How DURAN DURAN Got So POPULAR...AFTER FAILING!
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 Published On Aug 23, 2024

The story of how the band Duran Duran became so popular with the release of their second record Rio.

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Rhodes telling the associated press “Sri Lanka has big temples, shrines and things. For Save a Prayer and Hungry like a wolf we wanted we wanted jungles and cafes and things. For lonely in your nightmare we needed a carnival atmosphere and a soft of fantasy There are a lot of things in sri lanka. It’s been described as the nearst place to paradise.

After that, the band headed to australia and japan to play the first shows of the rio tour. The album was a huge hit in their home country debuting at the number 4 spot, eventually peakin g nat number 2. But the band still couldn’t crack the states. Four months after the album came out, Hungry Like the Wolf failed to chart and US radio were reluctant to play Duran Duran favouring more rock oriented songs. Despite billboard magazine giving the record a favorable review calling it "catchy, melodic and accessible," with bright and sassy pop”. Rio album debuted at No. 164 on the billboard’s Top LPs & Tape chart for the first week of june It slowly made some progress. It eventually made it al the way to 122 a month later, but by August, the album was off the charts.

But things were about to change. tThe first one was that in the summer of 82 Duran Duran opened for Blondie.

Then, the group’s label brought in David Kershenbaum to remix several singles to make them more aligned with what rock radio in the states was playing with an emphasis on making the guitars louder and the drums punchier while toning down the keyboards. It also resulted in a four-track EP called Carnival coming out in september of 82 The EP included Kershenbaum’s remixes for“Hungry Like the Wolf,” “Rio,” “My Own Way,” and “Girls on Film.” These version of the songs were sometimes referred to as the night versions.

”LA station KROQ also became an early backer of the band and New York Station along with WLIR playing Hungry Like a Wolf helping the band get more attention in America. Couple this with the groundbreaking and memorable video for Hungry Like the Wolf, which took inspiration from raiders of the lost ark. Garland quickly changed his tune when reviewing new videos at the time, proclaiming it the best video he’d ever seen. Compared to what mtv was showing - duran druan were innovative. They were filming videos in tropical settings with mini storylines and using 35mm film further enhancing their videos. The video premiered on mtv with the band appearing on mtv themselves introducing the video. The inspiration for the video came from Raiders of the Lost Arc with the band members crediting le bon’s drama background for helping sell the video. By the end of the year the band appeared at mtv new years eve ball,

By January of 83 - Hungry Like the Wolf topped the top rock tracks chart and by march it peaked at number 3 on the hot 100 chart staying on the charts for 23 consecutive weeks. Riomeanwhile peaked at number 14 on the hot 100 chart, while Save a prayer peaked at 16 on the same chart.

By November of 82 the band’s label issued a remixed version of Rio and by 1983 Rio went on to spend an astounding 129 weeks on the billboard charts, peaking at number 6. It went double platinum in america. The band’s label reissued teh group’s first album, which ended up going platinum as well.

As for the legacy of Hungry like the wolf, MTV named it the 15th most played video on the network’s history and 11th on the 100 greatest videos ever made. It even won a grammy for best short form music video at teh grammys. It became teh first music video to win that award.


The media hyped the group as the new beatles and frequently referred to them as the fab 5 - the band couldn’t even travel in public without security. The band began to detest the media’s summation of them as being a teeny bopper group. Not to mention the hatred they received some more older and more serious rock fans. Rolling stone wrote about the band in their profile on teh group What the members of Duran Duran will try to tell you, however, is that they’ve done nothing to encourage this sort of image.

It is that what Duran Duran aspires to? Do they w

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