Cuccurullo also wrote and arranged a keening, yearning guitar solo that drew on his progressive background and reinforced the song’s bittersweet beauty. This resulted in what was perhaps Duran Duran’s most sophisticated song to date, one with gorgeous fluttery acoustic guitars, majestic keyboards and sweeping strings. I can remember an occasion when Warren tried to tell me about a keyboard part and I just couldn't get it, so he ended up playing it. “I mean, John might come up with an idea for a sound and he'd play a little keyboard part. "We were constantly trying new ideas,” Jones told Recording Musician. Watch Duran Duran Perform 'Ordinary World' in Concertĭuran Duran’s producer for this project was John “JJ” Jones, who was on board with the band’s home recording approach and was on the same creative wavelength during the recording process. “This was true in 1992, and I think it’s still true.” “It makes you realize that a story about two people is just a tiny part of this huge story which is called humanity,” he said. "'Ordinary World' seemed like such a great title," he told Recording Musician, "because it says that the important thing is the ordinary thing, the reality – and the song's about somebody who feels that he's suddenly woken up in a bit of a crazy world and wants to regain the ordinary world that he once knew, something that he can recognize and feel comfortable with."Īs Le Bon told Paste, however, the Gulf War also informed this song's lyrics, particularly one of the later choruses. Le Bon focuses on a protagonist who recognizes that going back to how things used to be isn’t possible (“ where is the life that I recognize?/gone away”) and is searching for a way forward: “ But I won't cry for yesterday/There's an ordinary world/Somehow I have to find.” The chorus ends with the phrase “ I will learn to survive,” as Le Bon's voice soars with hope and optimism. ‘Ordinary World’ was the act of letting that go.” “I’m not a big believer in the supernatural,” Le Bon told Paste in 2017, “but six years after, I started to feel a weight inside me. (The other songs in the trilogy are Big Thing’s “Do You Believe In Shame?” and Medazzaland’s “Out of my Mind.”) Lyrically, “Ordinary World” ended up as the second of three songs Le Bon wrote for his friend David Miles, who “died in tragic circumstances,” he once said. Watch Duran Duran's Video for 'Ordinary World' It was very, very quick,” Le Bon told Recording Musician. "Nick was playing the chords, Warren picked them up and then kind of altered them a little bit, and within minutes I had the melody. In fact, the song’s demo started with the chorus. Le Bon had a strong vision for the chorus on “Ordinary World.” For example, he knew he wanted the title phrase included. "This time around we used pretty much the same method, but the difference was that it was in our guitarist's living room – and so we didn't have to keep looking at the clock." "On our previous album, we had a fully working band for the first time in years, so we really had most of the songs written and arranged in advance, but there were a couple of albums before that which we had written in very expensive studios," bassist John Taylor told Recording Musician in 1993. This was a new experience for Duran Duran. So when Duran Duran regrouped to work on a new album - which was rumored to be called Here Comes the Band or 4 on the Floor before it ended up a self-titled affair - they settled in at then-guitarist Warren Cuccurullo’s home studio. You don’t really go into the studio thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve got to make something that fits into the music now.’” “I think in the back of our minds we all knew it was going on. “We were slightly in denial about what had happened to the band, about the decline of the band,” vocalist Simon Le Bon told Stereogum in 2021.
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