Rio by Duran Duran

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Style: Synth Pop, New Wave, New Romantic
Release: 1982
Length 42 min.

Perhaps I need to be more knowledgeable in the new romantic scene, but I'm fairly educated in both new wave and synth pop. And I can honestly say to myself that catchiness and production (somehow managing not to be over-produced with all that's going on) is really all that Duran Duran's Rio has going for it.

The songs all have the same vibe going on. At least I can tell the differences between the songs. Still, I'm a little surprised Duran Duran got so far. I guess it's because they are more of a singles band. They're style seems to get a little tiring early on in the album, even though it's still easy to listen to. I mean, hey. When it comes to similarities, it's no Ramones. But what really gets me is the lack of creativity in most of the main rhythms. This is especially apparent in the opening track of all tracks: Rio.

Still, I will not say the album is “bad.” The album, it's got good features. The vocals are perfectly tolerable and very well sung, the production is almost perfect, and the songs have the romantic vibe Duran Duran was going for. And despite being forty minutes, it is very quick to get through. When I got halfway through, it felt like fifteen minutes, even though I wasn't having much fun. The Chauffeur was a bit different, which was cool. Still, it needs work.

So since every song has the same vibe, I'll just judge them all at once. Decent songs, brilliant production, successful in being romantic, if not a little cheesy. One could easily say it succeeds more than it fails. Definitely one of the best produced albums I've ever heard, maybe second. But they're still going for the same basic sound.

78/100. Voting it off as this, tied with Fear of Music, make the two worst new wave albums I've heard. Not to say it's bad. 78 is four stars.

Hallowed Ground > Violent Femmes

Hallowed Ground was the album where they were confident enough to actually do what they really wanted to do, whereas the debut was more comparatively safe. Their second album is simply one of the best alt rock records of all-time.

I wouldn't say the second was alternative. It didn't have the same sense of diversity, even though I love the cowpunk addition.

Less diverse than their debut, maybe, but it's still quite diverse and alternative (a meaningless term) dude.

You and your genre hangups never cease to amaze me.

To be honest, when it comes to a genre, I can usually tell what makes the sounds of an album get the term, even if it's hard for me to explain. I guess what fascinates me about genres is that there are far too many tags to describe music, but you'll often find many bands in the same genre with very different sounds. For hard rock, KISS and AC/DC are good examples. Prog, Yes and Kansas. Very different. SBut they still follow the general rules of the sounds that they are tagged in. That's because music is all abourt different sounds.

I never said I was always right about it. I can explain how I tag a kind of music as well as you can explain our methods. That has nothing to do with hubris. The fact that you're attempting to call me self-righteous after I describe my method might make you the pretentious one since I'm not trying to label any real people here and you just made fun of something that everyone does: genre tag. Plus, I never said I was king of genres or anything. Genres tags fascinate me for some reason, that's all there really is to it.

But if I must, I'll rephrase it. If I have a set sound in mind for what alternative is like, I'll call it alternative. Basically, you're saying it's meaningless due to alternative's very broad sound, right? Well, the same could be said for practically most genres that experiment with other genres. I've mentioned this before. I mean,l take a look at hard rock. You could put country, pop, blues, funk, punk, anything you want in it. That doesn't mean it has become a meaningless term. Same could go for alternative. Heck, I've seen grunge albums often get tagged with power pop, psychedelic rock, shoegaze, and post-rock as well as the common descriptors that go with grunge, like alternative, punk, riot grrrl, heavy metal, stoner rock, and noise rock.

Your confidence in your abilities far outweighs your actual abilities. Feel free to call that whatever you wish but I'll stick with hubris for now.

I don't see how genre labelling is pretentious. It's just a word, and it's not loike I'm saying I'm better than anyone else. Everyone hasd their own methods for genre tagging, and no one is better than the other. Unless there's someone who labels Justin Bieber as Powerviolence. That would be odd.