Pop Trash

	Pop Trash
album by Duran Duran
Released	19 June 2000
Recorded	1998-2000
Genre	New wave, synthpop, hard rock, heavy metal
Length	59:10 minutes
Label	Hollywood Records
Writer(s)	Duran Duran
Producer(s)	SYN Productions; TV Mania
Duran Duran

Pop Trash is the tenth studio album by Duran Duran, released by Hollywood Records on 19 June 2000.

About the album[]

The album marked Duran Duran's first release not under Capitol/EMI, with whom they'd been signed since 1981. It was also the last to feature the trio of Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes and Warren Cuccurullo.

The band left Capitol 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. Keyboard player Rhodes and guitarist Cuccurullo took on more of the songwriting than usual, reworking some of their TV Mania side project material into some of the songs on the album.

Pop Trash continues where Medazzaland (1997) left off; pop, funk, 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.' " ^[1]

At the conclusion of the supporting tour for this album, Cuccurullo was dismissed, and the band reunited with its original five members.

The album artwork features a rhinestone-encrusted car which belonged to Liberace.

Unused Songs[]

Dr. Vibes - This may have been a working title for another song. Mentioned by Nick in September, 1998. (source). Nevertheless, in 2003 Nick said that it was being recorded during Medazzaland sessions. During that session, it was an instrumental composition (source).

Critical reception[]

Critics were generally unexcited by the album. Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone^[2] 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 All Music Guide^[3] 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.