“Skin Trade” by Duran Duran

"Skin Trade" was the second single off Notorious, the 1986 album Duran Duran co-produced with Nile Rodgers, and it was a sharp left turn from the singles that came before it. The song rides R&B grooves, choppy funk guitar and brassy horn solos, while Simon Le Bon climbs into a falsetto that owes an obvious debt to Prince. Le Bon, Nick Rhodes and John Taylor wrote it, and Daniel Abraham engineered and mixed it.

The critics dug it. The charts were colder: it stalled at 22 in Britain and 39 on the Hot 100, the band's first real commercial flop, though it did well in other countries. Time has been kinder. Radio never quite let go of it, and it is now counted among the finest moments on Notorious.

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