Duran Duran - Greatest Hits (1998) WMA320

Yes, I admit it. When I was in college and getting my feet wet in radio, I was sent a copy of the first Duran Duran album and instantly fell in love with "Planet Earth" and "Girls On Film." When the band made an abbreviated club tour of the United States based on the success of "Girls On Film" and its controversial video, a very young Simon LeBon called me from a New York hotel and gave me only the third interview I'd done in my brief radio career. At the time, he and his fellow bandmates were infatuated by America, its landscape and especially New York City, with its wild clubland nightlife. LeBon told me he'd written a ton of songs in just a couple of weeks here and couldn't wait to get home to record them. I'll assume they became the crux of the highly danceable "Rio," which blew me away the week it came into the station I was working at when it was released.
With "Hungry Like The Wolf" and "Rio," I was hooked for good. Many of my college friends hated the band, calling them MTV dreck as they blasted their Led Zepplin and Pink Floyd albums. But secretly, I thought Duran Duran was the Bee's Knees. As they themselves put it, DD wanted to combine their two favorite styles of music, Chic disco and Punk rock, into one art form. That they managed to do this over and over again, plus blend in elements of Bowie and Roxy while making some of the most off-the-wall videos then fledgling MTV had available, put them over the top during that heady period that made stars out of Culture Club, Adam Ant and Aha. Unlike most of those groups, however, Duran Duran had the chops to make better than average albums over a sustained career and run up a string of hits that still hold up today.

One of the other interesting things about Duran Duran was their willingness to change, not just as they recorded new albums, but even with the music they had out. "Rio" was remastered and re-issued as "Wolf" became a hit, the debut album was reedited and reissued with "Is There Something I Should Know" as the lead track. (It has since been reissued on CD with the original songlist and artwork.) Singles would be radically altered for radio ("The Reflex") or completely re-recorded as "Night Versions" for clubs. Even though it is getting hard to find, the "Essential Duran Duran" from 1998 collects most of these and is worth searching out.

So for the 19 songs encapsulated on "Greatest," you get a consistently satisfying overview of 80's pop by one of its most inventive bands. As James Bond themes go, "A View to a Kill" holds up as one of the best of the Bond Themes. Even the latter stuff (the subdued "Ordinary World," the funky "Notorious" or the club heavy "I Don't Want Your Love") pushed the band harder than most of their peers. With the debut Duran Duran album being now over 20 years old, (and said young college radio DJ now into his 40's) that's really saying something.

by Tim Brough "author and music buff"

TRACKLIST:

01 - Is There Something I Should Know.wma
02 - The Reflex.wma
03 - A View To A Kill.wma
04 - Ordinary World.wma
05 - Save A Prayer.wma
06 - Rio.wma
07 - Hungry Like The Wolf.wma
08 - Girls On Film.wma
09 - Planet Earth.wma
10 - Union Of The Snake.wma
11 - New Moon On Monday.wma
12 - Wild Boys.wma
13 - Notorious.wma
14 - I Don't Want Your Love.wma
15 - All She Wants Is.wma
16 - Electric Barbarella.wma
17 - Serious.wma
18 - Skin Trade.wma
19 - Come Undone.wma

WMA 320Kbps 44100Hz STEREO