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When were Duran Duran cool? Circa Rio? Seven And The Ragged Tiger? Perfect Teeth? Donnie Darko? Reuters suggests that appreciative remarks from bands like the Killers have made the group “officially cool at last.” In 2008. So that’s what it takes to be cool? A tip of the hat from Brandon Flowers? Did “Tranquilize” make Lou Reed more cool? Or is Lou Reed so much cooler than the Killers or Duran Duran that working with the Killers made Lou less cool. And where does Timbaland fit into all this? Or, for that matter, the Dandy Warhols?
Pop stars Duran Duran, who shot to fame for a string of smash hits and dodgy suits in the 1980s, are officially cool at last.
Once panned for being pretty boys who used enough hairspray to blow a hole in the ozone layer, the British band have become a reference point for many of today’s chart-topping acts, such as indie rockers Arctic Monkeys and American outfit The Killers.
“It’s the greatest form of flattery,” Duran Duran drummer Roger Taylor told Reuters in an interview before a sell-out Tokyo show earlier this week.
“Sometimes the music press try to write us out of music history a little bit, so it’s been really cool that bands have actually said we were a good band, and they were good songs and they want to be a little bit like us and take something from Duran Duran.”
While videos of them on yachts wearing silk suits might be painful to watch now, over 100,000 Internet pages are devoted to Duran Duran, who have sold more than 90 million albums.
Actually, the video for “Rio” is probably the least painful thing about Duran Duran, and I’d really like to see how many of those hundred thousand pages a) are devoted to Duran Duran and b) have been updated since Medazzaland. You mean to tell me that one out of every three people that bought Pop Trash made a Web site about it? If so, I’d say they were officially cool then.
Wild boys Duran Duran cool at last [Reuters]
They were, are and always be the coolest thing ever. Fact.
This opinion is not at all colored by the fact that I want John Taylor to call me “naughty”, punch me in the face and roughly fuck my mouth.
Just sayin’.
Duran Duran may be cool, but they’re not cool as ice.
I love Duran Duran, but the coincidental timing of this article and their Nicole Scherzinger endorsement is curious.
“So that’s what it takes to be cool? A tip of the hat from Brandon Flowers? Did “Tranquilize” make Lou Reed more cool? Or is Lou Reed so much cooler than the Killers or Duran Duran that working with the Killers made Lou less cool.”
Yes.
I’ll (mildly) defend the writer of this piece, because I think (despite phrasing it poorly) he’s defining DD on a scale of hipster/indie/critic-level cool. Which they’ve almost never been.
I say “almost” because it’d be a rewriting of history to pretend that the New Romantics weren’t watched and critically appraised by the indie press, even back in the ’80s. For example, both the early ’90s Trouser Press and the mid-’90s SPIN Alternative Record Guide include essays on DD’s body of work — the implication being that merely including them in these books means they’re worthy of assessment even if, say, Spandau Ballet aren’t. Mind you, both essays come to predictable conclusions: first two records good bordering on brilliant (esp. Rio), the rest gradually worthless and stupid. Even so, I don’t know that this equates to “cool” in the eyes of Ira Robbins types.
So, bottom line, it’s an arguable premise, even if it makes for a painfully glib article.
“Which they’ve almost never been.”
MisShapes?
Andy Taylor remains one of the most underrated guitarists in popular music. That is all.
What are these “internet pages” I hear so much about nowadays? I must telephone my switchboard operator and have her connect me with one, posthaste.
@NeverEnough: pure class. that whole entry.
@spazandmojo: I aim to please.
The Norwich group Bearsuit made them cool by putting the song “Duran Duran” on the “More Soul Than Wigan Casino” single. Geez…
They were cool ever since ‘82, when Jill Rader let me feel her up at our 8th grade dance. Don’t overanalyze your makeout music, kids.
@Maura Johnston: Fair point. But that’s pretty recent. (I guess I’m showing my age by declaring “pretty recent” a phenomenon that’s come and gone in the early-mid part of this decade.)
I thought the premise was that through the first two decades of their existence, to anyone with a bullshit detector, DD were not quite “cool.” (Not to me, mind you! I had a Fab Five poster on my wall in ‘85. But I write about Billboard for a living.)
i always thought they were cool ever since elastica said they liked them in ‘95 or so. i even think their cover of white lines is pretty good.
also, i wanna hang out with NeverEnough. she sounds like fun.
@bcapirigi: Sure, it all starts out fun. Five drinks in and two hours later when I have you backed into a corner, breathlessly babbling about random Duran b-sides and explaining in tedious detail about why Warren Cuccurullo is worse than cancer you’ll regret ever having visited Idolator.