“That’s rock ‘n roll!”
Well, sort of. More like Girls on Film… again.
30 years after you’ve conquered the pop world, what do you do for an encore? Why, of course, you pile on french-kissing supermodels, prancing about in lingerie, in glitzy London locales; shoot a slick video (with gorgeous direction by Jonas Akerlund that indeed feels at home on Vimeo), in parts black and white, and hope that a shallow ginger such as myself tunes in. It worked for Girls on Film, but will it work for Girl Panic!, Duran Duran’s latest single?
I admit it: on at least one occasion (in Hull, Quebec of all places) I wore a skinny leather tie tucked in (very important that, for the Rio look) to a long-sleeved blue (silver?) shirt. We didn’t have the yachts. We didn’t have the supermodels. We didn’t quite have the coifs (despite extended head-upside-down sessions with the Joico spray). But we had the fashion dogma, even if it looked more Ross than couture.
About those women: Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Eva Herzigova, Yasmin LeBon, and Helena Christensen, join the voices of Team Duran in this “short film”.
It’s a stunt that only these Brits–and possibly Robbie Williams, who, co-incidentally, put the “brit” in celebrity–would attempt.
This is a band that’s all too aware of their place in pop culture history; though even attempts at self-deprecation still come across somewhat as art house vanity projects. Not that I mind. Music occasionally needs the superflous, the fashionable, the silly. Without them we’d be left with REM and Coldplay.
Duran Duran – Girl Panic
PS – you call this a video- where’s the boxing ring and whipped cream?!