One of the most powerful things about music is that it is the soundtrack of our lives. Fellow music fanatic Sharon Hepworth started a music challenge on Twitter for the month of July. Each day, fans around the world will select a song from their life and describe what it means to us. These are my songs. #SoundtrackToYourLife
Day 1
Duran Duran is the first band that I loved. Looking back, I think this fact was unavoidable. My brother and I were glued to MTV – and Duran Duran was king of the station. It seemed like a new video from the band was constantly surfacing. Largely influenced by Japan and Roxy Music, Duran Duran weren’t exactly pioneers. But they were in many ways the perfecters. They knew how to write infectious pop songs, often highlighted by the frenetic stylings on John Taylor’s bass guitar. A prime example of this is “Union of the Snake”.
I still remember seeing the video on MTV and being reeled in by the images and the music. Every band member had his moment to shine on the track, yet none of the instrumentation feels excessive. The breakdown and musical arrangement at the 2:16 mark, in particular, is one of Duran Duran’s finest studio moments and one of the most imaginative musical expressions of the decade. On it, you’ll hear each member playing off of each other in a call-and-response structure, culminating in a sax solo by session player Andy Hamilton. While all the band members seemed to create a unified sonic boom on anthems like “Rio” and “The Reflex”, “Union of the Snake” marched to a different beat by thrusting each member into the spotlight at different points in time.
“There's a fine line drawing my senses together, and I think it's about to break.”