skirt shot, squirting lube, straddling a dude dressed as a horse, flashing side-boob.  This was the absolute stuff.

Also, you know what makes that song, and most of the Duran Duran songs, rule?  The bassline. Shit is funky.  The rest of it is a relatively tame little synth and guitar track, but the bassline is straight up grooving its way into the soles of my feet.  "Planet Earth" was a damn jam.  

The second album had "Rio," "Hungry Like the Wolf," and "Save a Prayer."  I made a cassette tape copy of a vinyl album of this that I borrowed from the Howson branch of the Austin Public Library a million years ago.  The top track here is their overall top track in their entire streaming catalog, with "Hungry Like the Wolf" boasting 224 million streams.  That is legit!

YESSS!  This video always made me conflate Duran Duran with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom!  I had entirely forgotten about that!  And that super hot lady painted and running in the jungle with just a bathing suit on!  Who is really good at wrestling!  YES!  SO cheesy and awesome.

After the boys said they knew that song, I thought I'd look up where it has been featured.  Hot Dog...The Movie, Big Fat Liar, Old School, Shrek 2, and some random TV shows have all used it - but nothing in over a decade.  According to the band, Burger King has asked to use the song for years, but the band has refused.  But so that means that these boys know the song from, I guess, Shrek 2?  Fascinating.  Also, regarding that video - ""Hungry Like the Wolf" was #11 on the century-end MTV "100 Greatest Videos Ever Made" and #31 on the "VH1: 100 Greatest Videos".  MTV also named "Hungry" the fifteenth of their most-played videos of all time."

"Rio" has a great video too - so hot when I was a kid.

Beautiful models, paint splashing, sailing?  Top notch. And again, note that funky ass bassline.  Give it to me.

The third album, 1983's Seven and the Ragged Tiger, had "The Reflex," "New Moon on Monday," and "Union of the Snake" for its three big hits.  The first of those was the big one, "The Reflex" has 37.4 million streams.

My recollection of this song was that it was about masturbation or something.  Does anyone else remember that?  Or maybe that was "Turning Japanese"?  Yes, I was correct.  Here is someone digging deeply into it all (and funny too).

1984's live album Arena had one studio song tucked on there, which also had a dope video.  "The Wild Boys."

Got a sweet Mad Max thing going on, along with some hatred for school.  My memory of that video is much better than the actual article, those effects look like shit.  But you have to give it to them - they really went for big stuff with their videos.  No boring crap like the band just playing their song on a stage, they are definitely trying to make a show.

1986's Notorious still had some hits on it - "Notorious" and "A Matter of Feeling."  The title song has the most streams, although when I hear it start I always think of the sample taken from it for a Notorious B.I.G. song (or maybe that was Puff Daddy featuring BIG?).

Again, hot ladies dancing and a funky ass bassline that jams.  They had this deal on lock down, man.  Donnie Darko apparently used that song in a long montage, which I did not recall.  What a weird movie.

When their greatest hits came out (and I obviously bought it on CD), I remember being confused about why they included "Skin Trade" from that album.  Definitely a weak song.  Doesn't belong with their best stuff.

The next album - Big Thing - stops sounding like something special, and starts sounding like crappy 80's music.  Like, "I Don't Want Your Love" is just a generic synth groove that never does anything of interest.  It literally could have been New Kids on the Block.  And yet that was also on Decade, showing that they should have just stopped with 11 songs.  "All She Wants Is" kind of sounds like the synths from a Nine Inch Nails song, but with slightly brighter little flourishes like cowbell and Simon Le Bon.  "Drug (It's Just a State of Mind)" flipping sucks. This is definitely not a good album.

1990's Liberty likewise sucks.  "Hothead" makes me just sad for the band.  Like, truly saddened that this happened to them.  Only two of these tracks have more than a million streams, and I can't understand why that would be.  I guess "Serious" isn't awful, but it still isn't good.  Several don't even have 100k, which seems more right.

1993's Duran Duran (which is honestly poorly named since they already did an eponymous album, so some people call it the Wedding Album because of the cover) is also bad.  And overly long at over an hour long.  "Shotgun" is an actively terrible song.  But it does have two songs that hit pretty big and are currently the second and third-most streamed songs in their Spotify catalog.  "Come Undone" and "Ordinary World" were the big ones here, and "Ordinary World" cranks up 169.9 million streams.  Which is a ton!  I'm honestly shocked.

Oh, yeah, I remember that video too.  On some November Rain shit, with the sad wedding and a model vamping around in a wedding gown.  Here is what I'll say about the music itself - the bass is absolutely boring.  Hell, the entire song is boring, but the thing that made those old songs up above light up and jam was that they were funky.  This one just has the bassline match up to the boring drumming as an extra thump in the bottom end.  I'm guessing people must put this on their sad breakup playlists or something.  Or maybe the adult contemporary stations they play in dentists offices still jam it.  "Come Undone" has a cool groove to it.  I like that one better.  I feel bad for the people who bought this album for one of those two singles and then had to hear the rest of it.  For straight nostalgia points, I'll say that I kinda enjoyed "Femme Fatale" being covered on here, because I love R.E.M.'s cover of it, so it makes me happy to hear a lesser cover.

1995's Thank You is the covers album I mentioned above.  A passable re-doing of "White Lines," featuring Melle Mel, Grandmaster Flash, and the Furious Five, kicks it off.  But then it goes very downhill with Public Enemy, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Zeppelin, Lou Reed, and The Doors. "911 Is a Joke" sounds like Beck.  "Lay Lady Lay" sounds horrible.  "Crystal Ship" is worse, and then somehow, "Ball of Confusion" is massively worse.  Just fucking awful. This album was declared the worst album of all time by Q magazine.

I'm simply not going to keep going through these bad latter day albums.  Instead, I'll just note what some critics said:

• 1997's Medazzaland: "Unfortunately, for most of Medazzaland, the group tries to stay hip and contemporary, and ultimately that's what prevents the album from offering enough pleasure."
• 2000's Pop Trash: "Completely absent from this music was the aggressiveness and sexuality that made early Duran Duran great – kinder, gentler records could probably be expected from the band as they age, but this album feels careless and flabby instead of introspective."
• 2004's Astronaut: "Matt Dentler of The Austin Chronicle called the album an "overproduced synth shuffle", going on to say "With too many songs trying too hard, Duranies will still go hungry for quality.""
• 2007's Red Carpet Massacre: "Justin Timberlake, Timbaland and Timbo's partner Nate "Danja" Hills, provide a reasonably good return on investment. "  That sounds awful.
• 2010's All You Need is Now: "Crispin Kott of PopMatters dubbed it "the best album Duran Duran has released since Rio"."  And it made it to #29 on the Billboard chart, so not too shabby!  I guess I was just not paying attention!
• 2015's Paper Gods: "If Paper Gods isn’t quite as strong throughout as 2010’s back-to-basics All You Need Is Now, Kill Me With Silence and the title track have terrific choruses and Sunset Garage beautifully honours the band’s survival."  Okay, so they're better than I figured!

I listened to Paper Gods back when it came out, and my very short review of it was thus: "Duran Duran - Paper Gods.  I dig me some 80's Duran Duran, but this can be quickly forgotten as far as I'm concerned.  New-ish sounding beats and generic lyrics." 

I am going to go into one more song, because this was the moment that I really remember about my own Duran Duran fanhood back in the day.  I'm pretty sure that View to a Kill was the first James Bond movie I ever saw.  This is, by absolutely zero means, the best James Bond film, but I have a special place in my heart for it.  The main thing I recall about it from my childhood is how scary it was that the little pretty butterfly artist ended up being used by Grace Jones to stick a poisoned fishhook butterfly thing into a guy's neck and kill him.  That seemed very hardcore.  And then I thought it would be cool to own this movie on VHS, and I remember asking about it at the local mom and pop video store over on 2222 in between Balcones and Mopac (where Starbucks is now).  And the price tag for a single copy of it on VHS was like $100, which to me might as well have been one billion dollars at the time.  Needless to say, I did not acquire a copy of that movie.  Anyway, Duran Duran were chosen to do the Bond theme for that movie, which is very originally named "A View to a Kill."

Oh hell yeah.  Look at those sweet effects.  That video camera is just flying on up to the Eiffel Tower, baby.  Looks like my kid made this shit.  Hilarious.  Oooh!  Three cameras?  Shit yeah!  And a walkman disguised as a thingy to make a helicopter blow up in some snowy mountains somewhere far away!  Ingenious!  Oh, and it also makes a blimp blow up in San Francisco!  So versatile!  And the sightseeing viewer is a gun!  Oh no, the accordion is a death machine soundmaker that blows up people's heads!  The final moment of that is flipping so bad.  LOVE IT!

I'd absolutely go jam out to these tunes for a night.  Since I'm doing both Sundays, I'll see if I can talk my friend into doing Duran Duran for the first weekend, and then I know my kid is going to want to see Tyler the Creator the second weekend.  Win Win.