Duran Duran - song-by-song rate & discussion thread

Found this amusing. They went on to do a sold out Arena tour of the UK.

 

Astronaut

For me this being the title track of the Fab Five reunion album is a perfect irony. On the one hand I like the inventiveness of the track with Andy's excellent guitar parts co-existing alongside Nick's over busy synths; and a great John bassline. Yet due to its production which neutered far too much of the album sonically it feels like whilst DD may have been grooving out to X-Ray-Spex; they are still missing their own "Identity" on this album, which they most definitely still had with their corresponding live gigs.



3.5/5

 

With regards the healthy decision on the last page, this next track could be regarded as perfect timing:

157 Bedroom Toys


"Bedroom Toys" is a song by Duran Duran, released on the album Astronaut by Epic Records on 11 October 2004.

This was one of the earliest tracks recorded by the band to make the album, initially during the Nile Rodgers sessions; before Don Gilmore came in as engineer, and an additional producer with the band on this Average White Band like soul funk number.

Tessa Niles supplies backing vocals on this track.

 

Bedroom Toys

Oh this is not good...and that Nile Rodgers chicka-chicka guitar is awful.

0/5

 

Astronaut: 2.5/5 A promising start with the acoustic strumming but it kind of fades into mediocrity pretty quickly. Nothing horribly wrong with the song. Just meh.

Bedroom Toys: 3/5 A swanky, sexy song that would be somewhere between poor and mediocre if not for the hilarious and brilliant “Oh my god, what’s this?” bits. He delivers that line perfectly. Rest of the lyrics are kind of stupid though.


Maybe they shouldn't have ditched Nile in these sessions or did he leave? As dumb as it is, Bedroom Toys is one of the few tracks on this album with any real feeling or adventure behind it. Most of the rest (even the better ones like Sunrise and WHT are still a bit antiseptic on some level.

After Bedroom, the album takes a real nosedive IMHO until we are deep on side 2.

 

"Bedroom Toys".
This song made the cut, but "Salt In The Rainbow" didn't?
For me, "Bedroom Toys" has no redeeming qualities.
0/5.

 

Now THIS is something I will wholeheartedly agree with you on!

 

<<REW
“Drug” made the cut, but “I Believe/All I Need To Know” didn’t?

 

"Bedroom Toys"
0/5

...and with BT, the Astronaut winning streak grinds to a halt. Odd that this track would be so horrible, as I usually am a big fan of Nile Rodgers. Up there (or down there) with the worst of Liberty, IMO. Reminds me of Sugar Ray, which I have very little time for.

 

Bedroom Toys 0/5. These toys turned me off, nothing arousing in this song. Next!

 

"bedroom toys." literally one of two things that kept me from getting into "astronaut."

the first was that "sunrise," the--long-awaited reunion/comeback single--was underwhelming. while it's an ok track i thought "if this is the best/lead-off track, this is trouble."
and the second was "bedroom toys." when i saw that title i thought "this better not be..... " but it was. and worse. the topic wasn't the problem either, it was the horrible execution. just yikes. the one-two punch just turned me off "astronaut" completely.

 

i never committed it to tape, but i wrote a song titled "f@#! sugar ray" because. someone needed to say it at the time, they were getting so much attention for such awful music.

 

Bedroom Toys - 1.5/5: When the instrumental demo was used on the DD website circa 2002, I dug it. You can hear Nile's influence all over this one. But the final version is a colossal embarrassment along the lines of Danceophobia. Again, the band elected NOT to finish Beautiful Colours and Salt in the Rainbow but to somehow include this. Oh my God what's this, indeed.

 

Yeah. Such poor judgement on the band's part. I love "I Believe/All I Need To Know". It's so frustrating that it didn't make the cut.
If "Drug (Just A State Of Mind)" and the title track had been omitted, Big Thing would be damn near perfect (for me, anyway).

 

Bedroom Toys - sorry guys but this one has grown on me. It’s very tongue-in-cheek and sounds like a band having a bit of fun. It’s not to be taken seriously. Duran’s very own Maxwell’s Silver Hammer? Maybe, but I don’t mind that either. 3.5/5

 

Sugar Ray you say ....

Fast forward to 2:48 in .....

and you will be saying "Oh my God what's this" (or something ruder) ....

Sugar Ray - When It's Over

 

Forgot about that! He would make a good John Taylor! Good one!

 

i actually think that this was my trigger

 

Almost forgot, but with "Nice" coming up next, now's the time for this one:

Some years back a café was playing this song, I promptly enquired about it and tracked it down as it struck me that this is how I'd wanted Astronaut to sound - Balearic-rocking, yes, summer coffee-house music maybe, yes, but more exciting and joyous than what they'd managed with the album themselves:

Rinôçérôse - Dead Flowers

 

interesting! i am sure i will come back to revisit when i am in front of some nice speakers instead of watching on a phone

 

Bedroom Toys- WOW you people really hate this one. I be the second person to give it a thumbs up. Good bass, guitar , drum interaction. Generally funky. I think it's one of the better tunes on the the album.

 

Astronaut

The lyrics are just so so bad. Instrumentally, it's really a nice uplifting track. And the break with the vocal repeat is so nice, along with the layered guitars and the synths. It's really driving.

But you've gotta be kidding me:

Wasted, there's nothing gonna ace this
And we're gonna go to space, kid
'Cause I'm leaving with an astronaut​

But listening again, I really like the bass guitar mixed with the synth bass. And really there is a ton of really great stuff going on synth-wise. And guitar-wise. And percussion-wise. It really just boils down to ridiculous lyrics.

4/5

 

Bedroom Toys

I really can't stand this track in any way. It's just so cringe-y.

0/5


But I wanted to see what reviews said about the track and found a few things online about Bedroom Toys and the album in general:

NME:

No-one in the world sounds like Duran Duran. This is both good and bad. Good in the sense that as soon as Simon Le Bon sings, “Groovin’ now to X Ray Spex/Something tells me you’re the alien sex” across Andy Taylor’s funk rock guitar flurry in ‘Astronaut’ – a song quite clearly about hammering rock-star-quality pharms – you can practically smell the wildly over-expensive video. The same goes for ‘Bedroom Toys’ – hey, splashy rubber-sex with strangers rules! – which is the sort of copper-bottomed dub-funk the impossibly mental Grace Jones used to scowl over about a thousand years ago.

But it’s bad in the sense that, well, if any other band thought Duran were worth plundering for neat ideas surely to god they’d have done it by now? Instead, DD do some plundering of their own. ‘What Happens Tomorrow’, for instance, is so Oasis my IQ dropped 42 points on contact with it, while the slap-bass croonathon, ‘Taste The Summer’ (“The cool haze is reflected off your thighs” – genius!), could have been ripped directly from Duran’s 1986 mullet-friendly meisterwork, ‘Notorious’.

For all that, ‘Still Breathing’ – the 9/11 tune, everyone’s got one, schweedie – is a genuinely great song and ‘Chains’ is perfectly droney Beatledelia… but, y’know, so what? Doesn’t life already seem cruelly short? Do you really want to waste any of it ploughing through a new Duran Duran record?
​

The Guardian:

Duran Duran are daft. They were always daft; it's just that their daftness achieved a kind of flamboyant grandeur in the context of 1980s pop and the early years of MTV, when they specialised in the kind of vapid excess the decade demanded. But they have been making cruddy albums for years now, and the return of the Taylor boys for a hysterically received reunion tour has done nothing to change that.

Even at their peak, the yacht-loving Brummie quintet made froth with delusions of depth - nobody bought Rio for the lyrics - so they're on firm ground only as long as they're being vacuously upbeat. (Reach Up For the) Sunrise (nice brackets!) would make an adequate theme tune for a breakfast TV show and Nice's blandly approving title serves as its own review. Before long, though, Duran Duran are adrift in an unforgiving sea of disco-dad dance-pop, anaemic vocals and lyrics too distressingly awful to repeat in a family newspaper. On Bedroom Toys, Astronaut's dizzying nadir, Simon Le Bon raps and a nation contorts with embarrassment. 1980s nostalgia: so much to answer for.​

The Austin Chronicle:

When it comes to hunger, wolves have got nothing on Duran Duran fans. The band hasn't recorded an album with all five original members since 1983's Seven and the Ragged Tiger. Listeners have been teased with six mediocre LPs and one fine "Wedding Album" in varying group incarnations since then. Astronaut is a reunion for the original MTV generation. Unfortunately, the returning fold winds up lost in an overproduced synth shuffle. Since lead singer Simon LeBon and keyboardist Nick Rhodes have remained the only constant forces in the band's career, it's no surprise that on Astronaut, they dominate. Thus, the unrelated Taylors – guitarist Andy, bassist John, drummer Roger – have come back for no real reason. Many of the songs are choppy and unimaginative, like the tepid "Taste the Summer." The album's best tunes, the gorgeous "Chains" and pretty "Nice," are a river of blips and beats from an all-star producing roster including Dallas Austin (TLC) and Don Gilmore (Linkin Park). For a reunion album, very little of Astronaut sounds like Duran Duran, and even less of it sounds like a band of live players. Otherwise sturdy songs like "Want You More" drown in a sea of programming. Only "One of Those Days" compares to vintage Duran Duran. "Bedroom Toys" sounds old-man creepy when compared to classics like "Girls on Film." With too many songs trying too hard, Duranies will still go hungry for quality.​

PopMatters:

And yet, despite the blood-thick production; despite the hackneyed tracks like "Bedroom Toys", a cloying, awkward funk track that even Nile Rodgers' signature scratch guitar can't save; despite the hostile radio climate that "greets" them, Duran Duran found a way to make an album that, while not exemplary, is still better than anyone who thought they broke up in 1986 had a right to expect. It may not be Rio, but Astronaut is the sign of, for the first time in about twenty years, better things to come for Duran Duran. When was the last time anyone could reasonably ask for that?
​

 

John Aizlewood of London’s Evening Standard ( as well as Q Magazine) gave it quite a good review I seem to remember. I recall him stating that the last 30 mins of the album are the best the band had ever done. Or something along those lines. Unfortunately I cannot find the review online.

 

It's so weird how many web searches that show up, but the content is missing. Even in cached form! Astronaut really seemed like a release "in the internet age" but yeah - I agree.

And it's true it got a fair amount of good press - and I agree about the last 30m of the album! - but some of the review snippets I selected above highlighted the negative just because I had just subjected myself to Bedroom Toys and wanted some form of retribution. haha.