Duran Duran
Pop Trash

THE REVIEW

When you find yourself with a Duran Duran album in your hands, you have only two choices: grimace and toss it into some dark recess of the house, or, more diplomatically, listen to it and say, "Well, I've heard worse...". Anyone with a heart and around thirty years or so would surely have bought, or at least listened to, in 1982 "Rio", which I consider the masterpiece of Duran Duran, where one could dance to the notes of "Hungry Like The Wolf" or dream with "The Chauffeur", not to mention the translations that were secretly passed around at school when, in "Save A Prayer", Simon LeBon sang "Somebody might call it a quick fling, but you and I might call it paradise." It was emotional, today one would be embarrassed, but you should never repudiate your past, so "Rio" cannot be repudiated.
Afterwards, there came a series of rather anonymous works (in truth, I know two or three, but I couldn't discuss them fully), except perhaps for the beautiful moment of "The Wild Boys." After the magical decade, the eighties, suddenly came the nineties: albums without spirit, sudden flashes of glory ("Ordinary World" sells in tons, but this time it does not produce devastating sociological effects) and a substantial musical flattening that makes one think of the now premature end of a 'cult' group from the early eighties.
Interestingly, they reemerge on the music scene at the end of the millennium, precisely in 1999. Just seeing them brings on depression: former sex symbols (or so the girls said) now modern Trimalchios, fat and large, obese and, allow me, even a bit ugly. Well, one could argue, but what's physical appearance got to do with it? Then even Mick Jagger is ugly, but he has produced at least five masterpieces. I agree: physical appearance doesn't matter. But the album, for God's sake, that matters.

"Pop Trash", this is the title of the album. Sensing the scent of revival and general reassessment of the eighties music world (in Italy, we often reassess something: now it's the turn of Lino Banfi and Alvaro Vitali's films, tomorrow who knows, maybe we'll reassess Iva Zanicchi and Pupo), and seeing that the kids of the past are now almost all grown-up and that the paninari and the Drive-In are dead and buried, Duran Duran decide to dust them off with a stroke of genius (ironically speaking, of course) that leaves one puzzled. "Pop Trash" is actually a collection of tracks without vigor or backbone all centered around the concept of "this is pop trash, indeed trash, that one day will be widely reassessed." I don't know if we will reassess this album in a few years, the fact is that today melancholy comes to listen to stuff like "Hallucinating Elvis". Because yes, indeed we are facing a classic pop album (simple, direct, catchy), but it is a sugary pop, completely emptied of its original meaning, decadent, almost ridiculous.
Clumsy and wasteful, they get lost in strangely slow and pompous tracks, devoid of a single original idea, and they fail to detach themselves from the atmospheres and sci-fi references (LeBon’s usual little habit). The goal is clear: to reconnect with the old fans and bring the young generations to their altar. They miss every target. The old fans repudiate a trash bin so ridiculous and obscene, while the new generations turn their tastes towards entirely different groups or songwriters (the excessive popularity of people like Justin Timberlake or Jesse McCartney, just to name two). And not even a few timid rock hints manage to save this disastrous album.
"Pop Trash" is a failure, not only critically but also commercially. The album sells very little and the leading single "Someone Else Not Me" is broadcast on the radio just for the length of a weekend. A real and proper flop, a flop, we can say, more than deserved. And if "Rio" was (and continues to be) a masterpiece for me, I candidly proclaim "Pop Trash" as one of the most hideous albums in the entire history of music. But perhaps that would be too much: also because Duran Duran in 2004 released "Astronaut" which, while not a masterpiece, undoubtedly has qualities superior to this discographic mess. Then for goodness' sake, they are still old and doddering, and should retire. But we know, money calls for money...