Why is Duran Duran (The Wedding Album) on my best 1,000 albums ever list?
Destroyed by MTV, I hate to bite the hand that feeds me.
Some stats & info about Duran Duran (The Wedding Album)
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? British Bands, Synth Pop, Pop Music, Dance Music, New Wave
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 4 out of 5 stars
- When was Duran Duran (The Wedding Album) released? 1993
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #662 out of 1,000
Duran Duran (The Wedding Album) on Spotify
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.
What does Duran Duran (The Wedding Album) mean to me? What does it make me feel? Why is it exciting or compelling?
Looking back, the time period between, let’s say, the mid-1980s and the early 1990s doesn’t seem that far part of it. But if you lived through it with any sense of what was going on pop culturally, you know that there’s enormous change between when “The Reflex” dominated MTV and the airwaves versus the era of “Heart-Shaped Box” and “Cannonball.”
Which is to say, Duran Duran was not in vogue by the early ‘90s. They were decidedly considered an “’80s band.” And, by the by, the 1980s as a pop cultural decade were also considered decidedly uncool as a whole. So from that perspective, the fact that Duran Duran broke through in 1993 with their second self-titled album was a really big deal.
Most importantly, it’s a great album that absolutely holds up from the perspective of considering it from the future times of the 2020s. It’s an album that shows real maturity in the band’s song writing and yet captures that pure joy of pop hooks and gorgeous vocals that the band had become famous for over a decade earlier.
It’s also a moodier and more contemplative album than the Duran Duran of old. Songs like “Ordinary World” and particularly “Come Undone” do a fantastic job of bringing this version of the band to fruition.
“Too Much Information” does a really great job of kicking off the album and setting the mood. And lyrically it’s of a piece with an era that was just starting to reckon with something called the Internet. See also: the (great) movie Sneakers from 1992.
Not everything works perfectly. The cover of The Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale” is the standout in that department. If you’re looking for a cover of that song by a band that struck huge in the 1980s, go with R.E.M.’s version, I’d advise.
Pop culture stuff that’s somehow related to Duran Duran (The Wedding Album)
Apparently, bands will occasionally do more than one self-titled album for… reasons, I guess? I can imagine that happening perhaps when the band really can’t figure out what to name it. “Ordinary World” would have been a perfectly serviceable and very early 1990s album title, I’d think?
Anyway, I’ve also seen some sources reference the album as Duran Duran (The Wedding Album), so I’ve used that title as such here on the Pop Thruster.