Duran Duran - The Reflex. Apparently their biggest worldwide hit. What do you think of it?

While not my absolute favorite Duran Duran song, the single mix of "The Reflex" is in my top three. "Notorious" remains my very favorite, along with "A View to a Kill."

 

By late 1983, new wave was pretty much dead. Hip-hop was in.

 

I always hated this song, and Wild Boys. I loved the first 4 albums, but those 2 singles were just garbage to my ears.

 

Yep, this ^. But then, 'Save A Prayer' is the only Duran Duran song I actually like.

 

Durans first two albums were incredibly crafted units. One could say that the third album from Duran "Tiger" would be a dud.

Dud or not I realize Tiger was not equal to Durans first two efforts but all in all I just think of Tiger as a transition into the mid to later 80's pop sound. The first two albums were more new wave, Tiger was new wave with a more pop edge than its two older siblings.

 

Can't stand The Reflex but they had some other great singles

 

It took me a while to really "get" Tiger, and my perception of "The Reflex" as uncomfortably corny was a big part of that... but the single mix broke the song, and the whole album, wide open for me and now it's top-tier in my mind.

 

Annoying.

 

Kinda weird how there’s a whopping full three years between Tiger and Notorious, even when you take the side projects into account. Even Dire Straits didn’t manage that back then.

 

Not among general - ie, white - audiences in the US.

Rap wouldn't go mainstream until 1986...

 

Yeah, but DD had "Arena" in 1984. Sure, it's a live album, but it had a big new single via "Wild Boys".

Also, 1985 had "View to a Kill".

2 singles and live material doesn't = a full studio album, but at least DD had new material in those 2 "studio album free" years...

 

New Moon on Monday was back then and remains my favorite of the singles from this record.

 

Though I prefer "Reflex", I also liked "New Moon" an awful lot back in the day! Definitely the best song on "Seven" in terms of its album version.

"Reflex" tops it in remix form, but if that didn't exist, "New Moon" would be the album's best.

Never understood why the band seemed to hate "New Moon"...

 

I love The Reflex but it's not my favorite. : )

 

really? why? no pressure just curious...

 

yes, and Hungry Like The Wolf and Rio (good melody) are great songs as well...

 

Say what you will about Duran Duran, but as a 'sound' & a video 'The Reflex' sure set the tone for the mid-1980's. Fer sure. IMHO, of course...

 

I love “The Reflex”- my friend and I were so excited in high school that DD finally had a #1 hit (in the U.S.)—only to see its brief reign fall to this song we’d barely heard on the radio at the time, “When Doves Cry.”

 

I guess it's that warbling vocal part, the drums, and the whole production just hits my ears wrong.

 

good point - I remember now, it really was like Prince knocking them off the pedestal, making Duran Duran seem old hat kind of. I was older but it seemed like the teenagers were "over" DD and looking for a new kick. And Prince certainly had the right stuff at that moment.

 

I'm guessing it's got to be the remix since I've never heard the album version myself, and everything described in this thread sounds like the version I had on Decade (and heard on the radio).

 

It's ok I suppose, but really I'm more or less neutral towards The Reflex.

Favourite Duran Duran songs, no particular order: Seventh Stranger, Skin Trade, American Science.

 

... but some of these duds ("Big Thing") are great while some of the combacks ("Astronaut") are duds! Complicated band, Duran Duran!

 

This is as I remember. My friends also treated Radio Ga Ga as a joke. And Freddie Mercury's increasingly obvious gayness and the band's move away from hard rock did NOT play well to my high school friends or, more generally, American audiences of the 80s. But Smash Hits was a British magazine and I never got the sense that Queen's career stalled in the same way in the UK.