Pop Trash

Pop Trash is the 10th studio album by English new wave band Duran Duran. It was released on 19 June 2000 by Hollywood Records. Pop Trash was the band's first release after parting ways with EMI, with whom they had been signed since 1981. It was also the last to feature the trio of Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes and Warren Cuccurullo. The CD album went out of print in 2001.[1] It was the only album the band released under Hollywood Records. After the album's poor sales, Duran Duran's contract with the label was terminated, and they would not release an album until 2004's Astronaut. The album artwork, created by Andrew Day, features a rhinestone-encrusted car that belonged to Liberace.

Pop Trash
Studio album by
Duran Duran
Released19 June 2000 (2000-06-19)
Recorded1999–2000
Genre
Length59:10
LabelHollywood
Producer
Duran Duran chronology
Strange Behaviour
(1999)		 Pop Trash
(2000)		 Singles Box Set 1981–1985
(2003)
Singles from Pop Trash
  1. "Someone Else Not Me"
    Released: 13 March 2000
  2. "Playing with Uranium"
    Released: 20 October 2000 (Italy only)
  3. "Last Day on Earth"
    Released: 7 March 2001 (Japan only)

Since July 2008, the album is available for sale digitally through the iTunes Store in the United States and Europe, along with Medazzaland.[2]

Background

The band left Capitol Records in 1998 and signed with Hollywood Records, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. Vocalist and lyricist Le Bon, increasingly unhappy with the band's situation and the departure of bassist John Taylor, was suffering from a severe case of writer's block during the making of this album. In his stead, keyboard player Rhodes and guitarist Cuccurullo took on more of the songwriting than usual, reworking some of their TV Mania material into some of the songs on the album.

Pop Trash continues where Medazzaland (1997) left off; elements of rock, synthpop and electronica fused together, with many layers of production. The album is probably one of Duran Duran's most diverse, with songs like "Lava Lamp" including flanged drums and intricate guitars, the catty "Mars Meets Venus" and bizarre "Hallucinating Elvis" full of manufactured bounce, while gentle pop ballad "Someone Else, Not Me" featured few effects at all. Heavy guitar pieces like "Last Day on Earth" and "Playing With Uranium" are juxtaposed with softer songs filled with delicate melancholy, like "Lady Xanax" and "The Sun Doesn't Shine Forever".

This album was poorly promoted and did not sell well, although the supporting concert tour sold out at almost all venues, including a week-long stint at the House of Blues in Los Angeles. In March 2001, the band announced they had parted ways with Hollywood Records; Nick Rhodes said "Never was there a place that felt less like a record company: Seven giant dwarves hold up the building. You're listening to these people, and finally I had to say, 'How funny that your corporate logo is a large pair of ears, yet not one of you in here happens to have any.' " [3]

Nick Rhodes later said that Pop Trash was the most difficult album for the band to make: "Things felt very different without John, although he departed during Medazzaland, he had been part of the initial writing sessions and played on several tracks of that album. Our writing process became very different for Pop Trash, also Simon was having difficulty with some of the lyrics at this time, so I ended up writing more of them than I would have anticipated. We had a new label, Hollywood Records, which proved to be, at best, exasperating. As we did not use a producer either, it resulted in Simon, Warren and I having to focus all of our ideas whilst not having a clear vision of what we were trying to achieve with the album. Given that background, we actually think the record turned out well and closed that era." [4]

At the conclusion of the supporting tour for this album, Cuccurullo was dismissed, and the band reunited with its original five members. Duran Duran went without a record deal for a couple of years, while recording their next album and doing extensive touring. They finally signed with Epic Records, and released Astronaut in 2004, with greater success due to the reunion and promotion.

The song "Pop Trash Movie" was recorded first by American new wave band Blondie when they first reunited in 1997. This, and "Studio 54" (a homage to the New York City nightclub of the same name) were both written by Duran Duran. Both songs were the first new material the band released in fifteen years, but none of them were included in the 1998 album "No Exit".

Critical reception
Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
Metacritic52/100[5]
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic[6]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music[7]
Entertainment WeeklyC[8]
HOB.com[9]
MTV.com[10]
Q[5]
Rolling Stone[11]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[12]
Salon[5]
Wall of Sound72/100[13]

Critics were generally unexcited by the album, as Metacritic gave it a 52 out of 100.[5] Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone[11] said:

The well-named Pop Trash shows off their jaded hooks and nasty wit; it's for fans only, but those of us who still crumple at the opening hiccups of "Hungry Like the Wolf" will be glad for another fix.

Stacia Proefrock of AllMusic[6] said:

Some of the smooth, spacy ballads that were characteristic of their 1993 self-titled release show up here, but more often than not Le Bon is lost in a swamp of overproduction. Completely absent from this music was the aggressiveness and sexuality that made early Duran Duran great – kinder, gentler records could probably be expected from the band as they age, but this album feels careless and flabby instead of introspective.

Chris Willman of Entertainment Weekly[8] said:

Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say they didn't model Pop Trash after U2's Pop, but darn if Duran Duran aren't after a very similar juxtaposition of groove-based kitsch and super-sincerity. Not surprisingly, there are ephemeral confectionary delights [...] and a general witlessness, never more than when Simon LeBon keeps crooning "We'll all be famous for 15 minutes" as if he just thought of the idea.

A reviewer for Salon.com called Pop Trash "A mediocre Britpop album."[14] while Q defended the album and said that "Pop Trash proves to be far from embarrassing."[15] Another Negative review came from MTV.com who said that "Most of the album is, in fact, Pop Trash"[10]

Ultimately, the album would become the band's lowest-selling album, and their last until 2004's Astronaut.

Singles

The lead single "Someone Else Not Me" peaked only at #53 in the UK, and didn't chart at all in United States. However it made the top 10 in Latvia. Le Bon also recorded versions of this song in Spanish ("Alguien Que No Soy Yo") and French ("Un Autre Que Moi"). The music video for the single was the first to be created entirely in Macromedia Flash digital animation.

The song "Playing With Uranium" was supposed to be released as a single in Italy only, but was available only as a radio promo.

The song "Last Day On Earth" was released in Japan; it was also played during the opening of the Universal Studios Japan theme park in Osaka.

Track listing

All songs written by Duran Duran.

  1. "Someone Else Not Me" – 4:48
  2. "Lava Lamp" – 3:54
  3. "Playing with Uranium" – 3:51
  4. "Hallucinating Elvis" – 5:26
  5. "Starting to Remember" – 2:38
  6. "Pop Trash Movie" – 4:54
  7. "Fragment" – 0:49
  8. "Mars Meets Venus" – 3:07
  9. "Lady Xanax" – 4:53
  10. "The Sun Doesn't Shine Forever" – 4:51
  11. "Kiss Goodbye" – 0:41
  12. "Last Day on Earth" – 4:27

Bonus tracks on various international releases:

  1. "Un Autre Que Moi" (French version of "Someone Else Not Me") – 4:19
  2. "Alguien Que No Soy Yo" (Spanish version of "Someone Else Not Me") – 4:16
  3. "Prototypes" – 6:17

Personnel

Duran Duran

Additional musicians

Artwork and Photography

  • Andrew Day

Charts
Chart (2000) Peak
position
German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)[16] 80
Scottish Albums (OCC)[17] 88
UK Albums (OCC)[18] 53
UK Independent Albums (OCC)[19] 9
US Billboard 200[20] 135
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References
  1. Caulfield, Keith (2 May 2008). "Ask Billboard". Billboard. Retrieved 5 March 2012.
  2. "Pop Trash and Medazzaland on iTunes!". Duran Duran Official Website. July 2008.
  3. Grigoriadis, Vanessa. "Still Pretty", Rolling Stone. 21 April 2005.
  4. "Ask Katy". Duranduran.com. 13 May 2009.
  5. Metacritic score
  6. Pop Trash at AllMusic
  7. Larkin, Colin (2011). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (5th concise ed.). Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-85712-595-8.
  8. Willman, Chris (16 June 2000). "Pop Trash". Entertainment Weekly.
  9. http://www.houseofblues.com/cdreviews/july2000/000728duranduran/%5B%5D
  10. http://www.mtv.com/mtv/music/reviews/archive/blather/duran_duran_00.html
  11. Rolling Stone reviews on Pop Trash and Motley Crue's New Tattoo
  12. Sheffield, Rob (2004). "Duran Duran". The Rolling Stone Album Guide (4th ed.). Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-0169-8.
  13. http://wallofsound.go.com/reviews/stories/duranduran_poptrashIndex.html
  14. http://www.metacritic.com/music/pop-trash/duran-duran/critic-reviews
  15. http://www.metacritic.com/music/pop-trash/duran-duran/critic-reviews. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  16. "Offiziellecharts.de – Duran Duran – Pop Trash" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
  17. "Official Scottish Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
  18. "Official Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
  19. "Official Independent Albums Chart Top 50". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
  20. "Duran Duran Chart History (Billboard 200)". Billboard. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
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