In the last post, I promised we’d get into Duran Duran’s moodier side.

The band released their eponymous first/first eponymous album in 1981. While a success in the UK, the US market wasn’t buyin’ it. The album was re-released in the US in 1983, with one of the songs featured in this article replaced by the poppy earworm “Is There Something I Should Know?” (one of my least favorite of their entire catalogue). This album also features well-known hits “Planet Earth” and “Girls on Film”.

Let’s take a deep dive into 1981’s Duran Duran:

“To The Shore” (the song replaced by “Is There Something I Should Know?”) features such incomprehensible lyrics as:

Words are falling to the floor
Glands stand pouring fruit tree
Now they glisten on the waterline
See how you are at the shore.

Simon Le Bon, the band’s main lyricist and frontman said, years later:

“Whenever I listen to “To The Shore” I am completely nonplussed as to what it is really about. I think I was going through an experimental/impressionistic phase with my lyrics. I didn’t really care what the words actually meant; rather, what people read into them was the important factor, like a sort of Rorschach test”.

“(Waiting for the) Night Boat” is one of the band’s creepiest. According to Le Bon, he wrote the lyrics while waiting for the bus late one night. I love that it’s just a simple daily experience that inspired a whole kind-of ghost/zombie/horror storyline. I’ve linked here to the music video, which is also one of my favorites. Directed by Russell Mulcahy, and filmed in Antigua, it must have cost a fortune. Simon Le Bon gets his Shakespeare on in this one, with a recitation from Romeo & Juliet. John Taylor’s bass is, as always, a cut above.

Next up, the band’s first big US hit album, the incredible Rio. I may have to do more than two songs from that one.