Rio by Duran Duran

Rio, Duran Duran's second album, came out on EMI on 10 May 1982, and it's the sound of a band that had figured out that pop could be glamorous and adventurous at once. They wrote and demoed most of it first, then went into AIR Studios in London from January to March 1982 with Colin Thurston producing, and they played around far more than on the debut: vibraphone and marimba, a cigarette being lit, ice cubes cracking in a glass. On "Rio" itself, the sax solo belongs to Andy Hamilton.

It's new wave dressed for a night out, with synth-pop sheen, pop-rock punch and a funk and disco pulse underneath, mostly fast and upbeat, with a couple of slower, synth-washed ballads to catch your breath. Simon Le Bon's lyrics chase dreams and chase girls. "Hungry Like the Wolf" prowls, "Rio" sparkles, "Save a Prayer" drifts, and "The Chauffeur" hangs in the air, eerie and mysterious. John Taylor came up with the title, which the band felt caught the record's sunny, exotic mood, and Patrick Nagel painted the cover, laid out by Malcolm Garrett to look like an old-school cigar box.

The band shot videos for many of the tracks, and those clips helped drive the MTV boom. Rio hit number two in Britain and hung around the chart for 110 weeks. America didn't bite at first, so Capitol remixed it for American radio, and the remix camped on the Billboard albums chart for 129 weeks and got as high as number six. Reviewers at the time liked the tunes and sniffed at the lyrics; later ones call it the band's best work.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.