“Rio” by Duran Duran

The title track of Rio, Duran Duran's second album, went out in 1982 as the fourth and last single from the record, and it bottles the whole Duran Duran fantasy in one song: glossy, restless and aimed at a sunlit horizon a long way from home. All five members share the writing credit, Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, Andy Taylor, John Taylor and Roger Taylor, and Colin Thurston both produced and engineered it.

This is synth-pop with its sleeves rolled up, all bright sheen and a bass line that never sits still, with Andrew Kevin Hamilton's saxophone gusting through like warm air off the ocean. For the single, the band trimmed the album cut down to size.

America took its time. KROQ in Los Angeles was spinning it by August 1982, but the rest of the country only paid attention once "Hungry Like the Wolf" broke through. Capitol put "Rio" out again in March 1983, and this time it climbed to number 14, the band's second visit to the US top 20. Back home it had already reached number 9 in the UK, and decades on it still ranks as the band's third most streamed song in Britain.

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