Artists
BlondieChicThe CureDepeche ModeDuran DuranErasureAretha FranklinDan HartmanHuman LeagueJacksonsRick JamesGrace JonesEvelyn KingLL Cool JMadonnaTeena MarieGeorge MichaelNew OrderPet Shop BoysPrinceDonna SummerSylvesterTalking HeadsLuther VandrossWas (Not Was)Jody Watley
Top Dance Hits
|
Duran Duran dominated the early 80's world of music videos and MTV
with a sound the band described as the Sex Pistols
meet Chic. A string of Pop Top 10 hits put the
band at the top of
New Wave artists that stormed the U.S. charts prior to 1985. While maintaining some popularity
in clubs, Duran Duran's early hits were not
nearly as popular as Dance cuts as they were on the Pop charts. In
the second half of the 80's the band ventured further
into the realm of club music and were rewarded with a pair of #1 Dance
hits. As the decade ended, much of their popularity
faded and the band was torn apart by personnel issues. In 1992 the
band returned to the top of the charts with mellow, ballad hits
such as Ordinary World. Recent releases have ranged from the
Electro-Pop of Electric Barbarella to the
Top 10 Dance hit remake of Grandmaster Flash's White Lines.
Currently the band is gearing
up for the fall 2004 release of the first recordings by the original
membership of Duran Duran in 20 years.
With inspiration primarily from Roxy Music and David Bowie, Nick
Rhodes and John Taylor put Duran Duran together in 1978 with
Simon Colley and Stephen Duffy. The name Duran Duran comes from the
name of a villain in the Jane Fonda film Barbarella.
Also, the name of one of the clubs where the group played early gigs
was Barbarella's. Within a year both Colley and
Duffy left the group, and, after a number of other personnel changes,
Roger Taylor and Andy Taylor were added. The final piece fell into
place when vocalist Simon Le Bon joined the group in early 1980. By
the end of 1980 the group was popular among the New Romantic
movement in England. They secured a recording contract with EMI and
entered the studio to begin work on their first album.
Duran Duran's first single release Girls On Film in spring
1981 landed in the Top 10 on the heels of a controversial extended
video
created for the song by Godley and Creme. Like many other New Wave bands, Duran Duran's first extensive exposure to American audiences came in Dance clubs. Girls On Film
coupled with Planet Earth landed in the Top 30 of the U.S.
Dance charts as an import in 1981. The first album Duran
Duran was released in the UK by the end of 1981 and
landed in the Top 3
of the charts. 1982 was a big year for Duran Duran at home as the album
Rio was released, but the group made little headway
in
the U.S. outside of Dance clubs until MTV put Duran Duran's exotic
music videos into heavy rotation in 1983. A string of major Pop Top
10 hits followed
such as Hungry Like the Wolf, Is There Something I Should
Know?, Union Of the Snake, and the band's biggest
hit The Reflex. All of these also reached the Dance charts
but failed to approach the Top 10.
In 1985 the members of Duran Duran embarked on the outside projects
Arcadia and the Power Station scoring some success. By 1986, Roger
Taylor
left the group, and after some recording, Andy Taylor left as well.
With the group pared down to a trio, the album
Notorious was released
late in the year. Featuring co-production work from Chic's Nile Rodgers, the single Notorious
reached the Top 30 of the
Dance chart. The next Duran Duran album Big Thing
appeared in 1988 among fading Pop fortunes. However, the album's
first 2 singles I
Don't Want Your Love and All She Wants Is, sporting
remixes by Shep Pettibone, finally
landed
Duran Duran their first 2 #1 Dance singles.
This Dance success did not last long as the band retreated
into Adult Contemporary Pop in the early 90's scoring two of their
biggest Pop hits in
the U.S. with Ordinary World and Come Undon. In
1995 the band proved they could still pull audiences to the dancefloor
on their Top 5
Dance remake of White Lines for which they were joined by the
original recording artist Grandmaster Flash. Since 1995 Duran Duran
has released only
2 studio albums, Medazzaland and Pop
Trash. Neither of these reached significant commercial
success, and by the time
of Pop Trash only Simon LeBon and Nick Rhodes
remained from the early 80's group. This makes the 2004 return of the
group even more
remarkable. With the fall 2004 release of a new album titled
Astronaut, all 5 members of the early 80's version of
Duran Duran have
returned.
