Greatest

Duran Duran

1998: Capitol 7243 4 96239 2 7

1. Is There Something I Should Know?
2. The Reflex
3. A View to a Kill
4. Ordinary World
5. Save a Prayer
6. Rio
7. Hungry Like the Wolf
8. Girls on Film
9. Planet Earth
10. Union of the Snake
11. New Moon on Monday
12. Wild Boys
13. Notorious
14. I Don't Want Your Love
15. All She Wants Is
16. Electric Barbarella
17. Serious
18. Skin Trade
19. Come Undone

I really, really didn’t want to own a Duran Duran CD. I resisted it for so many years, and then finally in late 2002 I couldn’t stand not having “The Reflex” and “Is There Something I Should Know?” at hand, as they are two really fine tracks. So I got Greatest and let myself relax my attitude a bit, acknowledging that Duran Duran really did put out some excellent stuff (though not all of it is good). I think really it’s the combination of the memory of their lipstick-overkill look and Simon LeBon’s occasional whining-into-gear vocal shifts that put me off them for so many years…in retrospect, it’s not all that bad, I concede. Certainly the songs catch some of that time’s edgy excitement, and that’s nice to hear again (if only as an echo). And I’ve added “Electric Barbarella” to the list of songs I love to play when I need late-night working energy.

What I really wish is that I could locate a copy of the remix of “Notorious” that Radio Nova (101.5, Paris) played in 1989, in which the song was excellently cross-mixed with Chic’s “Le Freak.”

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Comments © 2005 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.