DURAN DURAN – “The Reflex”
At school we had a music teacher, and like most music teachers he decided that the way to reach the kids was to indulge their love of pop. So one day he asked us to name a current song we loved, to talk about in a future lesson. Fully three-quarters of the class gave the same answer: “The Reflex”, please.
The idea was quietly dropped. Looking back I feel for him: getting any kind of teachable grip on “The Reflex” would be a big ask. It’s not really a song, just a collection of clattery effects, thumping along on – to swipe a phrase – the ‘audacity of huge’. The words, for instance, don’t just (famously) fail to make sense – they deny it. Le Bon sings about dancing on the Valentine and treasure in the dark and what he’s giving off isn’t even conviction, it’s a kind of invulnerability.
(Individual lines in the song are terrific, though – “I sold the Renoir and the TV set, don’t wanna BE AROUND when this gets out!”)
In a way the gleaming patchwork abstraction of “The Reflex” is as perfect a product of its individual moment as “Mouldy Old Dough” or “Telstar”. Problem is, you could say the same about so many mid-80s records – “Too Shy”, the first Frankie hits, even Duran’s last single. There’s only so often you can revel in the neon glory of unmeaning before you start to need a different angle.
Luckily it takes more than lyrics or structure to make a song – that massive schoolboy “Reflex”-love wasn’t built on an appreciation of Duran’s PoMo credentials or a sense that they were really saying something. It was more a way for boys with a suspicion – or total ignorance – of club music to say they recognised a banger when they heard it. Even if they were never especially cool, the band had genuine roots in nightclubbing, and “The Reflex” is an stab at fusing that and their new status as global pop stars, creating something massive enough for world-tour arenas to dance to.
So the most memorable instrumental touches in the track are percussive – those steel drums and woodblocks – and the vocal hooks that stand out aren’t by Le Bon but the backing vocalists: the off-kilter opening “Na-na-na-na”, the jagged “Flex-flex-flex-flex!”, the Merseybeat-style “Wheye-eye-eye-eye-eye”. A melting pot of everything that might work in a small club, splattered across an arena. It’s hubristic, it’s messy, it’s emptyheaded – but when I was 11 I answered “The Reflex” in that music lesson like everyone else, and I was just about right.
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Tom in FT / Popular • Pop • 1,668 views • Share/Save
Stuff that turned pretty boys into millionaires. Jealous? Not necessarily – just mighty frustrated. I didn’t get it then and, even with the benefit of 25 yrs of venom dilution and laughter lines, I still don’t. It brought nothing to the music table except e.coli.
Perpetuating a drug habit on the back of 12 year olds’ pocket money is hardly a new phenomenon. Wound me up a little to see the Duran bleach boys win the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ at the Brit Awards – whilst the likes of Ray Davies go without the briefest mention in despatches.
If Le Bon and his mates brand of pop music is escapism, then lock me up in Alcatraz with a rabid panther.
I have never heard it and can take or leave Duran Duran generally but this blurb makes me want to listen to the song!
Their first number one was Planet Earth and it was Australia….the Reflex was mixed by Nile Rodgers, so hence the disco sound. Not my favourite DD song by a long shot….but I will now dutifullly give it a re-listen.
pretty sure you’d hate it Lex (for the same reasons as ‘Relax’, minus the gay)
>>And the bit in the vid when the wave crashes through the video screen, drowning the front two rows of Duranies.
I thought that part was the biggest disappointment/laugh in the whole thing…a huge wave rises up and goes crashing down – cut to some fans having a bucket of water tossed at them from off-frame.
This song also reminds me of a friend who worked in a record shop at the time and loved importing DD merchandise from Japan. When he showed me the Duran Duran AA batteries, I figured the end couldn’t be too far away…
Always my fave Duran hit (until very late in the day) because it had – yes! – a sense of humour, far away from their usual D&D mewlings. “Why don’t you use it? Try not to bruise it” That’s cheeky. And funny. The production, as mentioned already, is fabulously random, but still sounds twinkle-toed by DD standards.
That “why-yi-yi… BO!” is a belly laugh – are they referencing The Face Of Bo, maybe?
And what, I wonder, did Norwich City player Robert Fleck Fleck Fleck make of it all?
Ahhh, what a blast. Best thing of all about The Reflex is that it has none of the mutton-handed rhythmic problems that wrecked Is There Something I Should Know (as well as anything beyond the first two singles). But with the stuck pig vocal and creaking leather minimalism of Wild Boys later that year, they fucked up afresh. So club footed. Duran Duran are ergonomically unsound; The Reflex is the exception that proves the rule.
Re 26: Ray Davies hates the industry, and they hate him back. I’d like to think he doesn’t lose much sleep over the Brits and wouldn’t show even if they did give him an award.
Their first #1 in the U.S. (for 2 weeks). Not my favorite at the time, but it’s aged better than “Wild Boys” or “Union of the Snake”.
I never noticed “I sold the Renoir and the TV set” before (I usually find it fatal to the song to listen to Le Bon’s lyrics) but it’s a great line, isn’t it? Sounds like a Ray Davies and Bowie cutup.
Like ‘Is There Something etc.’ this is a bloody mess, lots of parts stapled together, but I loved it. The other one seemed like it was trying to be a big statement record (more about the band themselves than anything) while this is just big and barmy and highly enjoyable as a result. When this came on pub jukeboxes my mate Andy and I would stop what were doing and mime playing the drums during the skittering drum break. We were usually drunk.
This is and was atrocious. There was some speculation at the time that the alleged ’song’ was about playing video-games, but its main social function seemed to be to show *just* how misplaced all quibbling about ‘Let’s Dance’ (e.g., as somewhat lumbering) the previous year had been, and how utterly great Thriller *still* sounded (first copies were wearing out by this point…).
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Yep an appalling mess of a song from the Duranies who up to this point and maybe even beyond could do no wrong. The stuttering vocal samples, nasaly why aye y ayes & bollocks lyrics kill it stone dead for me.
Re #28, “Their first number one was Planet Earth and it was Australia” – I can’t see it here, or remember it being number one nationally – Wikipedia puts it at #8 in Australia, which sounds right. Their first top ten hit anywhere, but not their first number one.
This was one of my favourite records of 1984 – one other being “Relax”, and another one is coming up in a short while. The Renoir/TV set bit is the best line by quite some way. Ten year old me also liked the “BLEURGH!!!” sound, which might very well have been Nick Rhodes burping into the microphone of his Fairlight.
“i sold the renoir…” another vote for who knew?yowsa! but it shows how far they’d come – there’s a smash hits interview from not *that* long before this where simon declares that what he wants to do with his money is buy lots of thornton’s continental! obv i loved the reflex at the time but i’m not too keen anymore. next to frankie sounding effortless massive, this all seems a bit lumbering and blustery. lyrics that get their defence in first by drawing attention to their own meaninglessness are also a bit of a pet hate, though the one that really gets my goat is macca’s “..puppydog tales in the house of lords – tell me darling, what does this mean?”.
#37 They claimed the belch was Andy Taylor saying “Yeah!” Although that may have come from the Smash Hits lyric sheet, who knows?
Obviously this was a remix of the Seven and the Ragged Tiger version – my first experience of a remix of a familiar track. Couple that with a poster sleeve, and I simply had to waste my money on it.
And all my classmates thought I was dead cool for doing so.
In “The Young Ones” book, Rik’s favourite party trick apparently is to go “Look everybody, I’m a Duran Duran record”, and sit on the turntable, spin around and sing The Reflex very loud. Could anything be more 80s?!
I like the idea that the “why-aye-aye” bit is the Geordie remix!
Self-consciously meaningless lyrics – inside my head I’m getting Weird Al Yankovic’s “Smells Like Nirvana”: “What is this song all about? / Can’t figure any lyrics out … We’re so loud and incoherent / Boy this oughta bug your parents…”
With “sold the Renoir” they were clearly channelling the future as delivered by Microsoft Word. To testify from my travel writing days, the spellchecker renders “Pack the rainwear” as “pack the Renoir”!
Perhaps Macca is similarly gifted – dog tails in the House of Lords (and Commons) became a big issue in 2006 during the passing of the Animal Welfare Bill, when there was an amendment to exempt working dogs from the ban on tail-docking; the example most commonly used being the sniffer dogs who check both Parliamentary chambers for explosives every day, and which were allegedly in danger of serious damage to their (vigorously wagging) tails as they crawled under the red and green benches to perform their task..
I find it very hard to differentiate between Duran Duran records; all sounded dreadful to me!
Once again a very disappointing Number 1 (although a slight improvement on Is There Something I Should Know)IMO just about the whole of the first 2 albums (and all the Night Mixes/other non-album mixes from 81-82)being better than this or 99% of the stuff that followed.
FRom making classic Japan-influenced New Romantic dance pop to mullet headed going-for-the-rock-market within 12 months. This being at least a final vague stab at something more “modern”.
Good one! :)
Like Matthew H @ #39, I heard this first in the original version. My sister was a massive DD fan, so she bought the Seven and the Ragged Tiger LP almost as soon as it came out. It was about the only track on the album I could stomach.
The remix is stupid and fun and I like to think people bought it because of that and not because they were actually wowed by all the stutter FX. I mean, I was pretty fond of 80s 12″ remixes at the time an’ all, but really…
#42 Andy I’d agree with that.I didn’t like “Is There Something I Should Know” either so for me their two chart-toppers misrepresent them.
At the time I was really surprised this did so well as the previous single “New Moon On Monday” (Bowie on Mogadon)was a relative flop stiffing at no. 9. I thought releasing a third single from the album was asking for trouble. In that respect this showed there was a considerable resilience to the band and their following which has served them well over the decades.
#41 – yes, this is true. it is after all a fact that, when properly decoded, a good two thirds of nostradamus’ writings concern this issue.
I’ve just listened to this. I am lost for words by how truly awful it is – even worse than I had remembered.
There’s only so often you can revel in the neon glory of unmeaning before you start to need a different angle.
Speak for yourself!
strained. sounds like everyone involved needs a dose of laxative. which makes the fact (re #17) that you can see the video on Daily Motion kind of ironic.
sorry.
Not as strained as Wild Boys on which a mercilessly upfront Le Bon vocal sounds rather like Bully from Bullseye attempting a falsetto: “iiiiiin one”.
Funny career trajectory, Duran.
Their peak in commercial terms, 1983-85, saw only 1 album (the duff Seven and the Ragged Tiger – even that title!), and a clutch of singles that generally disappointed. I think NME got it right when it reviewed “Notorious” and described it as their least strident, least paranoid single since “Rio”.
The bit between Rio and Notorious was a bit all over the place really.
This I quite like – it does have a few hooks but it’s not a patch on the 81-82 output, which I’m glad to see is getting more rerelease treatment soon.
“Like An Angel”, now there’s a song.
This is a dreadful song; its spending so long at number one (unlike many other more poptastic Duran Duran tunes) says much about the problems of the world.
#50 if only the windmill to which Le Bon has been strapped to in the video had been on the base of a dartboard in which the rest of the band were flinging darts, with Jim Bowen in place of the strange mechanical bald guy.
The opening track on disc one of Now That’s What I Call Music 3, which ran like this:
Duran Duran : “The Reflex”
Nik Kershaw : “I Won’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”
Sister Sledge : “Thinking of You”
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark : “Locomotion”
Ultravox : “Dancing with Tears in My Eyes”
Howard Jones : “Pearl in the Shell”
Blancmange : “Don’t Tell Me”
Phil Collins : “Against All Odds”
Frankie Goes to Hollywood : “Two Tribes”
Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel : “White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It)”
The Special A.K.A : “Nelson Mandela”
Womack & Womack : “Love Wars”
The Style Council : “You’re The Best Thing”
Bob Marley & The Wailers : “One Love”
Bronski Beat : “Smalltown Boy”
re54 That’s not a bad selection – despite Nik Ks droning dirge – which would probably make me all nostalgic for a few seconds if I heard it again.
Sister Sledge: ‘Thinking of you’ is my all time desert island disc for it’s sheer syncopated joyfullness.
I saw Womack & Womack at the Brighton Dome in 1984 and got to bellow ‘Love Wars’ into one of their microphones at the front of the stage – and I remember listening to Two Tribes on the way to the gig.
‘One Love’ a hit because of the release of ‘Legend’ that year I presume.
Pretty sure the cassette versh of that Now was the tape I listened to Two Tribes on in the story I tell in the FGTH entry. “White Lines” was the first hip-hop record I really liked too. I would love to say that it sparked an immediate interest in rap but it didn’t really, don’t think I owned a hip-hop record until ’88.
is it my lolcatz-damaged ears or is lebon singing “teh reflex”?
Like this song, but then I’m a Duran fan. I think this might be the official point they became a ’singles’ band. Their first two albums were solid enough, but ‘Seven and the Ragged Tiger’ was weak, and the fact that this outshone it speaks volumes. They had two more big singles (‘Wild Boys’ and ‘View to a Kill’), but the duff live album ‘Arena’ just continued the downward trend. Then they did a bunch of side projects which, again, generated a couple of good singles but weak albums – and their time was up. First half of their career – album band, second half – singles band. At the point that ‘The Reflex’ topped the charts there was still time to save their careers, everything hung on their next album, but all people got was a live album and some rubbish sideshow albums, by the time ‘Notorious’ hit the shelves Duran were done. The Notorious album didn’t even bother the top 10.