“Save a Prayer” by Duran Duran

Duran Duran picked "Save a Prayer" as the third single off Rio, their second album, and put it out on 9 August 1982. It's the moment the band traded the dance floor for the dusk. The writing credit is shared by Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, John Taylor, Andy Taylor and Roger Taylor, Le Bon wrote the words, and the band arranged it themselves with Colin Thurston producing and engineering.

It's a slow, shimmering new wave ballad, all hush and haze, with Le Bon crooning over a bed of atmosphere that seems to hang in the air like heat after sundown. There's longing in every bar, and the band keeps it restrained right up until the chorus lifts off.

At home it became their biggest UK hit up to that point, climbing to number two. North America waited: despite the video's popularity on MTV, it wasn't released as a single there at first. An edited version finally came out in the United States in January 1985, backed with a live take from the Arena album, and it reached number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100.

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