and Words
Came in from a rainy Thursday on the avenue
Thought I heard you talking softly
I turned on the lights, the TV, and the radio
Still I can’t escape the ghost of you
What has happened to it all?
Crazy, some’d say
Where is the life that I recognise? (Gone away)
But I won’t cry for yesterday, there’s an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find
And as I try to make my way to the ordinary world
I will learn to survive
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
On an ordinary day in the mid-1990’s, a number of us shuffle down to the local Chili’s for a meal. We, a collection of friends and colleagues from Microsoft, take a break from work and drive the short distance down the street to that restaurant. We conduct this ritual with alarming regularly, nearly becoming our default place for meals. I ordered my favorite food item from the menu (the Chicken Crispers), and we sit and chat.
Today, we change our routine and elect to walk around the plaza for a bit before returning to work. Crossroads sits but a few minutes away. It distinctively hosts a used bookstore, food court, and collection of tables. Ever the music enthusiast, I wander into the music store immediately next to the Chili’s, by the name of Silver Platters. This particular location is considerably smaller than their other locations. As I browse the collection of CD’s neatly laid out in row after row. And then this song comes on over the speakers.
“Who is this?!”, I exclaimed.
In the prehistoric days before smartphones and apps like Shazam, the only way to determine details about the song was to simply ask. I asked all my friends in the store, with no luck. Admitting defeat, I went to the desk and asked the staff, the answer? “Ordinary World” by Duran Duran.
If I told you that I met that answer with skepticism would be gross understatement. That information struck with outright disbelief. My first thought that the clerk had made a mistake, but he fetched that CD. Though I physically held it in my hands, it still felt like an elaborate joke. Naturally, I bought the CD and brought it home.
Though allow to explain my natural skepticism. I grew up a child of the 80’s. A little cable channel called MTV disrupted the music industry and morphed it from strictly a listening experience to a watching once. This forced music artists to release videos to remain relevant. Some resisted this trend at their expense. Most bands started slowly, but eventually transitioned to releasing videos with each single. A handful embraced the trend to video, using the platform to bolster their popularity.
However, Duran Duran exploited the medium and tested its boundaries. First, all band members adorned the covers of teen girl magazines; their sleek style and look appealed to that demographic. Second, they released videos, like ‘Girls on Film’, rated too explicit to air on MTV. When pressed by interviewers about using sex to sell to promote themselves, they didn’t bother denying it; in fact, they laughed about it. In this respect, they exploited both genders. They certainly promoted their good looks in videos, but they also portrayed exceptionally attractive women.
While their music certainly got considerable airplay, both radio and video, it lacked substance. Videos like “Hungry Like the Wolf”, “Girls on Film”, and “Rio” felt like merely conduits to showcase beautiful faces in compromising positions on the screen. That said, plenty of other band’s songs lacked substance; this is not unique to Duran Duran. However, this particular band’s disproportionate popularity surprised me. The way by which they so blatantly and effectively used beauty without paying much mind to substance, both fascinated me and irked me.
However, this new album is substantially different. In fact, so much so that I checked who wrote both the older songs and the newer ones. I imagined that either the older songs or the newer songs were written by someone else. I was wrong, with subtle differences from personnel changes, the core has remained largely the same. The mystery continues.
“Ordinary World” establishes a melancholic, dream-like tone that last throughout its duration. Simon Le Bon, Duran Duran’s lead vocalist, is subtle if not outright seductive in the way that he utters those words. The entire song feels like you’re walking through someone else’s dream or memories, as he walks you through his past, though not forgotten, love. Gone are sophomoric lyrics from the past from “Hungry Like the Wolf” and “Girls on Film”, both shouted without finesse and mindlessly repetitive.
This new music is surprisingly deep and self-reflective. The words flowed beautifully, like this:
Papers in the roadside tell of suffering and greed
Fear today, forgot tomorrow
Ooh-ooh, here besides the news of holy war and holy need
Ours is just a little sorrowed talk
While I didn’t necessarily dislike the Duran Duran of the 1980’s, I simply didn’t find them of much consequence. It was musical fluff or popular filler. I didn’t find it necessarily bad, but they weren’t the band where I’d invest a whole lot attention.
It was like watching McDonald’s serving a filet mignon.
Though slowly, it all started to make sense. The band members’ ages ranged from six to ten years older than I am. By the time they released their music in the 1980’s, they were barely over their teens. Their early music simply reflected who they were at the time. They were collection of pretty boys, who were very popular and with a lot of money. I can’t blame them; given the same circumstances, I might’ve done the same.
By the time this album is released in 1993, the band members were substantially older. Simon Le Bon turned 35 in 1993. The band members, while still attractive, could not squeak by on just their good looks. The music industry had also changed, branching out into other more subtle genres. In fact, the band even thumbed their nose at the industry in the song “Too Much Information” with lyrics like, “Destroyed by MTV, I hate to bite the hand that feeds me”.
The easiest explanation? As I heard the name Duran Duran, I expected a static sound, a flavor, even a brand. They had such a distinctive feel to the decade that anchored my musical roots that I mentally refused to see them any differently. Sadly, I would’ve more easily accepted this very song released by a band of a different name.
Though in a surreal moment of self-reflection, I realized that I judged them unfairly. If we give each other the opportunity to grow, to mature, and change as individuals, should we not extend the same courtesy to these band members? Though they were known collectively as Duran Duran, they all had a wealth of life experiences past those first couple of albums.
These pretty boys of the 80’s and I grew up together, though I trailed them by a decade. I evolved; I grew older and presumably wiser. They too grew up. If I expect others to see me differently than the boy I was in the 1980’s, I can give them some grace and allow them to change. Not only is the album great; this song is exceptional.