| Duran Duran – Electric Barbarella Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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This song would have been more appropriately released on 'Pop Trash' as I think it goes in the ironic category. 'Too Much Information' was an earlier public revelation that the band realized that the culture industry was perverse but also understood it's place in it: "I hate to bight the hand that feeds...". Even earlier (1984) was Simon's insistence that "it will never happen again" as he protested suggestions by the American music presss that they were on par with the first British Invasion by The Beatles. This hysterical commodification of the band drove them to exhaustion, ending the original lineup. (Bob Dylan and Thom Yorke have had more intense documented backlashes to the press.) So, I'll get on with it. I think the song is about sexual commodification and the spectacle that is the vehicle of the message - it's about the 'Culture Industry' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry] as coined by Theodore Adorno. The fact that Simon is apparenly getting off with a machine has no consquence as the difference between man/machine is not realized - it doesn't matter. This is seen as an achievement by those selling the product. It is seen as a failure for those searching for nurishment: "Whether or not we live in a world of simulacra, the term is certainly important in light of how we view media. Media theorists, especially Jean Baudrillard, have been intensely concerned with the concept of the simulation in lieu of its interaction with our notion of the real and the original, revealing in this preoccupation media's identity not as a means of communication, but as a means of representation (the work of art as a reflection of something fundamentally "real"). When media reach a certain advanced state, they integrate themselves into daily "real" experience to such an extent that the unmediated sensation is indistinguishable from the mediated, and the simulation becomes confused with its source. The simulation differs from the image and the icon (and the simulacrum) in the active nature of its representation. What are forged or represented are not likenesses of static entities, but instead the processes of feeling and experiencing themselves. Beginning as a primarily visual representation, the simulacrum (provisionally: the image of a simulation) has since been extended theoretically, and in the recent theory exemplified by the work of Baudrillard functions as a catch-all term for systems still operating despite the loss of what previous meaning they had held." [http://www.chicagoschoolmediatheory.net/glossary2004/simulationsimulacrum.htm] |
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| Duran Duran – New Moon on Monday Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Luke007's comment is similar to what I've understood it to be about - which is the liberation of France from Nazi Germany. It can't really be (historically) about the end of Communism because those revoluations hadn't happened yet - but it is likely about political struggle in general. I researched the dates in Wikipedia of major victories and surrenders and matched that agains's NASA's moon phase directory and nothing comes up. "You got me coming up with answers; All of which I deny." - I interpret this to mean torture - false confessions. Ironically the Battle of Algiers with the French as the persecuters involved a lot torture and a lot of false testimony. "I said it again but could I please re-phrase it .. But I’ll wait till you decide." - Further suggestion that this is about torture and telling them what they want to hear. In the end, I wish they would publish a book for Duran Duran much like "The Songs That Saved Your Life" for The Smiths. |
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| The Smiths – London Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| The Smiths were from Manchester. When the got signed to Rough Trade they moved to London. I think this is a story about that move and, in many ways, leaving their lives in Manchester behind. The line, ""with this really ragged notion that you'll return," is more likely directed to his Manchester self, lamenting that you can "never go home again," which is a lyric from another song, but I can't recall which. | |
| Duran Duran – Rio Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| I don't know. I've always thought it was about a porn star. America? Porn star? Hmm, not much of a real difference there now really. No, but really. I heard it was about a porn star. I almost wonder if the song is pointing out the self-obsession of being '#1'? | |
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