Duran Duran – Meet El Presidente
#quotefromthe80s
You may not like it
You may not be scared,
But hell has no fury
Like a young girl's ego
#DuranDuran #MeetElPresidente
The president is always a somewhat mythological figure, the President of the United States or the President of the Republic, the President of a football team or the Eternal President … in short, the President is the President. And it doesn’t happen every day to meet the President, on the contrary, you must also go prepared: you can’t simply tell the President the first nonsense that goes through your head.
This was also the case at the end of April 1987, when the third song extracted from Notorious, the first Duran Duran album after the split of the group, entered the charts. After the experience with Power Station, however, John Taylor was back in the group, but Roger Taylor had left, because he could no longer resist such rhythms and pressures. And so were Duran Duran back, but in a still different lineup: Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, and John Taylor, and with some backing musicians including Warren Cuccurullo and Steve Ferrone.
The Notorious album had sold well and had given out two great singles and videos such as Notorious and the beautiful Skin Trade. The third and final single was a bit of an unexpected choice, because Meet El Presidente was not the most obvious song for the next single. Not that it was a bad song, indeed, but there were other masterpieces in the album like A Matter of Feeling, for example.
In fact, Meet El Presidente resulted to be a little less successful than other songs, but I would say that in general it was probably less aired by radios and TVs, and even the video at the end was not so well known. It must be said that the song we hear in the video is quite different from the version on the album. Basically it’s a remix, adding Latin rhythms and percussion to the original version. The video is quite simple, when compared to those great videos of Duran Duran which made the history of 80s videoclips. Basically, the video shows Duran Duran performing the song during a concert, in one of the dates of the Strange Behaviour Tour.
However, important names collaborated on this song, such as Nile Rodgers, who played guitars and was the producer of the whole album, and the talented Tessa Niles, one of the most important vocalists of the whole decade: she had in fact been the backing vocalist of every big name: David Bowie, the Police, Annie Lennox, Tears for Fears … could Duran Duran be missing from her collection?
Meet El Presidente may not have had the success that Duran Duran had hoped for, but it is still a very pleasant song with a very special text, as always. After this song, as we said, the Notorious period ended, and it was necessary to wait a year and a half to hear from Duran Duran and see their videos again.
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