Duran Duran

Performer: Duran Duran
Engineer: Colin Thurston
Producer: Colin Thurston
Distributor: EMI Music Distribution

Notes: Duran Duran: Simon LeBon, Nick Rhodes, John Taylor, Roger Taylor, Andy Taylor. Along with Spandau Ballet, Visage, and others, Duran Duran led the early-'80s charge of the New Romantics, a movement heavily inspired by the fashion-conscious, synth-colored art-school antics of Bowie and Roxy Music. Duran Duran and their peers updated that sound for a new decade, adopting punk's DIY attitude and helping to give birth to dance-rock along the way by adding a disco-ish beat. Subsequent releases would find the band moving more toward straight pop, becoming simultaneously less dance-oriented and less arty. The 1981 debut, however, is full of thumping, club-friendly beats and long, atmospheric tunes full of extended synthesizer-centered interludes. The fact that the boys were pop-savvy enough to add irresistible choruses to "Girls on Film," "Careless Memories," and "Planet Earth" doesn't hurt matters.

Rolling Stone (9/4/03, p.146) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...Simultaneously atmospheric and dance-floor-directed...a synth-rock blueprint..." Q (10/03, p.127) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...Naturally, it's all terribly glamorous..." CMJ (1/5/04, p.8) - Ranked #19 in CMJ's "Top 20 Most-Played Albums of 1981"

At the dawn of the 1980s, Duran Duran was part of Britain's "futurist" or "new romantic" scene, which merged glam-rock attitude with disco beats and synthesizers to form an intensely fashion-conscious variant on new wave. With their good looks and pop hooks, the group ruled the music world for the first half of the decade. After that, there were numerous side projects (Arcadia, Power Station) and personnel changes, but the original band reunited to much ado in 2003.

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