Title: “Hungry like the wolf”
Format: Single
Written by: Nick Rhodes, Simon LeBon, Roger Taylor, Andy Taylor, John Taylor
Performed by: Duran Duran
Genre: Pop/New Wave
Taken from: Rio
Year: 1982
Acclaim: Reached number five in the UK, helped break the band in the US through rotation of its video on MTV
You'll be totally unsurprised, I would imagine, to find I was never a fan of Duran Duran. I tended to see them as a scrappy pop band who were just pretty boys, and to some extent I still hold this belief. However it has become clear with age and the passing of time that they did in fact have, and write (to be fair, they wrote most of their own material) some pretty good songs. You might chance to catch me on occasion humming a badly off-tune version of “Rio”, “Girls on film” or even “Save a prayer”, though I'd never admit to it. “Hungry like the wolf” was certainly a popular song, though it could be argued that at this time Duran Duran were already long-established, at least in the UK and Europe, having already had four hit singles and two successful albums, though
Rio, their second, from which this single is lifted, was without question their commercial breakthrough, and introduced them finally to a rabid horde of American fans. Still, it could also be argued that without the constant running of the clever video for this song on the then very influential MTV (a show that could quite easily be said to have made more than one artiste's career) they might have struggled to have crossed that transatlantic divide.
At its heart, of course, it's a vapid pop song. It doesn't have a lot to say. Whereas previously featured Rainbow's song likened the wolf to an ancient figure of savagery and nobility, and hinted at dark magic, Duran Duran here go for the idea of the wolf as a romeo:
”I'm on the hunt/ I'm after you” gives no impression that the hunt will end with the prey being eaten, rather it's the age-old pursuit of a lover for his woman that we're talking about here. It's undeniably catchy though, and you can't help yourself singing
”Do do doo-doo do doo-doo” at the end of each verse. The song also used emerging advances in synthesiser technology, putting Duran Duran at the forefront of what would be generally regarded (by me anyway) as “synth bands” and thereby pushing the poor old dependable guitar firmly to the background.
I suppose for the time its very weakly sexual imagery in the lyric could have been seen as being slightly risque, though it's hardly Slayer or Metallica, is it? There's a very boppy “Popcorn”-like synth riff running through most of the song, and to be fair the guitar does get to strut its stuff a little so it doesn't sound as bland as many of the new wave synthpop bands would. Interestingly, the song was all written over the space of one day, and I have to admit, it doesn't sound like it, does it?
Things I like about this :
1. It's a catchy song; can't help singing it
2. It's not too twee
3. It has a certain amount of balls
Things I don't like about this:
1. It's Duran Duran, and I retain a legacy bias against them from my younger days which I've never seen any reason to change or challenge
2. It's pretty repetitive
Rating: 