The outspoken passionate one is a pariah, while the cold, calculated one is adored by millions. We’re doing this wrong.
David Medsker runs 1992 through the beat mix blender.
Welcome to our latest feature, in which we dissect the album that restored an artist’s chart prominence. First up: Duran Duran, and their improbable 1993 smash.
This album, for all intents and purposes, saved my life.
Here’s the back story: I had just graduated from college in the summer of 1991, I was in Connecticut. Girlfriend was in Ohio. I packed up everything I had and boarded a train to move to Ohio to be with her. But she was under tremendous pressure from her parents to break it off, and by the time I arrived, their smear campaign was clearly working. I rarely saw her, even though we worked in the same mall. I got a job at a record store, and one of the promo CDs that had just arrived was Squeeze’s new album Play. I had always liked the band but never bought any of their records. However, the local modern rock station (97X, holler) was giving it some support, so after hearing a couple songs I liked, I took it home with me and played it in the car of my friend Ed, who’s the only person I know who likes Squeeze more than I do. I vented all of my frustrations to him about the ridiculous predicament I put myself in as we blasted “House of Love,” because damn it, I was living that song. She was full of lies and boredom, a very acidic tongue waggled in her head, we seemed the best of friends, life had just begun…but on the roof a tile began to slip. The house of love caved in, and that was it. Fuck.
Or, to borrow an album title from the Judybats, Pain Makes You Beautiful. In 1990, Joe Jackson had just signed a spiffy new deal with Virgin Records after spending 10…
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