Duran Duran 'Ordinary World (single version)'

Chart Peak: 6
YouTube

'Ordinary World', which made No. 6 in February '93, was the group's biggest hit British single hit since 1985... This epic ballad was also a huge American success.

Start of Disc 2 is a song that mentions a Thursday - and I'm posting on Thursday! It's almost like I planned it or something (I didn't).

'Ordinary World' is a song that confused me a bit in the 1990s because I found myself quite liking it. It's a smooth, melodic-sounding number with a slick production (admittedly slightly dated now, but it was pretty good at the time) and importantly a sadness that gives it a weight most Duran music lacks. Apparently the song is actually about a deceased friend of Simon Le Bon, although I'm not sure whether that was widely-known at the time. Unfortunately, the song has in retrospect become a little over-burdened by the band's own insistence that it's their best work, as part of their insistent campaign that they're not just an Eighties band, etc. Good as the song is, that's a bit too much of a burden for it. Still, they're right to be proud of it, and it is true that the song effectively relaunched their career, at least until they wrecked it again with the dodgy covers album a couple of years later.

Also appearing on: Now 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 14, 25, 31
Available on: Duran Duran [The Wedding Album]

Duran Duran 'Notorious'

Starting a new album again here, so as a slight experiment I'm putting this part before any details of the track itself. Now 8 seems a logical enough way to follow Now 38, especially as it's the only one of the first 10 I haven't already done. Fitting in with my album-every-two-months schedule means that the short month of February is a good time to do the shorter 1980s albums. Besides, there are some real gems and a few surprises on here. Now 8 is also notable as the second album in the series to come out on CD, albeit again in a truncated single-disc version. Unlike the Now 4 compact disc, though, the Now 8 CD was drawn entirely from the vinyl and cassette versions so I have tagged the crossover tracks. As you may see from the image accompanying this post, my own copy of the album isn't in the best of condition but it's good enough and all sleevenotes are intact, so let's get going...

Chart Peak: 7
YouTube

Roared into the chart at No. 14 on 28th October after just one week on release.

Because we're in the era when there were only two Now albums a year (1985-7), it's less obvious than it might have been that Duran Duran were on a bit of a hiatus in the middle of the decade, save for the one-off James Bond theme 'A View To A Kill' on Now 5. 'Notorious' and the parent album of the same name marked their resumption, although by the time the record was finished they were two Taylors short with Roger Taylor in retirement and Andy Taylor estranged: he grudgingly took part in some recording sessions but left amid much acrimony. Some reports have it that he tried to stop the remaining trio using the group name, which would perhaps explain why the single and album covers just say "Duran Notorious". They were able to retain the services of Nile Rodgers as producer and guitarist for these sessions, which should in theory have been a good fit for the funk direction they were aiming at but as usual there's something profoundly unfunky about Duran. Maybe this track suffers particularly from the protracted recording sessions but it feels like there's a fundamental tension between the desire for a smoothly metronomic sound and the human element needed to give the track drive. The hip-hop-influenced repetitions of the title in the chorus certainly stick in the mind but unfortunately they always sound better in my memory than in the finished track. The song is apparently supposed to be quite a bitter one (the "flaky bandit" mentioned in the lyric is supposedly Andy Taylor) but the anger comes through no more convincingly than the funk. I don't want to sound like I have some anti-Duran bias but I've not really enjoyed any of their Now appearances yet, it somehow keeps feeling like a chore.

Also appearing on: Now 1, 2, 3, 5, 13, 14 24, 25, 31
Available on: Notorious

Duran Duran 'All She Wants Is'

Chart Peak: 9
YouTube

This became the group's 15th Top 20 single in Britain - it made No. 9 in January 1989

It was probably too early to say this in the spring of 1989, but this turned out to be their last Top 10 hit of the decade where they were perhaps the dominant act in UK pop. That said, it was also a bit of a comeback for them after the previous couple of singles had charted lower; in fact this was the second single from their album Big Thing but managed to outchart the first because it was released into the quiet post-Christmas market. It was too early in their career to sell on nostalgia but too late for them still to be the coolest thing on the block, especially as they were now reduced to a trio - although on the positive side, this meant there was now only one person called Taylor in the band to reduce the confusion. Big Thing - and if you think that title's bad, you should see the cover - was obviously an attempt to try and catch up with modern trends but it doesn't totally work, partly because house music wasn't a style that really suited the talents of the band, nor their rather cynical songwriting style. There's a half-decent chorus kicking off and the song sounds like it might be trying to say something, but in the end it's as incomplete as the title sentence.

Also appearing on: Now 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 24, 25, 31
Available on: The Biggest & The Best

Duran Duran 'Serious'

Chart Peak: UK 48
YouTube

Another of the major British acts of the 80s struggling into the 90s. In commercial terms, they were closer to the Human League than the Pet Shop Boys - this was their lowest-charting single in the UK at the time, though they were soon able to do even worse.

I hadn't heard 'Serious' before to be honest. I was somewhat surprised at how un-80s it sounded; it was recorded in 1989 and early 1990 so they were quite quick off the mark. Instead they've come up with a jangly little thing, rather more to my liking than their typical sound. Nice punchy drumming too. Even more surprisingly, Simon Le Bon sings the chorus "It doesn't have to be serious", which is rather the opposite of the sentiment I usually associate with them. Mostly they seem quite self-important, which makes this lighter moment one of their most pleasant.

Available on: Greatest

Duran Duran 'The Reflex'

Chart Peak: 1 (4 weeks)

YouTube

FLEX-FLEX-FLEX!


Yes, for the next couple of months we're going way way back. Back to the days when the Now albums were new enough that they needed to assert that the tracks were by the original artists (luckily they weren't still claiming that on Now 34) and to underline this with pictures of those artists on the front and rear; for the penultimate time, as it turned out, with Lionel Richie's dodgy tache on the front of Now 4 seemingly putting paid to the idea thereafter. Our porcine friend, so familiar from the early advertising, only lasted one more volume, bowing out on Now 5 - DANISH BACON FACTORIES are thanked on the back cover here for his presence.

Now 3 starts with one of the definitive tracks of the early 1980s from arguably the biggest band of the time (and certainly the biggest band of the time on EMI, which was handy for licensing). Duran Duran are among the handful of acts claiming a hat-trick of appearances with this album, and are promoted to opening track for the first time. Fans of trivia will be interested to note that it's the second consecutive opener to involve somebody called Roger Taylor, both as writer and performer.
So successful that an entire chain of retro nightclubs is now named after it, 'The Reflex' was Duran Duran's second and last single to top the UK chart but their first to do so in the US, pretty good going for the third single off an already successful album. The secret weapon is of course a single-specific remix by Nile Rodgers, meaning all the fans would buy it again and that the track was more appealing to the casual buyer as well. Certainly, the repeated vocals pastiching hip-hop scratching couldn't be more of their time and it's strange to think that there was ever a time when it would be considered modern. They, and the admittedly quite good bassline, lend the track some semblance of dancefloor credibility as Simon Le Bon wails on about something he thinks is very deep and philosophical, although by the time he's complaining on the second verse that "they won't slow down the roundabout" he sounds more like a petulant small child. I actually was a small child in 1984 and even I thought some of this why-y-y-y-y stuff was a little bit silly, but that seems typical of Duran's desire to have it both ways, to claim the teenyboppers' pocket money and to think of themselves as serious artists. The combination of po-facedness and inanity often seems to ruin the fun.


Also appearing on: 1, 4, 5, 8, 13, 24, 25, 31
Available on: Pure Gold

Duran Duran 'A View To A Kill'

Chart Peak: 2

YouTube

Second time lucky, I'm finally going to tackle Now 5 this time. And maybe that was the right verb, because the very first track made a bit of a dent in my enthusiasm, as I seem to have exhausted my current allocation of Duran Duran tolerance.

'A View To A Kill' has a place in history as the highest-charting James Bond theme in the UK (and indeed in the US, where it got to the very top of the chart), but for all that it doesn't seem the most remembered of them. Nor indeed does the film, which is why I'm not entirely sure whether I've actually seen it: the clips in the video look familiar, but that might just be from seeing the video itself at the time. To be fair, the ridiculousness of the Bond films is a good fit for the band, who I can never take seriously for all the huffing and puffing and earnest psuedo-funk of this track. And to their credit, they seem to have entered into the spirit of things in the aforemented promo video, although I'm not sure whether that beret is supposed to be funny or not. It still feels a bit of a throwaway, but in Duran terms I don't always consider that a bad thing.

Also appearing on: Now 1, 2, 3, 8, 13, 24, 25, 31
Available on: Best of Bond...James Bond

Duran Duran 'New Moon On Monday'

Chart Peak: 9

YouTube

It feels like a long time ago that I was writing about Duran Duran as the second track on Now 1. Here they are now as the second-to-last on this disc.

'New Moon On Monday' is their next-but-one single, the intervening 'Union Of The Snake' having fallen between the cracks, and a relatively small hit by their standards of the time. Some people say that this is roughly the point in their career where they started to lose their way; it's hard for me to judge because I've never really liked them anyway, but this doesn't strike me as being very exceptional Duran. It's less interesting than Howard Jones, which was why I felt sorry for him that he doesn't get to have hits any more and these guys do. I have a vague idea that Super Furry Animals might have heard this song before writing 'Northern Lites'.

Also appearing on: Now 1, 3, 5, 8, 13, 24, 25, 31
Available on: Seven and the Ragged Tiger

Duran Duran 'Is There Something I Should Know?'

Chart peak: 1 (2 weeks)

YouTube

This video doesn't look even remotely familiar to me, beyond the fact that it's pretty typical of the era's style. Split-screen effects! People standing on big boxy sets! Mullets! It must have been very expensive for the time though, and that might hint at how Duran Duran got to be one of the first really big MTV acts.
I knew the song well, enough of course. Despite only two Number One singles, they really did seem to dominate pop music of the time, to an extent which seems to have rankled with them as they've tried to sell records in the subsequent decades.
Perhaps it's partly because of this air of neediness that I've never been able to warm to them, but it's not only that - there always seems to be an uncomfortable blend of self-importantce and stupidity about them; Simon Le Bon's vocals aren't exactly a strong point either. I can, if feeling generous, admire some of the craftmanship here, especially the way it hits you straight off with that pre-chorus ("Please please tell me now") that effectively became the main hook of the song. But the verses could easily be interchangeable with many another Duran song, which is fine if you like them, but unconvincing to the unconvinced.

Maybe if I'd been a bit older at the time, I'd have been keen enough on it then to find it valuable now. Or maybe I'd have dismissed them even earlier than I did, because I don't get the impression it was ever cool to like them, at least not until the last ten years or so.

Also appearing on: Now 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 24, 25, 31.
Available on: Greatest