God, did I detest Duran Duran growing up. Hated them. Loathed them. Wanted to go to England and set them on fire. With a flamethrower. Burn them to a synthpop crisp. They were everything I despised; slick, synthesizer-driven, and catchy, the perfect betrayal of everything punk had set out to do.
Plus they were worked with fashion designers to perfect their look, something I’d only allow David Bowie to do. And they were even too lazy to think of a second word for their band that wasn’t the same as the first word. Come on! Get up off your ass and think of another word! Who do you want to be, Talk Talk? Robert Christgau put the New Wave supergroup in his place when he called them, “The most deplorable pop stars of the postpunk if not post-Presley era.” I’d cast my vote for the Police, but he’s on to something.
But something appalling happened over the years, at least in my case; hatred turned to a grudging neutrality, and I was finally able to appreciate their synthpop charms. Sort of. They’re still too slick by a country mile, but slick is what synthpop was—machines making perfect noises. But I can listen to them now without wanting to die, and I suspect that’s a bad thing. Have I surrendered? Or have I merely succumbed to that insidious undertow of nostalgia that so frequently turns the songs you loathed in your youth into latter-day radio sing-alongs? It’s a mystery, that nostalgia; how is it I suddenly like the hated “Hungry Like the Wolf” but will never, ever, surrender my adamantine loathing for Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock’n’Roll”?
