You, a 15 -year -old Paninara girl in 1985, with the heart in turmoil and the walls of the room covered with posters, Miguel Bosè, Madonna and of course Simon Le Bon, now you have 55 years old and you still feel fit. Simon Le Bon, Idolo, prohibited dream, a prophet of a glossy era, will soon appear on your smart TV. You are there waiting for the performance of Duran Duran, guests of Sanremo 2025. And in the meantime, while an old book “I will marry Simon Le Bon” comes to mind, you laugh bitterly because you have not married him at all.

Who were the Duran Duran?

The electrical air of forty years ago comes to mind. Radio Deejay, the boxes that unrolled like snakes on the floor and video clips that exploded on MTV as visions of a reality that you had never seen. Duran Duran were your passport for that world. Glamor, excess, rebellion packaged in silk jackets and synths but also pop played with real tools, a reproduction revolution that made you feel part of something great. And then today, forty years later, you find yourself sitting in front of your daughter or your nephew, has the headphones stuck, a blue strand in the hair and a bored expression. “Who were the Duran Duran?” He asks you, in that tone that exudes a vague sense of superiority, as if the past was just an old post on Instagram that is not worth scrolling.

From Birmingham to the top of the world

You sigh while she quickly reads this article on Today and discovers Birmingham in 1978, where a handful of boys obsessed with Roxy Music and David Bowie want to change the rules of pop and an inventing a suond that merges captivating melodies with innovative electronic arrangements, characterized from a prominent use of synthesizers and lines of low rhythmic. The name take it from Dr. Durand Durand, the crazy scientist of the science fiction film Barbarella. The Duran Duran were not only at the top of the second British Invasion of the 80s, they were a cultural phenomenon, a synthetic wave that overwhelmed the decade with glamor and decadence and somehow made the superficiality almost sublime. More than 100 million records soldan arsenal of hit that has set fire and hearts on fire. From Duran Duran (1981) a Future Past (2021), have ridden four decades between ups and downs but without ever really disappearing, always between style and excess, icons of an era that does not stop returning.

The Alfieri of New Romantic

You look at it and you would like to tell her crazy years of MTV, those of the limousine and models, yachts and parties in which reality was confused with the “Rio” video clip. You tell her that they were the future when the future seemed bright. Who were larger than the sum of their parts: John Taylor, the bassist beautiful to hurt, Nick Rhodes, the dandy with his fingers on the keys, Roger Taylor, the shadow man behind the drums, Andy Taylor, the guitarist with the determination Rock, and then him, Simon, the poet of pop, the voice that transformed the words into visions. You tell her that the new romantic was not just music, it was an aesthetic, an existential manifesto, a way of being in the world screaming: “Look at me, I’m beautiful and I don’t be ashamed of it”. And next to them, in that pop movement, there were the Spandau Ballets with their melodic pop, the visags with dark atmospheres, the ultravox and their experimental synth, the japans with their androgynous elegance.

But she raises her eyebrows, look at the phone screen. “Ok, but the music?” Music. “Girls on Film”, the piece that made everything explode, with a video censored for its erotic charge. “Hungry like the wolf”, the wild race among the jungles of the synth-pop. “Save a Prayer”, the broken heart ballad that made stolen kisses under the lights of the disco. “The Reflex”, with its strange groove and the refrain that looked like a password to access a parallel dimension. “Wild Boys”, a post-apocalyptic nightmare with a video that looked like a MAD Max movie shot under acid. Each song was a journey, a small film condensed in four minutes of saturated images and buttons, in which every detail was treated as a work of art. Duran Duran’s videos were not only promotional accessories, they were visual experiences, mini-films that told stories of adventure, exaggerated luxury, of brazen aesthetic and escape from normality. She shakes her shoulders. “Everything seems so exaggerated.” Exaggerated. The right word. You say that it was the 80s like this, a gigantic Technicolor video game, a daydream in which the appearance counted as much as the substance, and Duran Duran were the perfect heroes for that time.

Sanremo 40 years later

But even beyond, because while others collapsed under the weight of the padded straps and out of fashion synthesizers, they continued to reinvent themselves. They flirted with funk, with electronics, with rock. They dissolved and then recomposed, always finding a way to remain relevant. And then, Sanremo 1985. You were there. Your parents had brought you in front of the Ariston, and you were there, among the crowd in delirium, to shout the name of Simon Le Bon as if it were a god who went down to the ground. 18 million spectators glued to TV. Simon with the footaged foot, the microphone that falls and the sly smile that reveals the playback.

An epochal moment, a wave of collective madness that consecrated the Duran Duran to absolute idols in Italy. They returned in 2008 to remember that magical night, and today, in 2025, here they are again on that stage. Who would have said it? Another circle that closes, another dip in the past that mixes with the present. The girl listens, then resumes the phone, types something about Spotify. The first notes of “Ordinary World” start. “While I try to make my way/in the ordinary world/I will learn to survive”. Looks at you. “Ok, I like this.”