'Happy birthday to you' was created for you....

Out of all the pop-inflected new wave bands of the early 80’s, it’s been Duran Duran who have been holding on to relevance by the skin of their teeth. I know this because the second box set of singles from the group covers a period up to twelve yeas ago! The Singles 1986-1995 is the follow-up 14-disc set that chronicles DD’s British singles after their meteoric rise. It’s a labor of love that’s clearly meant for fans since each CD only contains between 3-10 songs, mostly remixes but also scattered album cuts and earlier hits. While the first box set ended with “A View To A Kill”, their second (and final) #1 pop hit, Singles 1986-1995 starts out with a fractured lineup, as their Notorious album pared the group to a trio of Simon Le Bon, John Taylor, and Nick Rhodes (Andy Taylor contributed only on a couple of tracks to the album). The side projects of Arcadia and the Power Station have clearly driven battle lines, and the funk-art of Arcadia basically won out. “Notorious”, produced by Nile Rodgers, tries to do to Duran Duran with “Let’s Dance” did to Bowie, supplying the trademark Chic guitar sound and prominent bass line, though to a slinky and more British backdrop. This CD has two other longer remixes, an “extended” and one done by the “Latin Rascals” (not sounding too Latin) that merely extrapolate on the same theme without adding much, and include the passable album cut “Winter Marches On”. “Skin Trade” was the groups first taste at commercial disappointment. Barely scraping the top-40, the song has aged better than some of their more notable efforts, with LeBon’s Prince-ish falsetto giving way to an anthemic horn-filled climax. Again, the remix isn’t revelatory, though not bad (the single has the edit and album versions), and also you’ll find a non-album cut “We Need You” that resembles the Rolling Stones’ (different) song and Beatles’ styling. The third single from Notorious, “Meet El Presidente”, isn’t as exciting as the others, but has a good melody and nonsensical lyric. You get the 7” remix and extended versions, as well as a unnecessary dub (“Meet El Beat”) and a far superior album track in the slow white-funk of “Vertigo (Do The Demolition)” that possibly could have have better success given the chance.

Their next album, Big Thing, at least proved that Notorious wasn’t a total fluke, with lead-off single “I Don’t Want Your Love” reaching the top-5. This disc only has the basics, the 7” mix, the album version, and the extended “Big” mix. However it’s the best song for them in this middle period (before the “first” comeback). The men (now including Zappa/Missing Persons alum and sporadic porn star Warren Cuccurolo) have gone from “New Romantics” to adult cads, with lyrics such as “I don’t want your love, to bring me down.” That’s continued with the slinky “All She Wants Is”, which became transformed into their biggest US dance club play success. Besides the single mix, the US Master Mix is included, as well as the peppier (though lyrically challenged) “Euro Dub Mix”. Also on this disc is a “Parisian” mix of “Skin Trade” which doesn’t deviate too much from the original, and the okay bonus cut “I Believe All I Need To Know”. The third release from Big Thing, “Do You Believe In Shame”, is a low-key moody piece, followed by a couple weird spoken-word tracks and a couple slightly better songs in Big Thing album tracks “Palimino” and “Drug”, along with a live version of “Notorious”, which is better here than later in the collection.

Closing out the 80’s with the greatest hits set Decade, the label promoted it with an odd choice of single – a duo of “dub megamixes” containing somewhat recognizable snippets from various songs without a major hook, save the “Save a Prayer” backdrop on “Decadance” that puts it slightly ahead of the totally scattershot A-side “Burning The Ground”, but both (and the redundant “2 Risk E Remix” of “Decadance”) are mostly-annoying collectors’ items. Though this pales compared to the utter drivel of their followup single, “Violence Of Summer (Love’s Taking Over)”, which is presented by seven back-to-back excruciatingly painful remixes. Leading off the deserved bomb of Liberty, its puerile lyric and too-bouncy arrangement (with the remix ripping off Roberta Flack’s “Look Out Here It Comes”) was the nadir of their career, and effectively sunk their momentum almost for good. (The single also has the toss-off “Throb”, not the Janet Jackson song but rather an instrumental of album track “My Antartica”, which come on later as the B-side to “Ordinary World”) The thud of the reception prevented any excitement over the second single “Serious”, which is slightly more passable in an atmospheric way (and hit big in Japan), and is accompanied by both awful experiments (“Yo Bad Azzizi” is a riff of their line in “Is There Something I Should Know”) and bad dance songs (two versions of “All Along The Water”, one called “Water Babies”, and both not so good).

After three years of pop purgatory, Duran Duran rose like a phoenix with the unexpected smashes “Ordinary World” and “Come Undone”, which capitalized on everything that was good about the band, and putting it in both a more modern and adult setting. “Ordinary World” is by far the anchor to this whole box, as since EMI was reintroducing the group to new fans, besides the passable aforementioned “My Antartica” B-side and album version of the single, the single (now CD singles) included a mini-greatest hits set, with five of their best songs: the single version of “Save A Prayer” (studio, not the live), the already-represented “Skin Trade”, their initial #1 single mix of “The Reflex”, their breakthrough hit “Hungry Like The Wolf”, and their underground fave “Girls On Film”. The subsequent “Come Undone” also tacks on three more of their best-known earlier hits, the silly but important “Rio”, the Beatlesque “Is There Something I Should Know?”, and their final #1, the theme to the James Bond flick “A View To A Kill”. This all astronomically increases the value of the set, though of course the fans this collection was made for already have all of these songs. Besides the single and album versions, “Come Undone” also has two clunky remixes that take away from the dark yet dreamy eeriness of the original. The disc for “Too Much Information” is by far the biggest, with ten tracks, though half of those are various mixes of the song, a vague cut on being a “video boy-band”, and two of those mixes are instrumental mixes. The single edit, curiously the ninth song on here and not the first (that’s the album version), is the best representation. The Ben Chapman mix is a little too muddled, though not totally without merit. The “B-side”, “Drowning Man”, was a dance club hit it its own right, and there’s two mixes here, one by British dance act D:Ream and an “ambient mix”. “Come Undone” shows up in two versions as well, a well-done live version and a Soul-II-Soul-ish dance mix which is nominally better than the ones on the “Come Undone” single proper. Finally on the disc is a horribly off-key live version of “Notorious”.

After the success of Duran Duran II (The Wedding Album), which had the aforementioned songs, instead of building on the success, the group astonishingly released a “covers album”, Thank You, supposedly intended to be a tribute to their “influences”. How both Grandmaster Flash and Public Enemy (who came on the scene way after the DDs) serve in any way as influences confused everybody, and again the momentum was lost. The two singles represented by this collection bob between the different tacks this set was trying to go in. “Perfect Day” is a mini-EP of different tracks, starting with two Lou Reed songs, which are the qualitative best of the bunch; “Perfect Day” gives LeBon a lazy backdrop to sing on, while there’s an alternate version of “Femme Fatale” (originally an album track on The Wedding Album) which improves on their original try. By no means does either come close to eclipsing Reed’s originals, but are the most believable of Duran Duran’s tribute. Also put in for good measure is a more pop-inflected mix of album track “Love Voodoo” to I guess put one dance-like track on here, two sub-par remakes that didn’t make the cut (Neil Young’s “The Needle And The Damage Done” and Steve Harley’s “Make Me Smile (Come Up & See Me)”), and the totally inane “911 Is A Joke”, which unbelievably made the album. There’s no reason for that. Likewise goes for second single “White Lines (Don’t Do It)”, which surprisingly was a dance club hit in 1995, where the band come across as a too-white-for-words frat party band who can’t keep up with the lyrics, let alone the meaning. This final disc has four mostly ghastly mixes, the least annoying only by a scooch being the “Junior Vasquez Mix”. Another Wedding Album track, “None Of The Above”, even in its mediocrity outshines the rest, and an off-key live version of “Ordinary World” closes.

As a whole, The Singles 1986-1995 is a labor of love for hardcore Duran Duran fans, and as such does the job. For the less rabid fan or casual listener, obviously this is way too much and way too clunky to be enjoyable, though if you can get it at the right price (which I did at 60% off when Tower Records closed) it has enough of the hits (only missing “Union Of The Snake” out of their top-5 songs) to distill a good playlist into your MP3 player or computer.

Grade: C
Best Cuts: “Notorious (45 mix)”, “Skin Trade (radio cut)”, “I Don’t Want Your Love (7”, Album, and Big Mix)”, “Ordinary World (single and album mix)”, “Save A Prayer (single version)”, “The Reflex (7” version)”, “Hungry Like The Wolf”, “Girls On Film”, “Come Undone (edit and album mix)”, “Is There Something I Should Know”
Weakest Links: “Burning The Ground”, “Violence Of Summer (all mixes)”, “Notorious (live)”, “911 Is a Joke”, “White Lines (album and Oakland Fonk mix)”

"Girls On Film" hit #26 dance club play, #19 rock, and #5 in the UK.
"Hungry Like The Wolf" hit #3 pop, #36 dance club, #1 rock, and #5 in the UK.
"Save A Prayer" made #2 in the UK. (the live version made #16 in the US)
"Rio" made #14 pop, #5 rock, and #9 in the UK.
"Is There Something I Should Know?" hit #4 pop, #34 dance club, #3 rock, and #1 in the UK.
"The Reflex" hit #1 pop, #6 rock, and #1 in the UK.
"A View To A Kill" made #1 pop, #11 rock, and #2 in the UK.
"Notorious" made #2 pop, #26 dance club, #4 rock, and #7 in the UK.
"Skin Trade" hit #39 pop, #18 rock, and #22 in the UK.
"Meet El Presidente" hit #70 pop, #22 rock, and #24 in the UK.
"I Don't Want Your Love" made #4 pop, #1 dance club, #8 rock, #13 modern rock, and #14 in the UK.
"All She Wants Is" made #22 pop, #1 dance club, #13 rock, #24 modern rock, and #9 in the UK.
"Do You Believe In Shame" hit #72 pop and #30 in the UK.
"Burning The Ground/Decadance" hit #23 dance club and #31 in the UK.
"Violence Of Summer" made #64 pop, #36 dance club, #13 modern rock, and #20 in the UK.
"Serious" made #48 in the UK.
"Ordinary World" hit #3 pop, #3 rock, #2 modern rock, #14 adult contemporary, and #6 in the UK.
"Come Undone" hit #7 pop, #14 rock, #12 modern rock, #19 adult contemporary, and #13 in the UK.
"Too Much Information" made #45 pop, #17 dance club, #24 rock, #30 modern rock, and #35 in the UK.
"Drowning Man" hit #40 dance club play.
"Perfect Day" made #28 in the UK.
"White Lines" made #67 pop airplay, #5 dance club, and #17 in the UK.

Listen: "I Don't Want Your Love (Big Mix)" [click here to listen]

Buy: You can pick up a copy of The Singles 1986-1995 at websites like here and here.

And for some extra clips... first "Girls On Film"..