Intro

Hello, and welcome to another episode of New Wave Beat. I'm your host, Jason D'Orazio. Today, we're gonna talk about Duran Duran's🔖✔ Big Thing album from 1988. New wave music was starting to lose some steam commercially by 1988, Duran Duran included. Though Big Thing is a small step below Notorious🔖✔ in my opinion, the former is still a rewarding listen, and you could even detect a turning point in the band with this album. Side A of Big Thing is mostly a slightly mellower continuation of Notorious, while side B sounds a bit more experimental, and features more avant-garde guitar work from Zappa and Missing Persons🔖✔ alum Warren Cuccurullo.

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A-Side

I Don’t Want Your Love

The first single off of Big Thing is I Don't Want Your Love, which sounds like a good continuation of the singles off of the previous album, Notorious. The bass line is warm, funky and fits the song well. LeBon dials back the intensity a little bit from the song Notorious, but still delivers solid vocals. I also enjoyed the bridge, which has good guitar work from session musician Chester Kamen, and an almost rap section by LeBon.

“My obsessive fascination is in your imagination.”

All in all, the song is a good, funk-inflected new wave song. The theme of the song is full of good snarkiness. I think on the surface, the narrator is rejecting a quarter, as evidenced by the song title and lines like, "My obsessive fascination is in your imagination." One could also argue the quarter in this case is the media.

The video for I Don’t Want Your Love features Duran Duran embroiled in courtroom drama. Are they on trial for their perceived excesses earlier in the '80s? The quick edits and switching between black and white and color makes it visually stimulating. For what it's worth, Simon LeBon is sporting longer hair than usual in the videos for Big Thing. Interestingly, the song fared quite better in the US than the UK, hitting only 14 in Britain, while reaching number four across the pond.

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All She Wants Is

All She Wants Is is one of the more eccentric Duran Duran singles.

"Spend your money on the corner now. Know you gotta save some for the shoeshine boy.

The structure of the song revolves around a detached chanting of the song title, along with a woman moaning in a clipped manner. The melody is repetitive and droning, which adds to its moodiness. Warren Cuccurullo and John Taylor's guitars add enough spice to the song to keep the listener interested.

Lyrics-wise, there's not a lot, and to be honest, I had a hard time ascertaining the possible meaning of the song. My guess is that all she wants is drugs. Simon writes, "If you need a lead to heaven now, just stick around." The heaven perhaps being a temporary drug euphoria.

The video, like the song, is weirdly creative in a good way, and IMHO is the best late '80s Duran Duran video. For example, it has some trippy light effects, which are pretty cool. The band and other characters in the video seem animatronic and have rubber facial expressions.

All She Wants Is actually performed better than I Don't Want Your Love in the UK, the former hitting the top 10. In the US, it did not do as well, but it was still good for a top 40 hit. I think it's a rewarding song, but perhaps its eccentricity hurt its chart performance.

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Album Tracks

Let's move on now to the album tracks on Big Thing's A side. It starts on a positive note with the charging title track.

“Power rotation. Give me the playlist and watch me eat it.”

The insistent drum intro segues into a gang chant, interspersed with LeBon singing solo. It sounds somewhat like New Kids on the Block, who were breaking out around the same time. Female backup vocals are present in the chorus, much like other songs on Big Thing's A side. I think the song is about the music industry, and making it big on the singles and radio charts. Indeed, there are references to music industry terms like "power rotation" and "playlist".

Next up is Too Late Marlene, which is a slower track, clocking in at a little over five minutes.

I will explain, we're too much the same. No I won't leave because it's just too late Marlene

A six-note synth riff is played throughout. Too Late Marlene has a soulful sound with some female backup vocals to that effect. They're a good counterpoint to LeBon's vocals, which also sound soulful and mellow. The keyboard by Rhodes is subtle, but nevertheless strengthens the song. From what I gather, the song is about a relationship that is having some trouble. Lines like "Still I wonder why everybody's saying that ice is thin" make me think that. The song's title might allude to it either being too late to reconcile or too late to back out of the relationship. I'm not sure which.

Drug sounded a little too generic for me, and so I would argue this is the weak song on the album.

Take me every morning, take me every night. Take me when you're feeling low. Take me when you want to stay up all night.

The song features horns similar to those used in their previous album Notorious. It's a pretty fast-paced song, so it's high on energy. I believe Drug is about the singer asking a love interest to sleep with him, to the point that he is like a drug. Indeed, he asks her to "Take me every morning, take me every night". Alternately, the narrator could literally be a drug to keep someone up all night (cocaine is a good guess for multiple reasons).

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B-Side

I would argue that the second half of Big Thing injects a new type of sound in the Duran Duran arsenal, a more guitar-oriented and adult contemporary one. This is perhaps due to guitarist Warren Cuccurullo's increasing influence on the band.

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Do You Believe in Shame?

The B-side kicks off with Do You Believe in Shame?, and was also the third single. LeBon's vocal delivery is different than in singles past. It is full of pathos. The instrumentation has a bit of a blues inflected, adult contemporary feel to it. There is enough synth action to give it that Duran Duran flavor though.

At first, I thought this song was about Andy Warhol, who passed away the year prior. But in reading John Taylor's autobiography In the Pleasure Groove, I now think that it's about Simon LeBon's childhood friend's passing. There are some melancholy lyrics like, "I don't think I ever can believe my friend is gone," and, "I feel so damn lonely when I think of you."

The video features LeBon, Rhodes, and John Taylor traversing New York City in separate storylines, which I believe all deal with grief and moving on. It is a powerful, reflective video, much like the song, but unfortunately, the song flopped commercially. Though I was still a kid when it came out, I now wonder if the song didn't do well because of the change in sound compared to the previous two singles off of Big Thing. Though 1993's Ordinary World was different from Duran Duran's earlier sound, and that was a big hit.

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Album Tracks and B-Sides

Palomino is a ponderous track. It features long, atmospheric synth notes. The relative quietness of the song is punctuated at times by Cuccurullo's guitar. In the verses, the vocals are in a lower register than usual for the tenor LeBon. The chorus is full of emotion and contrasts well with the broodiness of the verses. The chorus lyric, "When I run out of blue, give me red instead," was paraphrased from Pablo Picasso. There are other painting references as well, such as, "Painting eyes thick with the color she brings in," and the song title, which is a particular color for horses.

The six-minute Land is the next track:

Soon my ship will sail, away from here. To walk a howling sea lane. Stay here for me. Your love is life, for love is land.

It's a beautiful song, but perhaps being next to the also slow-paced Palomino makes the two seem to blend into each other. The expanded intro features backup vocals and more moody keyboards, and the bridge features a Spanish-sounding guitar. LeBon's vocals are a similar style to Palomino, but perhaps a tad more melancholy. I think the song is about the narrator leaving behind a love interest because he's going on a journey via sea. Indeed, LeBon says, "Soon my ship will sail." There are contrasts drawn between land and sea.

The Edge of America is short at about two and a half minutes, but it's still potent. The emphasis is on the lyrics and vocals, as the instrumentation is a bit more sparse than in other songs off the album. The keyboard is more prominent than the drums or guitars, and thus drives the melody. The song is a sad view of inner-city America. The song is full of lyrics like, "Inside the subway stinking fear and shame becomes the violent breath." It's a possibility he might be talking about Chicago in particular, because The Edge of America segues into the album closer, Lakeshore Driving. This song was indeed inspired by the Chicago highway with a similar name. It's an instrumental song which really shows off Cuccurullo's avant-garde guitar chops. The guitars are punctuated by light synths. It's kind of a trippy song, which makes sense given the song title. Besides the avant-garde, part of the song sounds a little funky, thereby tying together the two halves of the album. The song and album end abruptly.

The B-side to All She Wants Is is the sonically different I Believe. It's a Duran Duran fan favorite. It reminds me a bit of side project Arcadia's🔖✔ El Diablo. LeBon sings a bit lower and mellower for this one. It has a good harmonica section and low-pitch synths. It lacks funk elements, so if it were an album track, it would find a better home on the second side of it.

While the album Big Thing and its singles did not fare as well as their early to mid-'80s material, Duran Duran was still able to play at arenas holding about 20,000 people. One example is Nassau Coliseum near New York City.

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Outro

Considering the changing musical landscape, I would argue Duran Duran were holding up quite well compared to some other of their new wave contemporaries. One more thing to note. Unfortunately in the late '80s, Duran Duran was slipping commercially. Perhaps sensing this, or perhaps because the decade was coming to an end, the band created an amalgamation of many of their hits. It was dubbed Burning The Ground, named after a Hungry Like the Wolf🔖✔ lyric. A video was made to support Burning The Ground, which appropriately had clips from their iconic videos. Both song and video were a great capstone to the '80s incarnation of Duran Duran.

And that's a wrap on this episode of New Wave Beat. This is your host, Jason D'Orazio, wishing you a great week, and we'll talk to you later. Bye.

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