Pop Trash

Duran Duran - Pop Trash

Pop Trash
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CD Details

Artist: Duran Duran
Edition: Music CD
Published: 2000
CD Release Date: 2000-06-13
Music Label: Hollywood Records
Soundtracks:
  1. Someone Else Not Me
  2. Lava Lamp
  3. Playing With Uranium
  4. Hallucinating Elvis
  5. Starting To Remember
  6. Pop Trash Movie
  7. Fragment
  8. Mars Meets Venus
  9. Lady Xanax
  10. The Sun Doesn't Shine Forever
  11. Kiss Goodbye
  12. Last Day On Earth

Music reviews of Pop Trash

Music Review: POP TRASH IS ALL POP, NO TRASH
Rating: 5 Stars

This album is hugely surprising. I bought it recently at a specialty record store only because it is getting extremely hard to find, and, being a fan of the band, I thought I should grab a copy while I still had the chance. I expected the same mediocre, hit-and-miss approach of most of the other post-'85 Duran albums. Boy, was I ever wrong. Not only is the quality of the band's workmanship on Pop Trash extremely high, but the consistency is also extraordinary. I personally cannot think of one bad track on the album. It is as if Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, and Warren Cuccurullo managed to enter some kind of rarefied zone where everything turned to gold. Pop Trash skillfully blends style, glitz, and metrosexual attitude with striking melodies and an unusually high degree of musical sophistication. As great as the early Fab Five albums were, you simply will not find this level of maturity there, either musically or lyrically.

Lyricist Le Bon has reached a zenith with his conceptual bookends of "Someone Else Not Me," and "The Sun Doesn't Shine Forever." The former is a not-too-gentle kiss goodbye to a lover, leaving her even though his love for her "is real," while the latter stresses the need for a couple to stay together despite the fact that their relationship is troubled. Both have a potent emotional impact that is uncommon in Le Bon's other lyrics, and their placement on the album seems to underscore the postmodern schizophrenia of our fractured culture. Indeed, the whole album is a gigantic pop-culture reference. "Lava Lamp" is a tribute to a definitive piece of modern kitsch. "Hallucinating Elvis" takes us to a realm where reality and fantasy blur, where the entertainer can no longer see that he is not the person he is imitating -- an appropriate journey in a culture awash in reality shows. "Pop Trash Movie" (written by Rhodes and Cuccurullo) speaks to our media-crazed, star-dazed society, where making trash is perfectly acceptable, as long as it makes you famous. "Mars meets Venus" is a cynical, scathing, albeit humorous, look at modern dating, a la personal ads. "Lady Xanax" personifies our culture's dependence on mood regulators. On the whole, the album paints a picture of a culture that is obsessed with pretending to be more than it is, much like Duran Duran were accused of doing when they hit the scene some twenty-odd years ago. Pop Trash is the sound of former teen idols looking askance at a culture they helped to define, questioning it, laughing at it, then begrudgingly reinhabiting it in a way that attempts to define it in their own terms, rather than the other way around.

Musically, Rhodes and Cuccurullo are to be credited with striking the ideal balance between straightforward pop-rock and heavily produced synth-pop. "Someone Else Not Me" is a deceivingly comforting ballad, belying its heartbreaking intent. "Starting to Remember," "Pop Trash Movie," "Lady Xanax" and "The Sun Doesn't Shine Forever" straddle the line between ballad and uptempo, whereas "Lava Lamp" "Playing With Uranium," "Mars Meets Venus," and "Last Day on Earth" go into full tilt pop-rock. All songs successfully underscore their lyrical content, and are also irresistibly catchy. Taken together, they form a cohesive, consistent, thematically complete opus. This is the best album the band have put out since Rio, and one could make a case that it is the best album they have ever made.

Although this lineup, with only two original members of the band left, may not have seemed much like Duran Duran as we once knew them, the band nevertheless sound as though they had found the post-split identity they had been seeking for almost fifteen years. Instead of sounding banal (e.g., Liberty, Big Thing, and most of "The Wedding Album," other than the hits), or derivative (e.g., the overt Oasis-like stylings and general identity-crisis searching of Medazzaland), here the band sound truly original and comfortable in their skin, making outstanding pop music their own way. While the current reunion of the original Fab Five is a cause for fans to rejoice, one cannot listen to this album without lamenting that Le Bon, Rhodes, and Cuccurullo are no longer recording together. Pop Trash is a wonderful piece of work that deserves more attention than it got. If you should be lucky enough to find a copy, grab it, enjoy it, and wonder if the newly reformed quintet can hope to equal the stellar results this trio achieved here.

More Pop Trash free music reviews:
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Description of Pop Trash

Dutch version of long running new wave act's tenth studio album with sound snippets for sampling, the first single 'Someone Else Not Me' with English and Spanish versions as bonus tracks. Same bonus tracks as the Japanese edition.
Imagine how startling it must be for Simon LeBon and Nick Rhodes to realize that the older sector of once devoted, poster-kissing Duranies have aged enough to be soccer moms. The last two remaining members of the '80s superband hit and often missed throughout the '90s, but with Pop Trash, grown-up fans will find a reinvigorating pop album that strikes a nearly perfect balance between hip factor and maturity. The band backpedals from the overtaxing techno of the 1997 sleeper release Medazzaland, but retains a few well-chosen synth overlays and combines them successfully with the oceanic balladry from 1993's The Wedding Album. "Someone Else Not Me" and "Pop Trash Movie" reclaim the beautiful soundscapes of The Wedding Album's "Ordinary World," while the heavier tracks work diet industrial ("Mars Meets Venus") and heavy-metal riffs with weird time signatures ("Last Day on Earth") into proper Duran Duran bombast. There are moments when the band overruns the age-appropriate mark: "Lady Xanax," an ode to the anxiety-relieving medication, symbolizes a tempering of their fast and furious lifestyle, but then again, who has time for street drugs when you have to get the kids home in time for dinner? --Beth Massa

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