Duran Duran -- "Notorious"

This song is just a brilliant melange of nonsense and I love it.

Notorious / Notorious/ No-no-notorious

Here we go! I hope you're all bristling with anticipation.

I can't read about it / Burns the skin from your eyes


Anyone see any skin in that diagram? No, me neither. Although, I suppose "burns the aqueous humor from your eyes" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

OK, so Simon LeBon can't read about it, whatever it is, because it singes off his eyelids, I guess ... or, more accurately, it singes off YOUR eyelids. That's right. You no longer have eyelids because Simon LeBon read about it. Sorry, pal. Good luck trying to blink anymore. NO-NO-NOTORIOUS!!!

I'll do fine without it / Here's one you don't compromise

Does this "it" refer to the same thing as the previous antecedent-less "it," or does it refer to the skin from his eyes?

Lies come hard to disguise / They need to fight it out / Not wild about it

These really are the least comprehensible lyrics I've ever seen, bar none, and that's saying something. Simon LeBon might as well have just dubbed the inscrutable cries of the humpback whale over this music. Actually, that would've been kind of cool.

Let's just sit back and enjoy Simon's descent into madness, shall we?

Lay your seedy judgements / Who says they're part of our lives?

Nobody says that. Nobody says "My seedy judgements are part of your lives." Nobody has ever said that. Except Judge Judy. Once. And I refuse to give Judge Judy any publicity on this blog. I'm a Judge Joe Brown man.

I guess the proper response if someone did inexplicably utter those nonsense words, however, would be "Lay your seedy judgements!" That's fairly self-evident.

You own the money / You control the witness / I'll leave you lonely / Don't monkey with my business

For some reason, I think a lot of the lines in this song would be really funny if Harrison Ford said them in a movie. You know how Harrison Ford doesn't really act anymore, he just barks or growls his lines in a gruff, angry voice? Just imagine these lines as dialogue in a generic Harrison Ford thriller where he is trying to fight back against a corrupt system, or do the right thing against all odds in a world gone mad. Anyone with me here? No? OK, let's move on.

Harrison Ford: (growling) You own the money. You control the witness.
Corrupt DA/CEO/NASA Administrator: (sneering) What are you gonna do about it?
Harrison Ford: (struggling to free himself from hired goons to lunge at corrupt DA/CEO/NASA Administrator) (barking): DON'T MONKEY WITH MY BUSINESS!!!!

OK, now we can move on.

You pay the prophets to justify your reasons / I heard your promise, but I don't believe it

I don't know if LeBon says "prophets" or "profits" here -- they're homonyms. I can say with 100 percent confidence, though, that it doesn't matter which one he actually says.

These lines work well with that Harrison Ford thing, too. Just saying.

That's why I've done it again / No-no-notorious

What have you done again? And why have you done it? Is there any possible way to know? No. No. Notorious.

Girls will keep the secrets / So long as boys make a noise / Fools run rings to break up / Something they'll never destroy

That first verse was a motherfucking well-structured Socratic discourse compared to this gobbledygook.

Here comes the piece de resistance!

Grand Notorious slam (bam) / And who really gives a damn for a flaky bandit?

The only way the second line makes sense, and I mean the *only* way, is if Simon LeBon was trying to get this song used in a Head & Shoulders commercial starring Burt Reynolds.

The only way the first line makes sense is if Simon LeBon was trying to get this song used in a Denny's commercial, which also more than likely would've featured Burt Reynolds. Because, goddammit, say what you want about Burt Reynolds, but he moves merchandise!

Don't ask me to bleed about it / I need this blood to survive

Simon LeBon bravely takes a stand against the use of leeches for medical purposes, about a century too late.

OK, those are all the lyrics, but let's just take another jaunt through the chorus so we can once again bask in its total insanity.

You own the money / You control the witness / I'll leave you lonely / Don't monkey with my business / You pay the prophets to justify your reasons / I heard your promise, but I don't believe it / That's why I've done it again / Notorious

You bet your sweet ass you've done it again, LeBon, you magnificent bastard!

Duran Duran -- "Hungry Like the Wolf"

So if, like me, you are a connoisseur of 1960s French erotic science fiction, you probably already know this. But, for the unwashed masses who have missed the boat, the band Duran Duran is named after a character from the 1968 classic "Barbarella," starring Jane Fonda as the title character.

Here's the plot summary from Wikipedia:

"Set in the 40th century, Barbarella follows the adventures of its title character played by Jane Fonda. In the film, Barbarella is assigned by the President of Earth to retrieve Doctor Durand-Durand from the planet SoGo in order to save the earth. Beyond this premise, the plot is very loose, serving mostly as an excuse for Barbarella to end up in erotic situations. On her quest to find Durand Durand, Barbarella is seduced by a human resident of SoGo, who introduces her to penetrative intercourse (civilized people of Barbarella's society find sexual release through pharmaceuticals), seduces an angel named Pygar, and overloads a torture device (called the Excessive Machine) which kills through sexual pleasure."

Coincidentally, the members of Duran Duran went on to introduce all of America to penetrative intercourse with their hit song "Hungry Like the Wolf." Take a look at the music video. Oops, wait, that was the wrong video. Here you go.

Just as an aside, this video was shot in Sri Lanka, where to the best of my knowledge, there are no wolves. Why not shoot in Canada or Siberia or something? It would've been cheaper and more relevant to the whole wolf thing. Oh well.

Dark in the city, night is a wire / Steam in the subway, earth is afire

This is actually some pretty good imagery. "Night is a wire." I like that. Good work, Simon Le Bon.

Woman, you want me, give me a sign / And catch my breathing even closer behind

Starting to get a little creepy.

By the way, I'm not including any of the "do do do do, etc." parts here because they're not really "lyrics" per se, but I would like to point out that the Wikipedia page for this song states that "the repeating of the word 'do' at the end of each verse, is an inspiration from Gordon Lightfoot's song 'If You Could Read My Mind'." [sic] Being naturally curious about bands' musical influences, and being a fan of Mr. Lightfoot myself, I cued up the song, in which he does no "do do do"-ing whatsoever, unless I'm listening to some sort of abbreviated version or something. Is this just completely wrong or am I missing something here?

In touch with the ground / I'm on the hunt, I'm after you

creepy

Smell like I sound, I'm lost in a crowd / And I'm hungry like the wolf

"Smell like I sound"? I don't get that line. It could be "smell like a sound," but that doesn't really make much sense either. How can a thing or a person smell like he/she/it sounds? I don't think it's possible for a sound to smell like anything. Um. And the following line, "I'm lost in a crowd," doesn't help much either.

Straddle the line in discord and rhyme / I'm on the hunt I'm after you

I think maybe Simon Le Bon is so hungry that he's become delirious.

Mouth is alive with juices like wine / And I'm hungry like the wolf

Simon Le Bon is drooling. Or, I don't know, maybe eating somebody?

Stalk through the forest, too close to hide / I'll be upon you by the moonlight side

"The moonlight side"? What does that mean? And when did we get into this forest? In the first line we were in a city. Unless we were in the forest the whole time and he just happened to mention that it was dark in the city, as a kind of non sequitur. Is anyone else getting hungry? I'm kind of hungry.

Hey, why didn't Duran Duran turn this song into a whole series? They could've done "Angry Like the Goat," "Sleepy Like the Bear (In Winter)," "Sticky Like the Anteater," "Endangered Like the Panda," "Amphibious Like the Frog" ... the possibilities are endless. Each one could also be adapted as a children's book and an erotic science fiction movie. Synergy!

High blood drumming on your skin it's so tight / You feel my heat I'm just a moment behind

If someone was following you, what would happen first? Would you "catch (his) breathing" or "feel (his) heat"? And would those two things happen like two verses apart?

And, "high blood drumming on your skin it's so tight"? Huh? I think maybe it's actually "High blood / drumming on your skin, it's so tight." In which case, whaaa??? Actually, maybe Mr. Le Bon should be congratulated here, because even though I have no concept of what this line means, I can definitively say that it is creepy. Kind of like if a child gave you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich but instead of peanut butter and jelly, he used gravel and mucus. You don't really know exactly what he's trying to tell you, but it's quite clear that he is mentally ill and you should sleep with one eye open.

In touch with the ground / I'm on the hunt, I'm after you / Scent and a sound, I'm lost and I'm found / And I'm hungry like the wolf

OK, we get it.

Straddle the line it's discord and rhyme / I howl and I whine, I'm after you

The unofficial lyrics I found online said this lyric was "strut on a line." I think that makes less sense than "straddle the line," but it does sound more like he says "strut." So I listened hard to the song (he sings this line three times) and each time it sounded like something different. Then I thought, "Does it really matter which it is? This is like two detectives sitting around arguing about how many times the serial killer stabbed his latest victim, while the killer hops in his car and drives away." Then I realized it wasn't like that at all, but it got me thinking about detectives, so I watched 22 consecutive episodes of "Murder, She Wrote." Then I Googled "Angela Lansbury" and "1960s French erotic science fiction" and got no results.

This song is making me type nonsense.

Mouth is alive all running inside / And I'm hungry like the wolf

This song makes me want to eat a big juicy steak and have penetrative intercouse, not necessarily in that order. The intercourse should be the easy part, but where am I going to find a steak at this hour?