I’ll be honest and admit I don’t remember when I first heard Duran Duran’s music. I’m guessing it was near the end of high school but at the time it didn’t make a solid impression in the way it later did. I do recall that I first heard the Culture Club song “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” on BBC’s World Service radio, probably my junior or senior year of high school. I thought it was a woman singing at the time I heard it first. Boy was I in for a surprise when I finally saw the video months or maybe even a year or so later. :D

Duran Duran was part of the movement referred to as new romantics, a sort of off-shoot of new wave and featured mostly pop songs, many lending themselves towards dance mixes. Kind of funny since I was not much of a dance person and felt pretty self-conscious dancing in public, something that hasn’t changed much.

Rio isn’t the first album released by Duran Duran but I think it was the first to get much traction in the US and the one that came to my notice first. I suspect this may have had as much to do with their video releases as the music at the time. I think this was near the beginning of video as an art form and this band took advantage. The band did a video version of the album although I don’t remember ever seeing it. I’m going to include links to the videos on this one since they form an essential part of my fandom.

The first song that caught my interest was “Hungry Like the Wolf” and the video almost always comes to mind when I hear the song. I later came to know the video was filmed in Sri Lanka, birthplace of the Scientist. I didn’t know him then but I was able to make that association with the video later on. The video is done in a sort of Indiana Jones theme and features members of the band searching for Simon LeBon (lead singer) while Simon LeBon was hunting an exotic, tiger-like woman through the jungle. It’s very much a dance song and I recall there were quite a few different mixes available for purchase back in the day.

Rio was the second song I remember and I also associate this to some extent with its video. There’s a yacht with the band members dressed in suits and there are lots of beautiful women, some painted in bright colors, presumably referencing carnivale? The song is about Rio, a beautiful woman with a smile too difficult to resist.

Save a Prayer was Duran Duran’s first ballad of sorts. It features a strong electronic presence and the persuasive voice of Simon LeBon. I think even this song had some alternate mixes, I guess for the extended slow dance? The video is another I saw quite a lot back in the day. It was also filmed in Sri Lanka and is very much worth a look for the beautiful scenery of the country as much as the “story” of the song.

The Chauffeur is the last song on the album and it’s a song I could listen to repeatedly, given the right mood. Apparently the lyrics to this song were written by Simon LeBon as a poem many years before he joined the band and supposedly were a key to him being hired as the singer. It’s a slow number that feels a bit dark and haunted at times. I’m not sure if there’s a definite meaning to the song but I’ve found some amusement reading various interpretations online while looking up information. I should advise the video for this has a bit of nudity near the end but it’s kind of an artsy sort of video. Nothing at all like the band’s famous Girls on Film video from their first album which has a totally different feel.

Writing about this really takes me back to my first year at college when I started buying a lot more music, thanks to the Record Exchange on Tate St. Back when vinyl was still mostly king if you wanted to seriously listen to music. Early in 1984, I found myself camping out for concert tickets on a bitterly cold night. I was with two friends and another girl who I only knew briefly due to that experience. It was the only time I’ve ever camped out for tickets and it’s a fond memory. It can be fond now when I am sitting in my warm house but it really was cold that night. Our tickets weren’t too shabby and one of my friends even caught a bunny rabbit that had been thrown on stage, picked up by a band member and then thrown back out into the audience. He gave that to me and I still have it all these years later. I only saw them once but I still enjoy their music and this is an album I revisit every once in a while. The Scientist even gave me a dvd of one of their concerts, which was a big thing seeing that he is definitely NOT a fan. :D