MY CD RACK: Duran Duran - Thank You [1995]

Genre: New Wave, Synth Pop, Alternative

My opinion & thought: A masterpiece of one of the New Wave music's leaders paying tribute credits to their mentors. Simply irresistible.

Stands out track(s): Lay Lady Lay, Perfect Day, Thank You, Drive By

Thank You is a covers album by Duran Duran released in April 1995. The band's next album after the smash success of 1993's Duran Duran (The Wedding Album) was hotly anticipated by fans and critics alike, but Thank You was a long time coming, and its performance was a dismal failure by many critics' standards.

The album was reportedly begun as a lighthearted tribute to the band's influences, in the vein of Bowie's Pin Ups -- some of the tracks were recorded in borrowed studios (including Prince's Paisley Park) while the band was on the Wedding Album tour, with the intent to have an album ready to release soon after the tour was finished. Another studio album was to follow quickly afterwards. However, after a brief break the band set up a portable studio in the south of France to finish the album with producer John Jones, and progress slowed to a crawl. Conflicts within the band and between the band and Capitol/EMI created delay after delay, and mix after mix was ordered and rejected. Duran Duran's former drummer Roger Taylor, who retired from the band in 1986, joined the band in studio to play drums on "Watching The Detectives" and "Perfect Day" (as well as a cover of "Jeepster" by T. Rex that did not appear on the album).

By the time Thank You was finally released in 1995, the band was not enthusiastic about supporting the album, and much of the promotional work was done solely bySimon Le Bon and Warren Cuccurullo. Videos were completed for "White Lines" and "Perfect Day" (Roger Taylor, who did not tour or do any promotions with the band, excited old fans by appearing in "Perfect Day"), but the videos saw almost no airplay on the MTV or VH1 channels. Duran Duran were not happy about a label-mandated 1995 summer tour of radio station festivals. Bassist John Taylor was particularly frustrated, and stormed off the stage several times over the course of the tour. After a final half-capacity show in Southern California, where the band was booed, Taylor remained in Los Angeles to launch the resolutely anti-corporate side project Neurotic Outsiders with former members of Guns N' Roses and the Sex Pistols.

An acoustic version of the title track "Thank You" was included on the 1995 Led Zeppelin tribute album Encomium, and was also included on the soundtrack for the Joe Pesci film With Honours.

The cover of this album features a collage of the various artists whose songs were covered on this album, including Bob Dylan, Iggy Pop, Public Enemy with Flavor Flav, Jim Morrison of The Doors, Sly And The Family Stone, and Lou Reed.

The two singles from the album were covers of Grandmaster Flash's "White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)" and Lou Reed's "Perfect Day", each of which had a fair performance on the charts (and praise from their original performers), but the critics lambasted the band's attempts at "911 Is A Joke", "Ball of Confusion" and "Crystal Ship".

J. D. Considine of Rolling Stone said "[S]ome of the ideas at play here are stunningly wrongheaded, like the easy-listening arrangement given Elvis Costello's "Watching the Detectives" or the version of Zeppelin's "Thank You" that sounds like the band is covering Chris DeBurgh. But it takes a certain demented genius to recognize Iggy Pop's "Success" as the Gary Glitter tune it was meant to be or to redo "911 Is a Joke" so it sounds more like Beck than like Public Enemy."

The most interesting thing about the Thank You album, and its many bad reviews, was that all of original artists who had their songs covered actually liked the versions that Duran Duran had recorded. Lou Reed said, on the electronic press kit that accompanied the album, that Duran Duran's version of "Perfect Day" was "The best cover ever completed of one of my own songs".