![]() At the end of the song (the 3:32 mark, to be exact), a woman howls. The 45 of ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’ is playing on my turntable. I am sitting on the floor, working on a Lego Main Street set. Amy is standing on a chair hanging something on the wall. Speaking of my sister, ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’ is perhaps the one song on this list for which I have a crystal clear specific listening memory. It is another example of my ‘three great songs make a great album’ rule, with the songs in question being the title track, today’s SOTD and the elegant ballad ‘Save a Prayer.’ I’m working up quite a little wish list through this exercise, and Rio is high on it. ![]() Rio, in particular, is an album I feel I should own, lo these 27 years later. I suppose I can blame that on my sister, Amy, through whom I was exposed to most music back then (funny how it works the other way now). I find myself really enjoying their songs now when I happen upon them and I wonder how it is they slipped past my radar back in the early to mid-80s. 1 here in the U.S., despite strong Top 10 attempts by Paul McCartney and Wings, Sheena Easton, Madonna, Adele and the unforgettable Shirley Bassey.Duran Duran is one of the most successful and best-loved bands on this list, and one of the artists I wish I’d been more into at the time. 1 – 1984’s “The Reflex” (also aided by a remix, this one by Nile Rodgers, a longtime collaborator with the band), and 1985’s “A View To A Kill,” still the only James Bond theme to reach No. 15 of those reached the Top 40, 11 of those reached the Top 10, and two went to No. 1 on BILLBOARD’s Rock chart.īetween 19, Duran Duran racked up 21 BILLBOARD Hot 100 hits. 36 on BILLBOARD’s Dance chart, and spent three weeks at No. 4 in Finland, Italy, New Zealand and South Africa, No. It will forever be one of my all-time favorite albums.Īround the globe, fans of the Fab 5 were hungry for “Hungry Like The Wolf,” and it spent five weeks at No. That’s the way I will always remember RIO though - the “U.S. For the longest time, I didn’t know certain other versions of some of RIO’s songs even existed. Harvest Records version of RIO, a version of the album that I have had in my collection for almost 40 years. ![]() Some Carnival remixes that didn’t make the CARNIVAL EP ended up on the U.S. Both songs finished the year in the Top 20 for all of 1983 here in America. 2 (behind Michael Jackson’s monster hit, “Billie Jean”), and true to form, for the same three weeks, “Hungry Like The Wolf” peaked at No. Starting for three weeks at the end of March 1983, “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me” peaked at No. Within a month, it worked its way inside the Top 40, and for awhile, it seemed to be a chart race between “Hungry Like The Wolf” and Culture Club’s debut single, “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me,” which had been on the chart for a few weeks more.īoth songs reached the Top 10 of the BILLBOARD Hot 100 the same week in the second half of February 1983, with Culture Club consistently and directly in front of Duran Duran every week for 10 consecutive weeks. On Xmas Day 1982, “Hungry Like The Wolf” finally made its debut on the BILLBOARD Hot 100, at No. By then, it was only a matter of time before Duran Duran would get their wish for success in America. The powers that be at MTV absolutely loved the video for “Hungry Like The Wolf,” and less than a couple of months after the video was shot, it was already in heavy rotation at MTV. MTV (or MTV Music Television as it was known back in the day) was less than a year old at that point, and Duran Duran was not getting any airplay on the new music video channel AT ALL.īut, in a smart move by music video director Russell Mulcahy, who had directed the band’s first video, for “Planet Earth,” the video for “Hungry Like The Wolf” (and two other songs on RIO) was filmed in Sri Lanka, was inspired by RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, and the exotic, slick and creative video paid off.
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