Duran Duran’s Paper Gods – A Melange of Feces and Urine

by The Intolerant Man

This … is a band that once opened a show by playing Frank Zappa’s Watermelon in Easter Hay.

I could leave it at that. And say no more.

Perhaps I should, because truly Duran Duran is a dead, dead, long dead group. And anyway the band that existed then were different in many ways, thanks in great part to the vital inclusion of Warren Cuccurullo, who is to this day and will always be sorely missed in that band. As will Andy Taylor.

None of them could save this band now. Duran Duran have taken tripped over their own ego’s and fallen headfirst into a pile of muck of their own making.

Any remotely intelligent Duran listener knows all the facts: Over abundant studio tricks, copy pasted trend crap, cheap keyboards, next to no guitars or other instruments, auto-tune, Nick’s ego tripping, John and Simon’s never ending quest for fame and validation from … the mainstream. The media. What once was ‘I Don’t Want Your Love’ is now ‘Gimme a Scrap, Just a Used Tissue of Your Validation.’

The reality is that Paper Gods is flat out mainstream dance/pop.

The closest they’d come to that was some pop tracks on various albums: Wedding, Liberty – although those ones had some faint touch of melody and songwriting – Shelter, Liberty …. Those were pretty pop, but this is a whole new level, to the point where it is IDENTICAL to the worst of mainstream radio. To put this in 80s terms, it would be as if Duran Duran had put out something akin to a Bananarama or Rick Astley song.

(Mind you, Bananarama and Rick Astley sound like geniuses compared to our pop acts today).

What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
Another radio hit.

This is something even I could not have foreseen even a week before release. THIS, despite my having declared this a disaster based on the announcement of the collaboration and again, on the release of the first song, followed by two others, including the diarrhoea inducingly infamous Keisha song.

This trumps even their thus far worst attempts at self-sabotage beginning with the ‘work’ of Timbaland, which again I had warned about in late 2006 as soon as that project was announced. John Taylor and others gushed about it for a year, then quickly dismissed it when it failed! (Talk about a bunch of phonies who will say absolutely anything to get ahead; what is this, the never ending American Yuppie Dream?)

Follow up, All You Need is Now, which was another faux ‘masterpiece’ hoodwinked some Duranies, on the basis of it neatly replicating their older songs. So great is the need to ‘relate’. And be ‘relevant’. I may be hidebound, but I believe you need deeper roots into something like philosophy, spirituality or science to reach that space in life – not a bunch of posers who believe their own statements made to the press. One time Le Bon compared his band to being something next to Zeppelin (overrated imo) in greatness, and now Duran believe they’re really going to endure by writing for 17 year olds. Their Lady Xanax like dwindling base does as well.

You can always talk something up to the point where it sounds great.