Duran Duran

Duran Duran are an English electro/art-pop band from Birmingham that released three albums on EMI between 1981 and 1983: Duran Duran, Rio, and Seven and the Ragged Tiger. They scored multiple transatlantic hits, including “Planet Earth,” “Girls on Film,” “Hungry Like the Wolf,” “Save a Prayer,” “Is There Something I Should Know,” “New Moon on Monday,” and “The Reflex.”

After a mid-’80s pause for the spin-off projects Arcadia and the Power Station, a revised lineup of Duran Duran issued two further albums on EMI between 1986 and 1988, followed by additional titles on Parlophone, Capitol, and Epic during the two subsequent decades.

As one of the key players in the Second British Invasion that swept the U.S. during 1982 and 1983, the band were among the biggest global acts through the first half of the decade. Since 1980, the band’s two mainstays have been vocalist Simon Le Bon and keyboardist Nick Rhodes.

Members: Nick Rhodes (keyboards), John Taylor (bass, guitar, 1978-97, 2001-present), Simon Colley (bass, 1978-80), Stephen Duffy (vocals, drums, bass, 1978-79), Andrew Wickett (vocals, 1979-80), Alan Curtis (guitar, 1979-80), Roger Taylor (drums, 1979-86, 1994, 2001-present), Jeff Thomas (vocals, 1980), Andy Taylor (guitar, 1980-86, 2001-06), Simon Le Bon (vocals, 1980-present), Sterling Campbell (drums, 1989-91), Warren Cuccurullo (guitar, 1989-2001)

---

Background

Duran Duran formed in 1978 when guitarist/bassist John Taylor and keyboardist Nick Rhodes teamed with singer Stephan Duffy. They soon earned a residency at the Birmingham nightspot Rum Runner, where the members worked assorted jobs during non-performing hours. Another local club, Barbarella’s, was named after the 1968 sci-fi movie Barbarella. The band took its name from the antagonist in that movie, Dr. Durand Durand.

By early 1979, Duffy left the band over doubts regarding their electronic approach. (He resurfaced in the mid-Eighties as a solo artist and later fronted sophisti-pop/folksters The Lilac Time.) Taylor and Rhodes called in vocalist Andrew Wickett, recently of unrecorded local punks TV Eye. At this stage, Duran Duran conceived songs that later saw fruition, including “Girls On Film” and an embryonic “Rio.” They rounded the lineup with two unrelated Taylors: drummer Roger Taylor — formerly of unrecorded local punks the Scent Organs — and Newcastle guitarist Andy Taylor.

In early 1980, Wickett departed for reggae act The Xpertz. That May, Duran Duran found a permanent frontman in Simon Le Bon (b. Oct. 1958), a London native who recently studied drama at the University of Birmingham after a 1978 Israel-desert mission with a communal kibbuts. At his first meeting with the band, he fit his poem “Sound of Thunder” to one of their instrumental pieces.

During a summer UK tour supporting Hazel O’Connor, labels took interest in the rising band. Amid a bidding war, Duran Duran signed to EMI that December.

---

Duran Duran

Duran Duran released their self-titled debut album on June 15, 1981, on EMI.

The album contains nine Duran Duran originals by the first stable lineup: singer Simon Le Bon, guitarist Andy Taylor, bassist John Taylor, drummer Roger Taylor, and keyboardist Nick Rhodes. The arrangements pair Le Bon’s clipped upper-register phrasing with Rhodes’s keyboard surfaces, John Taylor’s foreground bass figures, Roger Taylor’s compact drum patterns, and Andy Taylor’s bright guitar accents.

“Girls on Film” struts from camera-motor chatter into a taut title call, with Le Bon cool against a rubbery low-end figure and slashing guitar. “Planet Earth” shimmers over galloping low-end motion, handclaps, and a zigzag counterfigure, then rises into the “bop-bop-ba” group answer. “Anyone Out There” tilts the first side toward a firmer rock edge, as a quirky dance beat drives interlocked fretted figures.

“To the Shore” drifts through languid electronic ambience and a slow, sinister billow beneath Le Bon’s exposed vowels. “Careless Memories” quickens with a sharper rock pace and a high-energy vocal stance. “Night Boat” looms through an extended, unearthly intro before Le Bon enters the dark electronic scene.

“Sound of Thunder” coils around a flanged figure and turns the debut’s dance impulse toward a moodier room. “Friends of Mine” lifts its title chorus over an upbeat setting and locks into a hard ending. “Tel Aviv” arrays a robotic opening refrain, synthesized strings, and distant wordless vocals into an electronic instrumental.

A1. “Girls on Film” (3:27) – frames fashion, sex, and spectacle as a camera-led transaction where the subject loses control of the scene. The “camera rolling” detail turns the body into a surface for display before the later water-and-crowd imagery darkens the setup.
A2. “Planet Earth” (3:59) – scans a rainlit world as if he has arrived from outside it, with club-era identity and television culture folded into the address. “No sign of life” gives the song its central contradiction: a dance-floor signal sent into vacancy.
A3. “Anyone Out There” (3:59) – a deserted speaker tries to reach someone after a breakup and receives only absence in return. “Ringing in the air” makes the unanswered phone feel like a suspended physical trace.
A4. “To the Shore” (3:47) – works as an image sequence: depleted appetite, public bravado, fallen words, waterline, silver sea. The shore functions as a wash-off point where stale desire and town-life residue get left at the door.
A5. “Careless Memories” (3:51) – the speaker processes loss through sharpened senses, darkened eyes, room-bound fear, and a sunlit street that hurts to enter. A thought or whisper can restart the memory, so the wound sits in ordinary perception.

B1. “Night Boat” (5:25) – turns waiting into threat: shudders, echoes, darkness, and a river that seems to answer back. The question about whether the river lives shifts the scene from travel delay to fear response.
B2. “Sound of Thunder” (4:06) – a prone figure lies in grass for hours and waits for an external rupture that never clarifies itself. The dotted-line and stepped-off-path images reduce him to a marked, displaced body after a break from the route.
B3. “Friends of Mine” (5:42) – the speaker rejects a circle of time-wasting friends and folds public names into a private social indictment. “Georgie Davis” refers to George Davis, an East London minicab driver convicted for a 1974 armed robbery and jailed in 1975. His case became a British street-politics cause under the slogan “George Davis Is Innocent OK.”
B4. “Tel Aviv” (5:16)

Duran Duran recorded the album at Red Bus Studios, Chipping Norton Studios, and Abbey Road Studios with producer Colin Thurston. The group completed the album mix at Utopia Studios with Thurston and engineer Renate Blauel.

Duran Duran appeared in a sleeve designed by Malcolm Garrett with photography by Fin Costello. The cover shows the five members in styled formal clothes against a pale photographic field, with Garrett’s blocked title treatment placed above the portrait.

EMI lifted “Planet Earth” as a February 1981 single with the non-album “Late Bar” and which reached No. 12 on the UK Singles Chart. The Russell Mulcahy video places the band on a dark soundstage with sharp light panels, club dancers, and New Romantic dress codes.

B. “Late Bar” – compresses an afterhours room into crawl-through walls, trapped bodies, mirror-ball motion, and no floor space. The numbered party room gives the nightlife fantasy a fixed, grubby address.

The single appeared on 12″ with an extanded version titled “Planet Earth (Night Version)” (6:18)

“Careless Memories” followed in April 1981 with the non-album “Khanada” and reached No. 37 on the UK Singles Chart. The video uses fast-cut interior images, street fragments, and posed band shots tied to the song’s broken-address text. Twelve-inch copies include “Fame,” their cover of the 1975 David Bowie hit.

B. “Khanada” – addresses an elusive figure through money, game-playing, and refusal. The anti-rule refrain makes the speaker sound guarded, with attraction filtered through suspicion.

“Girls on Film” appeared in July 1981 (b/w “Faster Than Light”) and reached No. 5 on the UK Singles Chart. Godley & Creme directed the long-form clip at Shepperton Studios, where the film sets fashion, gym, pool, and boxing-tableau images against a performance sequence. The shorter broadcast edit reduced the more explicit model sequences for television use.

B. “Faster Than Light” – converts pursuit or desire into aerospace motion, white light, fear of flying, and a homing approach. Its repeated speed imagery makes contact feel mechanical, bright, and unstable.

The single appeared on 12″ with an extanded version titled “Girls on Film (Night Version)” (5:31)

Their early video album cycle also included “Night Boat,” a dark island-set film in which the band moves through fog, water, ritual figures, and horror-film imagery. 

The first UK album cycle preceded the American breakthrough by more than a year. Duran Duran placed “Planet Earth,” “Careless Memories,” “Girls on Film,” and the non-US “My Own Way” on the UK market before Capitol and MTV reworked the US sequence around Rio.

Duran Duran reached No. 3 on the UK Albums Chart. The 1983 US reissue replaced “To the Shore” with “Is There Something I Should Know?” and reached the Billboard 200 top ten in America.

---

“My Own Way”

On November 16, 1981, Duran Duran released “My Own Way,” a standalone single backed with “Like an Angel.”

A1. “My Own Way” (3:42)
B1. “Like an Angel” (4:41)

“My Own Way” reached No. 14 on the UK Singles Chart. The video shows the band in a white studio room with suspended circular forms, stylized dress, and direct camera movement around Le Bon.

Duran Duran later rerecorded the song for Rio, where the arrangement drops the original single’s string-disco surface into a tighter album setting. 

“My Own Way” did not receive an original US single issue. The American market first met the band through scattered imported copies, club play, and the early MTV presence that gathered force during the next album cycle.

---

Rio

Duran Duran released their second album, Rio, on May 10, 1982, on EMI.

The album contains nine Duran Duran originals by the same five-member lineup. Saxophonist Andy Hamilton expands the title track and selected passages, while the core group directs the arrangements toward bright keyboard layers, high bass placement, crisp drum accents, and clipped vocal refrains.

“Rio” flashes from a reversed-piano whirr into flickering arpeggios, swinging verses, and a languid saxophone break before the final peak. “My Own Way” springs through peppered keyboard figures while Le Bon rises toward a near-shout. “Lonely in Your Nightmare” slows into melancholy address, with the vocal aimed at a guarded addressee who is asked to “let me in.”

“Hungry Like the Wolf” darts through a racing arpeggio, a guitar figure, and spoken asides that tighten Le Bon’s chase scene. “Hold Back the Rain” charges through feedback, machine accents, and a beat that refuses slack. “New Religion” deepens the set with hollowed-out synth figures, loping bass, vibraphone flecks, and competing vocal parts.

“Last Chance on the Stairway” glides through a meditative party scene, with marimba in the bridge and cigarette-and-glass effects behind the vocal. “Save a Prayer” lingers on meditative verses as the title plea rises and recedes over a subdued beat. “The Chauffeur” slinks through staccato vocal phrases, icy electronics, and ocarina traces under a noir nocturnal veil.

A1. “Rio” (5:39) – turns a woman into a moving image of display, travel, beach glare, television distance, and chase. “Cherry ice cream smile” gives the fantasy its surface: bright, sweet, artificial, and already staged.
A2. “My Own Way” (4:51) – the singer rejects advice, reputation, and outside restraint through air-race, street-corner, and public-figure fragments. “Fear of flying — no, not me” makes independence sound reckless rather than reflective.
A3. “Lonely in Your Nightmare” (3:50) – a protective voice offers entry into someone else’s fear, where empty promises, returning soldiers, winter, fire, and refuge imagery mark isolation. “Your refuge turns you captive” gives the song its sharpest reversal.
A4. “Hungry Like the Wolf” (3:41) – desire becomes pursuit through city heat, subway steam, forest stalking, breath, scent, blood, and moonlight. “Night is a wire” turns the urban scene into a live current before the chase shifts into animal imagery.
A5. “Hold Back the Rain” (3:59) – treats friendship or band survival as travel under bad weather, with distance, wind, fire, and wandering as shared risk. “We’re miles away from nowhere” places the bond inside motion rather than domestic safety.

B1. “New Religion” (5:31) – the singer moves through social pressure, public faces, doctrine, saints, soldiers, and crowd noise while arguing with a second inner voice. “Singing out of tune” matters because the beat still holds, so belief becomes collective noise before it becomes conviction.
B2. “Last Chance on the Stairway” (4:18) – catches attraction at party distance: half-remembered meeting, movie talk, perfume, drink, fire, and a hesitation that cannot wait another night. “A scene out of Voltaire” makes the romance feel stylized, clever, and slightly unreal.
B3. “Save a Prayer” (5:33) – frames a one-night encounter as a temporary release from loneliness, with street lights, a window, fear, dancing, and morning as its moral boundary. “We can call it paradise” recasts the night as chosen escape rather than confession.
B4. “The Chauffeur” (5:10) – observes a passenger across heat, road glare, engine vibration, insects, lovers parting, and withheld speech. “Glass splinters” lodged in the mind turns the erotic surface into psychological damage.

Duran Duran recorded Rio at AIR Studios in London with producer Colin Thurston. Engineer Renate Blauel worked on the sessions, and David Kershenbaum later prepared US remixes for the American campaign.

Rio appeared in a sleeve designed by Malcolm Garrett with an illustration by Patrick Nagel. The cover presents a stylized woman’s face with black hair, arched brows, red lips, and a curved smile inside a purple-and-red graphic border. Andy Earl supplied the rear-sleeve band photography.

EMI issued “Hungry Like the Wolf” as a May 1982 single (b/w a live version of “Careless Memories”), which reached No. 5 on the UK Singles Chart. Russell Mulcahy directed the Sri Lanka clip, where Le Bon runs through markets, jungle, cafés, and river settings in a chase narrative built for repeated television play.

Capitol first released the single in the United States in 1982, then reissued the Kershenbaum remix after MTV placed the video in heavy rotation. The delayed US campaign turned the song into the band’s first major American hit and pushed Rio into the Billboard 200 top ten.

“Save a Prayer” followed in August 1982 (b/w “Hold Back the Rain”) and reached No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart. Mulcahy filmed the video in Sri Lanka at temple, beach, and coastal locations, with the band placed in soft daylight and slow camera movement. Capitol withheld the studio single in America until January 1985, when a live version tied to Arena finally reached US radio.

“Rio” appeared as a November 1982 UK single (b/w “The Chauffeur (Blue Silver)”) and reached No. 9 on the UK Singles Chart. The Antigua video places the band on a sailboat, shoreline, and resort-like exterior settings, with model Reema Ruspoli as the woman who links the title image to the clip. Capitol reissued “Rio” in the United States in 1983 after the MTV-driven breakthrough of “Hungry Like the Wolf.”

Duran Duran also filmed “Lonely in Your Nightmare” in Sri Lanka and commissioned Ian Emes to direct “The Chauffeur.” The latter clip uses black-and-white photography, a driver-passenger premise, and staged model imagery without a full band performance. The 1983 self-titled video album grouped the early promo films into a single visual package and won the first Grammy Award for long-form music video.

Rio reached No. 2 on the UK Albums Chart and No. 6 on the Billboard 200 in America.

---

“Is There Something I Should Know?”

On March 14, 1983, Duran Duran released “Is There Something I Should Know?” The song was added to a US re-release of their first album on Capitol. The b-side, “Faith in this Colour,” remained exclusive to this single.

A1. “Is There Something I Should Know?” (4:11) – reads surveillance, social recoil, and a one-sided romantic game as signs of withheld truth. The “nuclear war” comparison makes the other person’s difficulty sound violent, modern, and impersonal rather than merely evasive.
B1. “Faith in This Colour” (4:07)

The single entered the UK chart at No. 1. Duran Duran recorded the song at Good Earth Studios in Soho with producer Ian Little. Bob Clearmountain prepared the mix in New York, and Alex Sadkin completed the twelve-inch mix at RAK Studios in London.

Capitol issued the single in the United States several months after the UK release, with “Careless Memories” on the reverse. The US issue reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and supplied the new track for the 1983 American repackage of Duran Duran.

Russell Mulcahy directed the video, which sets the band in a white room with angled panels, symbolic props, and fast intercuts of children, soldiers, and surreal object shots. The clip extends the clean graphic world of Rio into a harder, high-contrast studio film.

---

Seven and the Ragged Tiger

Duran Duran released their third album, Seven and the Ragged Tiger, on May 10, 1983, on EMI.

The album contains nine Duran Duran originals by the classic five-piece lineup. Ian Little and Alex Sadkin joined the band as producers, and the arrangements add denser vocal stacks, brass touches, percussion detail, and broader keyboard surfaces to the group’s single-led format.

“The Reflex” springs from sleek electronic flashes into stuttered title syllables, with Le Bon pressed against a coiled bass figure. “New Moon on Monday” glides through lower verse phrases and a steady end build, then opens into a cinematic electro-noir finish.

“(I’m Looking For) Cracks in the Pavement” lurches through warped synth bends, a carnival lean, and a brief Andy Taylor break. “I Take the Dice” skips over castanet clicks and lush electronic figures while Le Bon stretches the chorus. “Of Crime and Passion” races through fretted bursts and deeper vocal phrases.

“Union of the Snake” climbs from an eight-bar thump into John Taylor’s low-end figure and a mysterious title refrain. “Shadows on Your Side” surges through a racing beat and high vocal lift. “Tiger Tiger” drifts through an atmospheric electronic instrumental, with rattle-and-stick detail under the pastoral drone. “The Seventh Stranger” settles into moody midtempo electronics and a slow Le Bon address.

A1. “The Reflex” (5:29) – describes impulse as a separate force that gambles with his choices, hides information, and leaves every move unresolved. The line about being stuck on a ride that will not slow down gives the lyric its clearest image of panic under momentum.
A2. “New Moon on Monday” (4:16) – stages pursuit through signals, lunar imagery, warning sound, and torchlit renewal. The “firedance” image turns the encounter into a night ritual, not a simple romantic invitation.
A3. “(I’m Looking For) Cracks in the Pavement” (3:39) – the speaker sheds a social skin at the edge of a party and searches for fault lines beneath public life. The line about standing in light while breaking for shadows makes the collapse internal before the pavement image names it.
A4. “I Take the Dice” (3:17) – treats attraction as a wager made under glare, midnight pressure, gossip, money, and a stranger’s smile. The bracelet detail gives the scene a hard material object inside the roulette logic.
A5. “Of Crime and Passion” (3:50) – casts betrayal as injury, prosecution, storm build-up, and bodily evidence. The heart turning into a spade turns romance into a black suit-card, a death sign, and a gambling mark at once.

B1. “Union of the Snake” (4:24) – connects bodily pressure, radio voices, warning plants, and a force that rises toward a boundary. The singers inside the body make the threat internal, while the radio image pushes it outward into broadcast space. 
B2. “Shadows on Your Side” (4:02) – addresses someone exposed to crowd pressure, scandal, bent truth, and public illusion. The image of a life sliding while others say the person has the time of their life gives the lyric its social bite.
B3. “Tiger Tiger” (3:20) – hypnotic, ethereal instrumental reminiscent of the 1982 Simple Minds soundscape “Somebody Up There Likes You” and the 1973 Pink Floyd space passage “Any Colour You Like.”
B4. “The Seventh Stranger” (5:24) – moves through distance, unanswered calls, city sameness, altered identity, and estranged vision. The splinters-of-ice image makes the memory tactile, then the name-change detail turns escape into self-erasure.

Duran Duran recorded the album between spring and autumn 1983 at AIR Studios in Montserrat, Studio 301 in Sydney, and related mobile-session locations. The group completed the final mix in Sydney with Sadkin and Little.

Seven and the Ragged Tiger appeared in a sleeve designed by Malcolm Garrett and Keith Breeden with photography by Rebecca Blake. The cover shows the five members in dark formal clothes inside a marble-and-stone interior, with a Bengal tiger placed beside the group as the title’s visual anchor.

EMI lifted “Union of the Snake” as an October 1983 single (b/w “Secret Oktober”), which reached No. 3 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in America. Russell Mulcahy filmed the video near Sydney, where desert travel, underground spaces, reptiles, and theatrical figures turn the single into a pulp-adventure sequence. MTV received the clip before the single reached radio, which reversed the older audio-first rollout.

B. “Secret Oktober” – traces a private afterparty aftermath through fireworks, silence, a stranger’s bed, battered-car survival, and morning displacement. The butterfly leaving the killing jar gives the song its key image: fragile escape from a beautiful trap.

“New Moon on Monday” followed in January 1984 (b/w “Tiger Tiger”) and reached the British and American top ten. Brian Grant directed the long-form video in France, where the band appears inside a resistance-style village narrative with torches, uniforms, café scenes, and a staged liberation finale.

Nile Rodgers remixed “The Reflex” for its April 1984 release as a single. In the UK, Duran Duran backed the release with a live cover version of “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me),” a 1975 UK No. 1 by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel.

The US release used a live version of “New Religion.” The concert video combines Maple Leaf Gardens performance footage with digital water effects, animated overlays, and close shots of the band in full arena-scale presentation.

“The Reflex” reached No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in America.

---

Arena

On November 12, 1984, Duran Duran released Arena, a live double-album “recorded around the world” on their 1984 tour.

The album documents the Sing Blue Silver tour and adds the new studio track “The Wild Boys.” The live material preserves the original five-piece lineup at its peak US profile, with the concert sequence drawn from the band’s 1984 North American and British arena work.

A1. “Is There Something I Should Know?” (4:34)
A2. “Hungry Like the Wolf” (4:01)
A3. “New Religion” (5:37)
A4. “Save a Prayer” (6:12)
A5. “The Wild Boys” (4:18) – casts the boys as hunted survivors in a damaged public world, with fire, sirens, roadside murder, fallen figureheads, and repeated attempts to tame or break them. The “razors edge” detail gives their movement a narrow danger path rather than a victory march.

B1. “The Seventh Stranger” (5:05)
B2. “The Chauffeur” (5:23)
B3. “Union of the Snake” (4:09)
B4. “Planet Earth” (4:31)
B5. “Careless Memories” (4:07)

Duran Duran recorded “The Wild Boys” at Maison Rouge Studios in London with producer Nile Rodgers. Russell Mulcahy built the related Arena film from concert footage, staged science-fiction sequences, and added crowd material shot at Birmingham NEC and Twickenham Studios.

Arena appeared in a dark theatrical sleeve tied to the concert film. The cover presents the band name and title as a hard-edged graphic mark against a dramatic staged image, with the wider package tied to the costumed world of the Arena film.

EMI issued “The Wild Boys” in October 1984 (b/w a live version of “(I’m Looking For) Cracks in the Pavement”). The single reached No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in America. Mulcahy directed the video in London, where the band appears inside a large industrial set with water tanks, windmill machinery, chained bodies, giant heads, and actor Milo O’Shea as a ringmaster figure.

Capitol issued a live “Save a Prayer” as a January 1985 US single after the song had already reached the UK market in August 1982. The two-and-a-half-year gap shows the late American conversion of the band’s early catalog after MTV had made the Rio imagery familiar to US viewers.

Arena reached No. 6 on the UK Albums Chart and No. 4 on the Billboard 200 in America.

---

Band Aid

In November 1984, Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof and Ultravox singer–keyboardist Midge Ure organized Band Aid, a one-off charity ensemble formed after BBC reports on the Ethiopian famine reached British television. Geldof recruited the singers and public faces; Ure helped shape the song, arranged the track, and produced the session. Band Aid released “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in December as a charity single for Ethiopian famine relief.

Paul Young opens the solo-vocal sequence, with Boy George and George Michael ahead of Simon Le Bon, followed by Sting, Bono, Marilyn, and Glenn Gregory. The ensemble chorus includes Bananarama, the Boomtown Rats, Ultravox, Spandau Ballet, Status Quo, Kool & the Gang, Jody Watley, Phil Collins, Paul Weller, Adam Clayton, and the remaining Duran Duran members. Band Aid recorded the single in late November 1984 at Sarm West Studios in London.

Le Bon follows George Michael after the prayer phrase and takes the line with “when you’re having fun,” then continues with “there’s a world outside your window” before Sting enters. The single held No. 1 for five weeks on the UK Singles Chart and raised £8 million for Ethiopian famine relief within twelve months of release.

---

“A View to a Kill”

On May 6, 1985, Duran Duran released “A View to a Kill,” the them song to the namesake spy film starring Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. They co-wrote the song with Bond composer John Barry.

A1. “A View to a Kill” (3:33) – Duran Duran/Barry; fuses espionage, seduction, and death wish: secret meeting, night cover, assassination, snow-like tears, phoenix imagery, and a final plunge into danger. The “fatal kiss” phrase makes intimacy and mission collapse into the same act.
B1. “A View to a Kill (That Fatal Kiss)” (2:31) – Barry

Duran Duran recorded the single at Maison Rouge Studios and CTS Studios with a large orchestral ensemble. The single reached No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart. It became the first James Bond theme to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in America.

Godley & Creme directed the video at the Eiffel Tower. The clip casts each band member inside a spy-film role, cuts performance images against Bond-location footage, and places Le Bon in a mock confrontation with Roger Moore’s screen persona at the end of the film.

Duran Duran played Live Aid at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia on July 13, 1985. The set comprised “A View to a Kill,” “Union of the Snake,” “Save a Prayer,” and “The Reflex.” The performance became the final full concert appearance by the original five-member lineup.

---

Side Projects

In 1984, John Taylor and Andy Taylor formed Power Station with singer Robert Palmer and Chic drummer Tony Thompson. They recorded a 1985 self-titled album with producer Bernard Edwards and scored hits with “Some Like It Hot” and the T. Rex cover “Get It On (Bang a Gong).”

Meanwhile, the other three-fifths of Duran Duran formed Arcadia with producer Alex Sadkin in Paris. Their album, So Red the Rose, appeared in November 1985 and included guest appearances by Grace Jones, Sting, David Gilmour, Herbie Hancock, Mark Egan, and David Van Tieghem. They released “Election Day” as a single with a video that places the band inside pale rooms, patterned costumes, and formal tableau images. 

---

Notorious

Duran Duran released their fourth album, Notorious, on November 21, 1986, on EMI.

The album marks the first Duran Duran studio LP without Roger Taylor and the first after Andy Taylor left during the sessions. Le Bon, Rhodes, and John Taylor completed the album with drummer Steve Ferrone, guitarist Warren Cuccurullo, producer-guitarist Nile Rodgers, and additional brass, backing vocal, and percussion players.

“Notorious” struts on a sleek guitar figure and the stuttered “no-no” title phrase. “American Science” sways through after-hours restraint, with Le Bon doubled on the lonely-place pre-chorus. “Skin Trade” slinks through falsetto, a slithery electronic riff, and rapid-fire brass before the middle-eight break.

“A Matter of Feeling” glides through luminous electronic washes and Le Bon’s most exposed vocal stance on the album. “Hold Me” charges through a large beat and a broad chorus. “Vertigo (Do the Demolition)” careens over a heavy keyboard figure and a futuristic solo break.

“So Misled” jerks through a heavy beat and multi-part verse vocals before a wide chorus answer. “Meet El Presidente” spikes the set with Latin-leaning flute and party shouts. “Winter Marches On” drifts through slow layered electronics and bleak nocturnal air. “Proposition” closes on a punchy brass return, a strong keyboard figure, and Le Bon’s menacing vocal tone.

A1. “Notorious” (4:18) – answers money, witness-control, paid prophets, rumors, and seedy judgment with defiance. The skin-burning reading image makes publicity feel physically corrosive before the chorus turns the charge back on the accusers.
A2. “American Science” (4:43) – treats seduction as experiment, procedure, and social display, with the absent face leaving a room emotionally vacant. The “cling-wrap plaything” image gives the lyric a cheap, plastic surface under the upscale nocturnal setting.
A3. “Skin Trade” (5:58) – links sex, labor, exploitation, and money through a woman who works through the night and knows the transaction more clearly than the observers. The pearls detail makes the scene material, while the compromise language turns desire into market conduct.
A4. “A Matter of Feeling” (5:56) – addresses someone surrounded by people but cut off from understanding, with love treated as a habit and emotion stored for later use. The rainy-Monday image turns feeling into a delayed account that arrives after the damage has already started.
A5. “Hold Me” (4:30) – asks a guarded figure to drop shame, ghost, pride, and isolation long enough for contact. The “spear of guilt” inside the body gives the song its sharpest image of concealed emotional injury.

B1. “Vertigo (Do the Demolition)” (4:44) – attacks illusion, power, appetite, and empty conversation through demolition language and repeated commands to listen. The dark-side power image frames confusion as political and bodily at once.
B2. “So Misled” (4:03) – traces bad desire through London summer, false gold, magazine promises, and guaranteed satisfaction that only deepens confusion. The gold-sold pun makes the lyric pivot from glamour to transaction.
B3. “Meet El Presidente” (4:19) – turns a female power figure into a mix of pinup, politician, media object, and threat. The “factory wall” placement reduces glamour to workplace display before the gun and chamber imagery push the scene into staged violence.
B4. “Winter Marches On” (3:25) – drains warmth from trade, birth, coronation, crowds, and music until winter becomes a public force. Frozen dreams and a ringing sky make the season sound ceremonial, not simply seasonal.
B5. “Proposition” (4:57) – frames freedom, sacrifice, guilt, coalition, and generational shame as a political bargain with bodily cost. The “closing edge” image places the speaker under pressure before the chorus names the offer.

Duran Duran recorded Notorious at Westside Studios, Abbey Road Studios, Maison Rouge Studios, Skyline Studios, and AIR Studios. The group produced the album with Nile Rodgers and engineer Daniel Abraham.

Notorious appeared in a sleeve designed by Frank Olinsky with photography by John Swannell. The front cover frames a cropped black-and-white fashion portrait against a white field, with a red title block and small band portrait elements arranged as graphic fragments.

EMI lifted “Notorious” as an October 1986 single (b/w “Winter Marches On”), which reached No. 7 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in America. The video places the band in a black-and-white studio setting with horn players, dancers, sharp shadows, and Paula Abdul choreography.

“Skin Trade” followed in January 1987 (b/w “We Need You”). The single reached No. 22 on the UK Singles Chart and the American top forty. The video uses tinted fashion-film imagery, model shots, and tight performance scenes. The sleeve used a close-up photograph of a bare backside, which some retailers rejected in select markets.

B. “We Need You”

“Meet El Presidente” appeared in April 1987 (b/w “Vertigo (Do the Demolition)”). The single became the first Duran Duran title issued as a CD single. Its video places the band in a stylized Latin-political fantasy with formal dress, women in staged roles, and club-like interior action.

Notorious reached the UK Albums Chart top twenty and the Billboard 200 top fifteen in America.

---

Big Thing

Duran Duran released their fifth album, Big Thing, on October 18, 1988, on EMI.

The album presents the trio lineup with Warren Cuccurullo as the principal guitarist and Sterling Campbell as the touring drummer of the period. Jonathan Elias and Daniel Abraham joined the production team, and the album adds programmed rhythm parts, longer keyboard beds, guest brass, and intermittent acoustic textures to the trio format.

“Big Thing” rattles from a bare opening into machine-tooled dance motion. “I Don’t Want Your Love” struts through programmed low end, clipped-off vocal phrases, and the “I like noise” middle-eight. “All She Wants Is” grinds through moody mechanical accents and a menacing title demand.

“Too Late Marlene” settles into midtempo melancholy and reflective Le Bon phrasing. “Drug (It’s Just a State of Mind)” jerks across a machine-driven electronic track with the album’s starkest floor rhythm. “Do You Believe in Shame?” withdraws into a stark, cinematic setting and a more introspective Le Bon address.

“Palomino” shimmers under delicate vocals and glassy electronic tones. “Land” broods through breathy Le Bon phrases before Spanish guitar steers the second half. “Flute Interlude” bridges the reflective side into “The Edge of America,” where the mood darkens before “Lake Shore Driving” erupts into white-noise guitar and an abrupt cutoff.

A1. “Big Thing” (3:41)
A2. “I Don’t Want Your Love” (4:06)
A3. “All She Wants Is” (4:34)
A4. “Too Late Marlene” (5:08)
A5. “Drug (It’s Just a State of Mind)” (4:36)
A6. “Do You Believe in Shame?” (4:23)

B1. “Palomino” (5:19)
B2. “Interlude One” (0:32)
B3. “Land” (6:12)
B4. “Flute Interlude” (0:32)
B5. “The Edge of America” (2:37)
B6. “Lake Shore Driving” (3:03)

Duran Duran recorded much of Big Thing at Studio Davout in Paris and mixed the album at Soundworks Studios in New York. The group produced the album with Jonathan Elias and Daniel Abraham.

Big Thing appeared in a saturated typographic sleeve with large block lettering, bright graphic fields, and little reliance on band portraiture. The cover reduces the title into a flat design object, with the group name treated as part of the image.

EMI issued “I Don’t Want Your Love” as a September 1988 single. The single reached No. 14 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in America. Steve Lowe directed the video, which sets the group in monochrome performance shots, hard light, and fashion-model fragments.

“All She Wants Is” followed in December 1988 (b/w “I Believe/All I Need to Know”) and reached the British and American top thirty. Dean Chamberlain directed the video in London with stop-motion effects, saturated light trails, mannequin-like bodies, and a gallery-style performance set. The clip won an MTV award for innovation in video.

“Do You Believe in Shame?” appeared in April 1989 and placed the band in a slower single format tied to the Tequila Sunrise soundtrack campaign. The video uses grave interior scenes, memory images, and solemn close shots that match the song’s memorial lyric.

Big Thing reached the UK Albums Chart top fifteen and the Billboard 200 top twenty-five in America.

---

“Burning the Ground”

Duran Duran released “Burning the Ground” as a December 1989 single on Parlophone.

A1. “Burning the Ground” (4:00)
B1. “Decadance” (4:22)

The single functioned as a megamix tied to Decade, with “Decadance” on the B-side. The track splices vocal and instrumental fragments from the band’s 1980s singles into a single edited sequence, with “I Don’t Want Your Love,” “Notorious,” “The Reflex,” “Girls on Film,” “Rio,” “Hungry Like the Wolf,” and other titles folded into the construction.

The video compiles earlier promo-film images and concert-era footage into a rapid visual chronology. The clip reframes the 1981–88 image cycle as an archive of stage lighting, travel films, fashion-studio setups, and MTV-era edits.

---

Liberty

Duran Duran released their sixth album, Liberty, in August 1990 on EMI.

The album marks the first studio album with Cuccurullo and Campbell as official members. Bernard Fowler, Carol Kenyon, Luis Jardim, Roddy Lorimer, Spike Edney, Stan Harrison, and Tessa Niles appear among the supporting players, with Chris Kimsey as producer and Christopher Marc Potter as engineer.

“Violence of Summer (Love’s Taking Over)” kicks from house-piano flashes into rude, in-your-face Le Bon phrasing. “Liberty” slips from muted keyboard figures into a suave low-end track and a winding Cuccurullo solo. “Hothead” snaps through spoken phrases and news-soundbite inserts.

“Serious” glides on chiming riffs and a surging Le Bon melody. “All Along the Water” locks into a lean rhythmic-funk setting. “My Antarctica” drifts through glacial synths, a desolate piano hook, and Le Bon’s haunted vocal. “First Impression” twists around Cuccurullo’s guitar work and a firmer rock-facing track.

“Can You Deal With It” pumps through a house-tinged setting while Le Bon barks the title phrase. “Venice Drowning” sinks into buried guitar figures and fevered erotic-noir phrasing. “Downtown” closes with a menacing chorus-line effect and a hoarse Le Bon finish.

A1. “Violence of Summer (Love’s Taking Over)” (4:22)
A2. “Liberty” (5:01)
A3. “Hothead” (3:31)
A4. “Serious” (4:21)
A5. “All Along the Water” (3:50)
A6. “My Antarctica” (5:01)

B1. “First Impression” (5:28)
B2. “Read My Lips” (4:30)
B3. “Can You Deal with It” (3:47)
B4. “Venice Drowning” (5:13)
B5. “Downtown” (5:23)

Duran Duran recorded and mixed Liberty in London with Kimsey and Potter. Ted Jensen mastered the album at Sterling Sound in New York.

Liberty appeared in a sleeve with photography by Ellen von Unwerth and typography by Ruth Rowland. The cover shows the five-member lineup with two women at a funfair, with bright clothes, carnival décor, and casual group placement replacing the harder graphic branding of the late-eighties sleeves.

Parlophone issued “Violence of Summer (Love’s Taking Over)” as an August 1990 single (b/w “Throb”), which reached No. 20 on the UK Singles Chart. The video uses fairground lights, model figures, saturated close shots, and band-performance fragments that match the sleeve’s fashion-carnival image.

“Serious” followed in October 1990 (b/w “Yo Bad Azizi”) and reached No. 48 on the UK Singles Chart. The black-and-white video places the band in a loose performance setting with dancers, model shots, and a lighter comic tone.

Liberty reached No. 8 on the UK Albums Chart and No. 46 on the Billboard 200 in America. 

---

Duran Duran (The Wedding Album)

Duran Duran released their second self-titled album in February 1993 on Parlophone.

The album presents the quartet lineup of Le Bon, Rhodes, John Taylor, and Cuccurullo. John Jones co-produced the album and added programming, keyboards, and selected instrumental parts. Milton Nascimento shares “Breath After Breath,” and the album includes the Velvet Underground cover “Femme Fatale.”

“Too Much Information” charges from a rousing guitar lick into an extended coda. “Ordinary World” descends from Warren Cuccurullo’s high-note lament into Le Bon’s mournful first phrase and a luminous electronic haze. “Love Voodoo” slinks through dubby space and playful keyboard flourishes. “Drowning Man” pounds under Le Bon’s angry Uncle Sam images.

“Shotgun” jolts the sequence with a brief spiky interlude. “Come Undone” drifts over a chugging breakbeat, dense layers, and back-and-forth vocal replies. “Breath After Breath” lifts through a joyous beat as Le Bon and Milton Nascimento trade English and Portuguese phrases. “U.M.F.” flips from spoken setup into a bright break with horns, whistling, and rounded backing replies.

“Femme Fatale” lingers in an echoey cover treatment. “None of the Above” starts with an a cappella chorus and rolls into a polished verse. “Shelter” hardens the second half with a soft menace in the vocal. “Sin of the City” stretches into an extended closing jam after the machine pattern slips out of sync.

1. “Too Much Information” (4:56)
2. “Ordinary World” (5:39)
3. “Love Voodoo” (4:58)
4. “Drowning Man” (5:15)
5. “Shotgun” (0:54)
6. “Come Undone” (4:38)
7. “Breath After Breath” (4:58) – Duran Duran/Nascimento
8. “UMF” (5:33)
9. “Femme Fatale” (4:21) – Lou Reed
10. “None of the Above” (5:19)
11. “Shelter” (4:25)
12. “To Whom It May Concern” (4:24)
13. “Sin of the City” (7:14)

Duran Duran recorded the album between 1991 and 1992 at Privacy Studios in Battersea and Maison Rouge Studios in London. The group produced the album with John Jones.

Duran Duran appeared in a sleeve by Nick Egan with artwork by Eric Roinestad. The cover uses sepia wedding photographs of the members’ parents, arranged beneath a gold Duran Duran logo. The parent-photo concept produced the informal title The Wedding Album and separated the release from the 1981 self-titled debut.

Parlophone issued “Ordinary World” as a January 1993 single (b/w “My Antarctica”), which reached No. 6 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in America. Nick Egan directed the California video, which places the band inside a formal white interior and garden-like exterior scenes with a bridal figure and slow ceremonial motion.

“Come Undone” followed in March 1993 and reached the British top twenty and the American top ten. Julien Temple directed the video, which uses water, aquarium imagery, blue light, and confined interior shots around the band and model figures.

“Too Much Information” appeared in August 1993 and continued the album campaign with a media-saturation lyric. Temple filmed the video in Santa Monica, where the group appears amid cameras, monitors, stage equipment, and overloaded image surfaces.

Duran Duran also filmed “Femme Fatale” in New York with Ellen von Unwerth and “Breath After Breath” in Argentina with Milton Nascimento. The former clip uses black-and-white fashion imagery; the latter places the band and Nascimento inside South American exterior and performance scenes.

Duran Duran reached No. 4 on the UK Albums Chart and No. 7 on the Billboard 200 in America.

---

Discography:

• Duran Duran (1981)
• Rio (1982)
• Seven and the Ragged Tiger (1983)
• Notorious (1986)
• Big Thing (1988)
• Liberty (1990)
• Duran Duran [aka “the wedding album”] (1993)

---

Sources:

• Discogs: Duran Duran
• English D Albums Directory (page 5)
  
• 45worlds: Duran Duran
• 45cat: Duran Duran
• TVRDb: Top of the Pops – Duran Duran