Duran's Top 50 UK Singles Part 1: 50-26
Who knew Duran Duran had released 50 UK singles, just as Cherry Lipstick was about to compile a DEFINITIVE list of the greatest of them all? Not me, or your contributors here, who came up with various numbers between 46 and 54, but we settled on 50 as it is such a lovely number.
The thing is – you knew where you were in the good old days. Girls On Film was single. Friends of Mine wasn’t. Sometimes international releases muddied the waters (Save A Prayer in America in 1985, Matter of Feeling in Brazil in 1988, Femme Fatale in France in 1994, amongst others). But these days?
We had to debate the extent to which a physical release (All Of You) was a bigger deal than a radio release (Last Night In The City), or a video release (More Joy), or a ‘designated named streaming’ release (Laughing Boy). In the end, choices had to be made, and, friends, Face For Today, Five Years, Boys Keep Swinging, New Moon (Dark Phase), did not make the list.
Your Cherry Lipstick team was asked to rank the chosen 50 based upon the following criteria:
· Song Quality
· Impact
· Innovation
· Video
· B-side
· Picture sleeve
· Remixes / 12”
· “something else”, to include personal prejudice.
Your team, reunited tonight, are Adam Wilson, Ben Rawson-Jones, C.K. Shortell and Ruth Galvin. The rankings below represent the average ratings of the 4 secret votes, which were slightly moderated for the top 10 to avoid the skewing of one or two ‘rogue’ votes.
Enjoy
Adam, Editor
50: Last Night In The City (September 2016)
Ranked at nos 44, 48, 49 and 49, giving an over all average poll position of 47.5
Adam: The worst song off their worst album
C.K.S. It’s at least upbeat and somewhat modern sounding.
Ben: Killed by weak, stuttering verses.
Ruth: I worked out my poll scores for each song based upon its ‘impact’ ‘art work’ and ‘video’, and then had to factor how these have changed over the years. Regardless, this song is objectively ‘bad’.
49: Meet ‘el’ Presidente (April 1987)
Last Night In The City and Meet ‘el’ Presidente were the only two tracks to have all four voters score them in their bottom 10.
Ben: How was this mediocrity released as a single ahead of Hold Me?!
Ruth: Busy, glossy and faintly exhausting. They decided to come out of their period marketing themselves as pretty boys of pop by singing a pseudo-political, sexy, jazz, funky thing.
Adam: John looks like Princess Anne on the cover.
CKS: Literally any other song on Notorious would have been a better choice for the third single.
48: Violence of Summer (Love’s Taking Over) (July 1990)
Voted 50th by Ben
Adam: This single caused Sterling to leave.
CKS: There is something about the unrestrained, pent up energy of Liberty that is especially endearing after so many overproduced, buttoned up LPs that have dropped in the 21st century. This is actually a great choice for a single and should have done better.
Ben: A great deterrent to stop people buying Liberty. This is the worst of the worst. People forget that it had a chance. It came off the back of album that had had a top 10 single yet made no dent whatsoever.
Ruth: Bright, brash and desperate to announce a comeback, but the tune is not strong enough to carry all that forced sunshine. A great deal of activity for very little lasting impression.
Adam: There is a special place in hell for the Story Mix.
47: Burning The Ground (December 1989)
Ben: It does a decent, fairly cohesive job for what it is.
CKS: An interesting concept but not worthy of a DD single.
Adam: Who was this supposed to appeal to? It fails as a nostalgia piece for the ‘I remember them’ crowd, and desperately waves from the other side of the car park to the cool crowd going to the trendy club.
Ruth: There is fun in hearing the familiar pieces rearranged, but not much invention in borrowing your own furniture and moving it around the room. This is for the committed rather than the curious.
46: Someone Else Not Me (April 2000)
Voted 50th by Adam and CKS
Ben (no.23): It stood zero chance. I’ll go to the grave standing up for this song and my belief it COULD have been a hit if released in different circumstances and a video that didn’t look like it was made by an idiot messing around with MS Paint. It’s an emotionally powerful song that still resonates with me.
Ruth: One of the rare occasions where I can find almost nothing to defend. Subdued to the point of inertia, with little impact, invention or visual energy, it seems to evaporate while you are listening. It’s such a plodding, horrible song.
CKS: 26 years ago, Cherry Lipstick declared this the “worst Duran Duran single of all time” and frankly … nothing I’ve heard in the ensuing 26 years would change my mind. As a song, it’s fine—maybe even above average—but an absolutely horrific single for band chasing another mega ballad hit in an era that had already (sadly) left them behind.
Adam: Still the worst Duran Duran single of all time.
45: What Are The Chances (August 2015)
Ben: It almost gets going and threatens for a tiny moment to reach the greatness of Ordinary World, but doesn’t.
CKS: I love Fruscianti’s guitar work on Paper Gods and while I think Simon ran out of steam lyrically about halfway through, this is a beautiful song.
Adam: The worst of the various Ordinary World-wannabes.
Ben: Pressure Off should have been followed up by Face For Today rather than this momentum-sapping plodder that I really tried to force myself to love. The single version of this also cut out the best bits - the decent Frusciante guitar solo was neutered so much it became a eunuch and the emotive Le Bon wailing near the end was disappointingly truncated too.
Ruth: Moody, reflective and competently assembled, but it never quite becomes as moving as it believes itself to be. Not offensive, just slight—and being forgettable is a more serious crime for a ballad than being bad.
44: Perfect Day (March 1995)
Ruth: This is a song about heroin that was filmed in a red padded cell delivered far too dreamily to capture the bitter irony of the lyrics.
CKS: Maybe my least favourite song on Thank You. I guess it’s cool that Roger is in the video, for the 2 seconds that Warren the director lets the camera linger on him.
Ben: I just found this so boring and disappointing in 1995 that I had no desire to hear it again. It seems like I wasn’t alone. Of course, as decades have passed I really see the song’s merit and like this version a lot now. But not then - and then is what counts.
Adam: I ranked this at no. 24 and I do not remember why now. Roger is the video. Other songs seemed worse when I made my scores. Without this score (the others were 43-44-48) it would have been lower than Someone Else Not Me so just for that I am pleased I gave it a bump that it really doesn’t deserve.
43: Leave A Light On (June 2011)
CKS: A beautiful song but not a great choice for a single, especially on an album with so many great options.
Ben: It almost gets going and threatens for a tiny moment to reach the greatness of Save A Prayer, but doesn’t.
Ruth: The video is competent and everything is tastefully arranged; unfortunately, tastefulness cannot supply a missing hook. Pleasant album track, over-promoted single.
42: Careless Memories (April 1981)
Ben: Not a hit and not on Greatest. Probably should have been left as a great album track that everyone says should have been a single!
CKS: Is it heresy to put a first album song so low? This is not a song I revisit, and even back in the mixtape days was not one that made a lot of appearances.
Ruth: The rhythm drives hard, but the song has little soul or dynamic variation: the listener is catapulted through it at high velocity and then it is simply over. The bored woman on the boring sleeve does not help, branding notwithstanding. Plenty of bands would have been recast as one-hit wonders after this; fortunately, there was money and belief behind them.
Adam: A deserved flop. The story goes that Nick insisted on it being the second single, incredibly when they still had Girls On Film in their back pocket. The video sits in late 1980 and – who is to say – maybe it took semi-naked women to avoid sinking this crazy ride after 4 months. Thank goodness for semi-naked women pillow fighting on a greasy pole and wrestling in mud baths. Don’t judge me.
41: Evil Woman (October 2024)
Voted 50th by Ruth
Ruth: It is more offensive than Last Night In The City. This sounds like a cheap cabaret band, devoid of personality or invention or a persuasive reason to revisit a song that did not need this treatment. It is so forgettable. It makes me feel old, which makes me hate it the most. Last place, comfortably.
Adam: Duran have been releasing cover versions since 1981 and this is by far the worst*.
Ben: As far as cover versions go, this is smooth and fits in well with the DD sound. It was played loads on Radio 2 and helped to position DD alongside Halloween for another year. So, it did its job.
CKS (no.24): A banger! Duran lean into disco. Have actually heard this on satellite radio in the US here and there.
*Adam: If you don’t count Drive By. I mean, Evil Woman is still the worst, but not “by far.”
40: Tonight United (September 2021)
Misses the bottom ten by half a point.
CKS: It’s catchy and not horrible, but that’s a pretty low bar.
Ruth: It’s not unlistenable. An earnest communal anthem assembled from very broad sentiments and very familiar parts. It wants arms in the air; I mostly want a more distinctive chorus. The weak song quality, impact and lyrics leave it sounding generic rather than genuinely unifying.
Ben: Impact wise, that highly choreographed Commonwealth Games performance of this song with a sea of dancers was something special. A new Duran Duran song in 2022 being nailed in front of a huge audience across the world. That helps it transcend the fact it’s hardly one of their best quality wise.
CKS (no.46): The Moroder collaboration was a misfire. Also, how can you have powerful guitar driven dance music without…guitar? It would be lower but for the fact that they made Dom sing backing vocals on this live, which I find hilarious.
Adam (no.27): I think I was trying too hard to be terribly fair to modern Duran.
39: My Own Way (November 1981)
Adam (no.18): I am once again the outlier [other scores were 41-43-47]. I am very happy to stand up for My Own Way as a stand-alone single that did a great job in late 1981 of keeping Duran in the public eye during the gap between Girls On Film and Hungry Like The Wolf. It is a good pop song with a thumping chorus, was played on the Sing Blue Silver tour, and its remix is perfectly suited to the Rio album.
Ben: The single pales in comparison to the very different and much better version on the Rio album. The band clearly don’t like the song which may shift fans’ perspectives.
CKS: I’m assuming we are talking about the dreadful sped up version and not the album version on Rio.
Ruth: Sounds like a slowed-down Planet Earth, only with strings and less charm. I love Malcolm Garrett's alternate Rio artwork for the Japanese release; the monochrome matador sketch on the main sleeve, less so. There is surely a buried joke about the parrot playing Nick's synths. The album version wisely pulls the strings back; the single is ELO on speed.
Adam: Obviously I have not judged My Own Way on the exorable Like An Angel.
38: More Joy! (August 2021)
Ben: Good fun and cool video, although so many other better songs on Future Past deserved their moment in the spotlight rather than this
Ruth: Bright, quirky and a welcome jolt of energy. It is much more fun than its limited impact suggests, and CHAI add personality rather than merely a fashionable name. The lyrics and video are hardly profound, but profundity is not the assignment. More joy, indeed.
CKS: Duran take a risk! While Chai’s collaboration was limited to some screaming in the background, this is still one of the better songs off the hit-or-miss Future Past LP.
Adam: Compare and contrast this upbeat, interesting, fun track with the over-done and oh-so-familiar sounds of Black Moonlight etc.
37: Free To Love (April 2026)
Ben: Instantly catchy.
Ruth: Does its job without ever developing a memorable hook or fresh idea. Free to Love, certainly. Compelled to replay, not especially.
Ben: Instantly forgettable
Adam (no.16): See no.40.
CKS: I’m getting Nile’d out at this point.
36: Black Moonlight (September 2023)
Ben: Instantly catchy
CKS: Nicely complimented the Dance Macabre material.
Ben: Instantly forgettable
Adam: Don’t worry Cherry Lipstick fans. I put this at no.37. In its favour, I would actually like to hear this live instead of Evil Woman. Though I’d also like to hear almost anything live instead of Evil Woman.
Ruth: Why did I score Black Moonlight at no.23?!? [other scores 36-37-40] Maybe I mixed it up with Danse Macabre? Basically, I couldn’t give two hoots about Black Moonlight.
AND NOW, A SHORT ADVERTISEMENT BREAK.....
PRINT AND DIGITAL DOWNLOAD FANZINES AVAILABLE, FROM 1993 - 2022
DOWNLOADS AVAILABLE FROM £0.00 (YES, FREE) WITH THE REMAINING PRINT ON SALE AT A DISCOUNT. ALL FEATURING ARTICLES NOT AVAILABLE ON THE WEBSITE, INCLUDING THE POWER STATION STORY AND THE LOST TREASURES OF RIO.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION...
35: Anniversary (August 2021)
CKS: A fun track, great choice for a single, interesting video.
Ruth: A warm, self-referential celebration that knows exactly why it exists. The celebrity-lookalike video was meant as harmless party froth; unfortunately, its grinning Putin impersonator aged catastrophically after the invasion of Ukraine 6 months after the video’s release and now lands with all the gaiety of a diplomatic incident. This is fated to be consigned to the dustbin of history – like a birthday card that you quietly remove from the mantelpiece when the sender has become embarrassing.
Ben: A song that somehow felt less than the sum of its mostly great parts - and the strained ‘freshly cut nails on a black chalkboard’ vocals on the chorus ensured it would never take off. But what verses, what a guitar riff and what a middle eight. Imagine if the video budget had been spent on Invisible instead rather than letting some AI creature get directorial power and pave the way for the annihilation of the human race within the next decade?
Adam: Fun while it lasted. Maybe they can re-hash it for Planet Earth’s 50th in 2031?
34: Nice (August 2005)
Adam: One of those Nearly songs (see also its sibling Taste of Summer). It feels shackled by its mundane name. You know what you are getting from a song called Wild Boys, or More Joy. Likewise, ‘Nice’.
Ben: There’s a really cool pop song in there, but some of the weird squeaky vocal effects hark back to the horrors of Interlude One off Big Thing. It didn’t get the proper release it should have though - so never stood a chance of making an impact.
CKS: Arguably the best song off Astronaut that deserved a better fate.
Ruth: A brisk, enjoyable pop song that deserved a better fate. The song-quality score is strong because the hook and polish are genuinely there. What is missing is weight: little impact, a middling video, modest artwork and almost no chart presence. Nice by name, nice by nature—and perhaps that is the problem.
33: Electric Barbarella (January 1999)
Ben: I know others like myself who got into the band via Greatest without knowing much about their history and took a strong liking to this song
CKS: Musically, this should be higher, as this is one of the few times the Warren-era band actually wrote something that sounded like early Duran. Unfortunately, trying to sell it digitally [in the US in 1997] tanked this and ultimately killed Medazzaland, and for that crime, it gets ranked down here (32nd). DD fans should not be proudly citing that it was the first single for digital download (also, other bands did it, including Aerosmith earlier in the 90s…I guess the distinction is they didn’t sell it). Ultimately, it’s a silly footnote in music history that potentially cost the band some late 90s success.
Ruth: Playful, synthetic and recognisably Duran, with enough hook to rise above an absolutely dismal commercial showing. The concept has the usual mix of glamour, technology and questionable taste; the sleeve appears to have given up altogether.
Adam: Not as good as it thinks it is. It faffs about forever before Simon starts singing (0:40) and throws the kitchen sink at it before Warren bores on. The video is one of the more shameful moments of Duran’s career. The band manage to desecrate the sacred name of Barbarella’s, the club at which Duran played their first show (before either Le Bon or Cuccurullo turned up).
32: Girl Panic! (November 2011)
Ruth: The song is lively enough, but let us be honest: the supermodel video is the event. It is glamorous, witty and calculated within an inch of its life, turning a decent track into a pop-cultural talking point.
Ben: The song veers between sonic brilliance and clunkiness, but the supermodel-filled video propelled post-RCM new DD music into the ears of millions of YouTube viewers and showed that traditional radio wasn’t the only way to reach the masses.
CKS: Girls on Film redux from the album Duran stubbornly claimed they never wanted to do (and then subsequently complained about having to do it ever since). I also didn’t find the video particularly clever, nor the perfume tie-in.
31: Give It All Up (December 2021)
Scored by Ben and Ruth in the top 20, but at no 39 and 43 by Adam and CKS.
Ben: An absolute banger of a track with the fab Tove Lo that packed a punch in its much shorter (and shockingly commercially unavailable) radio edit. It achieved something very impressive - it put Future Past back in the UK album charts after a one-month absence for three weeks when this track was all over Radio 2.
Adam: I LOVE this song but scored it at no.39 as it was such a missed opportunity. I could and should have been a major hit. I have probably disproportionately assigned low marks to impact, and also my personal angst at seeing this beautiful track get away due to poor marketing / decision making.
CKS: Meh personified. Admittedly, I did enjoy it live in 2023.
Ruth: It is a fantastic song and I am disappointed to it so low in this chart. I gave the song a ten because it is genuinely infectious: sharp, fresh and lifted by Tove Lo rather than overwhelmed by her. I think you were too harsh here, Adam. I interpreted impact in the golden era about what something meant in the charts, but for these later years it was more about what a song has meant to the fan base. So Danse Macabre has had a huge impact – it’s unifying song amongst the fans.
Ben: I do agree with Adam that this was a huge missed opportunity. Why did Anniversary get a huge video for that shit hole of a video? Even More Joy got a video.
30: Do You Believe In Shame? (April 1989)
Voted 4th greatest Duran song of all time by Cherry Lipstick readers in 1994. In 2026 it squeaks the top 30 by half a point.
CKS: A rare example of the band actually releasing the next best song as a single. And then watching it flop.
Ben: I feel sorry for this song. It’s like that cute dog you see in a rescue shelter that’s been there for a long while and you wonder why nobody wants to adopt it, but then you choose another dog instead. It really deserved better. “If love can conquer all then why do we only feel the pain?” is one of DD’s best lyrics.
Adam (no.38): I thought this was the best song they had ever done for about 4 months in 1989. On Big Thing it helpfully introduces the meditative side 2 but it is hopelessly exposed as single in the big bright lights of radio and the charts – the swimmer without a costume on as the water drains out the pool. This is proven by the fact they recorded a performance for Top of the Pops, only to never have it broadcast as the single went down the charts that week.
Ruth (no.33): The video aims for a meditation on grief and the road not taken: broken keys, birthday candles turning into memorial candles, and WALK/DON'T WALK signs suggest lives interrupted and choices abruptly closed off. Then it rather loses its nerve and throws in stock-market traders and a bargain-bin snow globe, as if grief needed explaining with every symbol left in the prop cupboard. The muddle blunts what might have been genuinely moving. Add a weak sleeve and negligible chart impact, and the whole campaign practically apologised for the song's existence. I like it more than the ranking suggests—but private affection is not evidence of a successful single.
29: Skin Trade (January 1987)
Adam (no.19): My score relates to the song quality – a career highlight and the band were rightly delighted by what they had created. It certainly showed off the reduced-circumstances band’s range by making this single number two. But with your album already long dead in the charts, and you double-down with a plain red sleeve and drab video you are asking the audience to work too hard.
CKS (no.38): The video is noteworthy as Warren’s first (albeit brief) appearance with the band. The fact that John loves this song so much makes me want to shove it even farther down the list … but I do enjoy the sound. The band overrates it (it’s not better than Wild Boys) and there were better choices for a second single. American Science was on the hype sticker on the album, as was Vertigo. Either should have been the second single from Notorious.
Ben: Lovely song, but a truly naff video.
Ruth: The falsetto and sparse funk were a brave move, and I give it credit for refusing simply to remake the old hits. It is stylish rather than lovable, though, and the modest impact and chart showing explain my middling result (no.26).
28: Serious (October 1990)
Ben: This beautiful song stood no chance commercially given the atrocity that preceded it. The fact it was remixed years later by Ferry Corsten and released under the name ‘Fire’ has helped to keep DD’s music alive amongst the clubbing crowds.
CKS: A case study for when the band actually gets it right and releases one of the best songs as a single and it…goes nowhere.
Ruth: Almost aggressively inoffensive. Fans love it precisely because there is so little to object to: it is melodic, tidy and asks nothing difficult of the listener. But that lack of friction is also the problem. Serious is nice. It really is just a nice song—and nice is not the same as essential.
Adam: This just about holds up on Greatest, and gave it a status. But has anyone mentioned the b-side?
27: All You Need Is Now (December 2010)
CKS: A triumphant, anthemic return to form for the band after the disaster that was RCM. It will never cease to amuse me that the guy going to the party in the video looks like a young Warren.
Ben: Oh boy, that chorus. One of the best in the band’s history. Imagine if this song was released as the 2004 comeback single instead of Sunrise? After the low ebb of RCM, this return was an impressive statement - but not having a major record label behind it meant it didn’t stand a commercial chance.
Ruth: I can hear exactly what it is trying to do, but recognising the ingredients is not the same as tasting the magic. Solid song, adequate video, very little genuine impact: reassuring rather than revelatory.
Adam: The chorus is glorious, the video is on point, but they blew it with the air raid siren intro and pitchy vocals in the verse.
26: Too Much Information (August 1993)
Adam: I made the mistake of listening to the Deptford Dub remix. But I am a fast learner. I think that 12” is still in a box somewhere. This song is… fine. A good album opener, but it set the tone for way too much whining on the Wedding Album. We get it, the BBC didn’t playlist your last record in 1990 and you’re very cross at them. Maybe they heard it?
CKS: One of their best opening tracks ever and it deserved a better fate chart-wise. The machismo era at its best.
Ben: Amazing song, amazing video - but ruined by a marketing mess created by not getting the song out there soon after Come Undone. RIP momentum. Deserved much better, although following in the footsteps of the previous two Wedding Album singles was never going to be easy. Like trying to bang a lass whose previous two boyfriends were porn stars. Always going to fall short even if you deliver the goods.
Ruth: I actually loved this when it came out—possibly more than Ordinary World. Yes, you read that correctly. It sounded more recognisably connected to their earlier work than the guitar-heavy Wedding Album. I was only just becoming a fan and had not yet caught up with Liberty or Big Thing, so this became my direct line back to the golden era. The campaign barely registered, but the frantic media-saturated song still works for me.
Part 2: 25-1 coming next!
Comments