Duran Duran - Rio

I don’t have that ninth grade review of Rio, but I vaguely remember enough of it to paraphrase one of the “money shot” lines. I referred to the song “Hungry Like The Wolf,” noted the song lyric’s strong sexual imagery and declared it to be something that may to “too risque to find it’s way on to the Solid Gold show.”
For those of you that were too young to remember (read: all of you), “Solid Gold” was a television show where people would come and lip-synch their songs in front of a phony audience. It was very lame and not very many “cool” bands played on it.
Anyway, our town didn’t have MTV and, therefore, I didn’t really have too great of a visual image of the band. I probably saw the video to “Hungry Like The Wolf” once or twice, but I really thought that Duran Duran would turn out to be this highbrow new wave band and eventually get heroin addictions and record albums in Berlin with Eno.
So I write that bitchin line and what does my English teacher write on it? “I just saw them play this song on ‘Solid Gold’ last week. A-“
Let me return the favor, Duran Duran, and award you with my own ‘A-‘ for your best album, one that remarkably holds up better than expected and isn’t as embarrassing as my review of it. There, I said it.
I’ve concluded that Duran Duran owes a ton to Roxy Music. And while they couldn’t touch some of Roxy’s best work, Rio comes close and certainly bests the band’s late 70’s output like Flesh & Blood, the era that D.D. most resembles.
Unlike other Duran releases that are only as good as their singles, Rio’s lesser known tracks are not only noteworthy, but are on par with their more famous counterparts. What makes the album work so well is the band’s rhythm section of John and Rodger Taylor. John provides some nifty bass work full of funky slaps and pops while Rodger works both acoustic and electric drums with great precision. Make no mistake, it’s very white Anglophile funk, but there’s enough legitimate booty shaking thanks to Duran’s rhythm section to make their dance floor antics plausible.
The hits are concentrated on side one, but side two is fucking better. Slick, atmospheric and fuck-ready, the four songs on the second side of Rio are the best thing this band has ever done.
In closing, this is better-than-good pop music that, unlike the band’s other releases, is able to transcend the moment in which it was created and sound timeless when other contemporaries sound dated. And thanks to the success that Rio bestowed upon them, Duran Duran were never quite able to recreate the impeccable blend they achieved here.