Cherry ice cream smile - I suppose it's very nice

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

03/04/83 : Rio - Duran Duran

OK - confession time.  This is another one of those weeks on the charts that I don't believe because every album is showing the same position as last week (or tomorrow, depending upon how you're measuring time here). My suspicion is that officialcharts.com, the fine site I use for all my chart information couldn't get hold of the chart for this week so just stuck with what they had.  I don't blame them in the slightest though because, without them, none of this would be possible- so we'll just go with it and cut them some slack, OK?

This is our second visit with Duran Duran this year and it's one of those albums I don't really need to revisit because I listen to it reasonably frequently - but I revisited it anyway.  I actually don't think it has a weak track on it - if I had to go for favourites I'd pick "Rio", "Hold Back The Rain" and "The Chauffeur" which I think is a particularly bold choice of something different for the closing track.  I appreciate the album isn't for everyone, but "I hate all that 80s shite, but Rio isn't a bad album" isn't an uncommon confession.  It's also got a pretty iconic album cover as well and it's one I've owned twice, first as a cassette and then it graduated to CD - which brings us up to 11.5/39.

We're at #7 in the charts this week in their 57th week of a 96 week run - that's a proper run, that is.  And it's appeared for 15 more weeks on 6 more runs over the years, with it last being seen for a single week in 2015 (I'm always intrigued as to the reasons for these sudden reappearances).  Due to the chart shenanigans described above, I won't go into any more details for this week other than saying Pink Floyd were #1, which I have confirmed is correct from a separate source (who may well also use officialcharts.com).

Wikipedia has a reasonable amount on the album (185 milliPeppers) but very little of interest until we get to the critical reception - it really wasn't very well received by the critics at all, with Robert Christgau (who we haven't mentioned for a bit) declaring it to be not as fun as Haircut 100 and not having as many hooks as A Flock Of Seagulls.  It's amazing it did well at all really, isn't it?  Time has been kind to it though, with general agreement that maybe it'll last better than either of them two - although it did pretty well at the time commercially, selling over 2 million in the US on a 129 week chart run.  Which I guess counts as doing pretty well.

"Customers also listened to" Tears For Fears, The Human League, Pet Shop Boys and INXS (you don't hear much about them these days, do you?).  There's been a few albums sold between that lot and no mistake.  And Duran Duran have shifted a few as well, but personally I think this is their highpoint - it's certainly the one I revisit most often.

27/03/83 - Some fine pop quiz questions
10/04/83 - A first, but not in a good way