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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Duran's First, March 5, 2004
Duran Duran's self-titled debut was released in the UK in 1981 and was a smash hit. The album did not catch on in the US. It took the release of the band's second album Rio and the inventive videos that were staples on MTV to propel this album into the US top ten two years later in 1983. As an added attraction the re-release featured a new song, the number four hit, "Is There Something I Should Know?". This remastered version is the original English version minus that track. The first five tracks, which comprised the album's first side, are songs that in the traditional DD vein. The first two tracks, "Girls On Film" and "Planet Earth" are the most familiar and still sound great twenty-three years later. "Careless Memories" was a minor hit in America and "Anyone Out There" and "To The Shore" embodies the pop sensibilities that made the group a success. The final four songs are a complete 180-degree turn from the first five. They are atmospheric, moody and brooding numbers that find the band turning inward and introspective. The band has always sited Roxy Music as big influences and they are never more so then on these four tracks. "Night Boat" is a foreboding track and the album's final number, the instrumental "Tel Aviv" is quite haunting.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Duran Duran" - Remastered., August 29, 2003
Younger audiences may say otherwise, but my highlight at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards was when the original members of Duran Duran reunited and accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award. Their victory sent a strong message to everyone in the music industry after many years of disdain from critics, and the group finally got the props they deserved. Why not? Though they had a teenage following, Duran Duran are anything but a faceless boyband. Not only do they write their own material, but they also play their own instruments. And unlike, say, the Backstreet Boys, Duran Duran are a self-made band and not the by-product of a potbellied, money-hungry svengali. After forming in 1978, the boys from Birmingham released its debut album in 1981. While it was a reasonable success in the UK, it didn't catch fire in the US until 1983, when it went Top Ten and platinum. It was one of my most-played releases in 1983, and 20 years and a college degree later, I still give it the occasional spin. The album's 9 songs are stylishly-crafted exercises in synth-heavy/new wave pop that perfectly capture the essence of the New Romantic movement. The album's most popular single, "Girls on Film," still holds up well as a commentary on life as a supermodel, while the debut single "Planet Earth" is a cool slice of disco bliss. But another track of note is "Anyone Out There," an album cut that stands out as a convincing breakup jam ("I never found out/ what made you leave. . .). On this, the remastered version, the previously deleted track "To the Shore" appears, and to be honest, it took a while for it to grow on me. But after a few repeated listens, this moody and dark track finally won me over. To be sure, Duran Duran weren't the greatest band of the 1980s, but, as this debut album proves, they epitomized the essence of cool unlike many of their peers. If, by chance, that last statement is difficult for you to digest, then get over it. To quote a line from one of Duran Duran's peers, George Michael, listen without prejudice.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
In Their Own Words, September 4, 2006
John Taylor: "[Around] 1978, the whole punk thing started to lose its color."
Nick Rhodes: "We grew up in the 70's with glam rock; I suppose that's where our influences are, our stylistic influences, and so we wanted to move more back towards that."
John Taylor: "But at the same time there was this new wave of bands, like Japan, and Simple Minds that were kind of embracing that glam thing, but there was a little bit of funk coming into it, and that just seemed like, `Yeah, this is where we belong.' "
Nick Rhodes: "We found Simon [Le Bon] in 1979 and then we knew we had the full line up."
John Taylor: "We had a piece of music that had a start, a finish, a middle...it had, actually, a verse section and a chorus section and we said [to Simon], `Hey, you got any words for this?' "
Simon Le Bon: "...and I had some words that I tweaked a little bit and found that I could fit them and we had a melody that worked, and within 30 minutes we had pretty much 70% of the song called Sound Of Thunder. When you find something that works that easily and that quickly, you know you're onto a good thing."
John Taylor: "I knew we were doing something new because Andy kinda got the feel for this disco, four-on-the-floor kind of dance beat, and we wanted to somehow throw that into the equation of what was happening."
Nick Rhodes: "We were termed `New Romantics,' or `Futurists'. Actually, I preferred `Futurists' because it sounds a bit more like an art movement."
Simon Le Bon: "And I think we let ourselves become part of that scene, and be thought of as part of that because it helped us. There was a lot of interest in it. And we realized that if we could get into it that it would all spiral and it would help us take off. If you look at the music that the groups were making at that time, it wasn't that similar, really. But, there was a common feeling, a feeling of being part of something new, and this being our time, [that this was] the chance for us to go straight out there and have hits and to grab people by the throat and go, `We're here; we have arrived!' "
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