Duran Duran Talkin' 'Trash' About Blondie

04/05/2000 5:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(4/5/00, 5 p.m. ET) - Duran Duran has named its new album Pop Trash, after a song the group originally wrote for Blondie. The group, now in its third decade, features Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes from the original '80s lineup, plus Warren Cuccurullo.

Rhodes tells us they decided to put the track titled "Pop Trash Movie" on their new album because Le Bon really wanted to sing it himself, and Blondie was in the middle of a label crisis. "That particular song is the one on the album -- the odd one out -- in that Warren and I wrote it for Blondie a while ago when they were just thinking of getting back together, and they needed a little help at the time. And we did record it with them, but then it turned into record-company hell because the company they had -- EMI America -- closed down," he says.

With Blondie in search of a new label home, Rhodes and Le Bon say the track was shelved. In the end, the group decided essentially to cover the Blondie track that they wrote. "They were effectively without a label and the whole thing got very messy and it never got used. But Simon had heard the song and he really wanted to sing it, so he was thrilled actually and we ended up doing it as a Duran Duran thing," Rhodes says.

"But now I've got this real kind of anxiety thing going on which is, like, 'Oh no -- not another cover version.' At least it's our cover," Le Bon quips.

Other tracks on Pop Trash include "Someone Else Not Me," "Lava Lamp," "Playing With Uranium," "Hallucinating Elvis," Starting To Remember," "Fragment," "Mars Meets Venus," "Lady Xanax," "The Sun Doesn't Shine Forever," "Kiss Goodbye," and "Last Day On Earth."

Duran Duran has sold more than 60 million records after nearly 20 years in the music business, and the new album is due June 6. "Someone Else Not Me" will be the first single and is due for release on May 2.

-- BBC, London, with additional reporting by Jason Gelman, New York