Duran Duran are an English New Wave band notable for a long series of catchy, synthesizer-driven hit singles and vivid music videos.
They were a leading band in the MTV-driven Second British Invasion of the United States, and the most commercially successful of the New Romantic bands. They are still often identified as an “Eighties band” despite continuous recording and chart success over their twenty-eight year history. The band has sold well over 70 million records worldwide, and has had eighteen singles in the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and thirty in the Top 40 of the UK Singles Chart.
The band’s title song “A View to a Kill” for the 1985 James Bond film of the same name remains the only Bond theme to go to Number 1 on the US charts, and it also remains the highest-placed Bond theme on the UK chart, reaching Number 2. The song was accompanied by a tongue-in-cheek “spy” video that had the band scampering all over the Eiffel Tower and it also included scenes from the film. The lead singer ended the video by smarmily introducing himself as “Bon. Simon Le Bon.”