Songoftheday 11/29/13 - You got sirens for a welcome, there's bloodstain for your pain and your telephone been ringing while you're dancing in the rain...

Duran Duran - "The Wild Boys"
from the album Arena (1984)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #2 (four weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 14

Today's Song of the Day is by the "Fab Five" of the second British Invasion, Duran Duran, who had three consecutive top-10 hit from their amazing album Seven And The Ragged Tiger with "Union Of The Snake", "New Moon On Monday", and the #1 pop hit "The Reflex". After the release of the album, the band went on a very successful world tour, and from one of their stadium dates in Oakland, they recorded their mostly live album and accompanying movie Arena. There was one new studio track tacked on to the set, "Wild Boys", written by the band and co-produced by them with Chic leader Nile Rodgers. The elaborate big-budget video, directed by Russell Mulcahy, was meant to be a promo for his pitch to make a movie based on William S Burroughs' book The Wild Boys: A Book Of The Dead. That movie never came, but in return we got a tripped out fantasy featuring each of the five band members being tortured in different ways, with lead singer Simon Le Bon the worst of it strapped on to a windmill dunking his head on every revolution....

"The Wild Boys" hung out in the runner-up spot on the American pop chart for a solid month in December of 1984, while making it up to #27 on the dance club play list in Billboard. Internationally, the single topped the chart in Germany and Italy, reached #2 in Ireland, Switzerland, and their native England, and top-ten most everywhere else.

I admit I wasn't quite a fan of the song at first at all but it has grown on me a little bit. Not a lot, but a little.

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Of course during the time of MTV premieres and video excess, the song also had an uncut 7-minute version...