20 Landmark Songs Of The 80s

11. Duran Duran - Save A Prayer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Uxc9eFcZyM With €˜Save a prayer€™ Duran Duran moved away from their flirtation with being New Romantics and discovered who they really were; which was the ambitious ultimate pop boy band that would define the rules of engagement for the genre. Following some classic rules of the boy band i.e. the singer is always the least good looking, in the bass player John Taylor they still possessed possibly the best looking boy of the decade. The musicianship came across as secondary; what the band looked like was ultimately more important than what they sounded like. But they never sounded better than they do here on a song that is incredibly sophisticated, which still manages to make them look buff, which of course was always the point. The song was unashamedly about the hedonism of casual sex, €œSome might call it a one night stand, but we can call it paradise€ but set in a very much in a middle class setting; the video paints Simon Le Bon as a James Bond-esque character, picking up amazingly glamorous women. Whilst it was dressed up in a squeaky clean pop package, the references to promiscuity would get louder in songs as the decade progressed. And the video made no bones about the fact that they had money behind them, this was a far removed as you could get from The Sex Pistols sailing a boat down the Thames, which added to the 'globetrotting yuppies on a year-long sabbatical in Thailand' image they had. They attempted the same again with €˜Rio€™, but that song lacked the seriousness of €˜Save a prayer€™ and playing the comic card was a jump too far from their roots. €˜Save a prayer€™ invented the boy band, referenced their New Romantic origins and embraced the aspirations of the 80€™s; which were to have lots of money, wear designer clothes and have sex with as many people as possible. So job done, but let€™s not forget, the ace it had up its sleeve was that it was still a killer tune.