* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: "Save a Prayer" - "You saw me standing by the old corner of main street, and the lights are flashing on your windowsill. All alone ain't much fun so you're looking for the thrill." Anyone else think the song is from the perspective of a hooker?
* AudienceAlienatingEra: ''Notorious'' was when many fans thought they'd overstayed their welcome. Others believe that the album that preceded it, ''Seven and the Ragged Tiger'', was the start of their downfall, due to it being produced by the divisive Nile Rodgers.
* SugarWiki/AwesomeArt: Patrick Nagel's iconic painting on the cover of ''Rio.'' It's a gorgeous album cover with sleek graphics.
* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Lots, but ''Rio'' and their SelfTitledAlbum stand out, with their catchy riffs, smooth vocals and snazzy guitar work.
* EvenBetterSequel: While their debut album is well-regarded, their second album ''Rio'' is their most popular and well-known album.
* FanNickname: The Fab Five.
* FanonDiscontinuity: Many fans ignore the 90's-and-onwards stuff entirely.
* {{Narm}}: "Ordinary World" is a beautiful, introspective ballad, and arguably one of the best songs of their career. The issue is not the song itself, but the music video -- it depicts the band singing the song to a woman wearing the most ''ridiculous'' bridal ensemble in the free world. One of the guitarists even plays with it at one point.
* NarmCharm: Revolutionary for their time though they might have been, their music videos are full of cheesy acting and convoluted plots, but that's exactly why people still love and remember them.
* OvershadowedByControversy: The controversial "Girls on Film" caused quite a stir and Simon Le Bon would later complain that its notoriety had overshadowed the message in his lyrics- the song is [[LyricalDissonance actually a rather scathing deconstruction of the objectification of women in media]]- one possible interpretation of the lyrics is that it's about the death of a starlet at the hands of a StalkerWithACrush and a camera.
* RefrainFromAssuming: No its not "Dance into the Fire", its "A View to a Kill", just like [[Film/AViewToAKill the Bond movie it's attached to]].
* SeasonalRot: Since their mid-eighties hiatus they've demonstrated an uncanny ability to follow up their most successful albums with a string of disappointing ones.
** The first post-hiatus release, ''Notorious'', did fairly well, but ''Big Thing'' and ''Liberty'' were mediocre at best.
** The next release, ''The Wedding Album'', was a big hit, but ''Thank You'', ''Medazzaland'' and ''Pop Trash'' ranged from SoOkayItsAverage to just plain awful.
** When the original five members got back together for the first time in twenty years they had another success with ''Astronaut'', but they followed it up with the less successful ''Red Carpet Massacre''.
* SongAssociation: "Wild Boys" is well-known as walk-in music for Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic. He used it for most of the fights in his career, so it's not difficult to find comments under [=YouTube=] videos with this song remembering this fact.
* SpiritualSuccessor: Many analysts likened the band to the '80s equivalent of Music/RoxyMusic, especially as they were after the departure of Music/BrianEno, thanks to both groups' suave images and knack for sexually charged songs. This is fitting, as one of Duran Duran's influences, Music/{{Japan}}, were previously compared to Eno-era Roxy Music.
* TearJerker: "Save a Prayer" and "Out of My Mind" are heart-wrenching songs about bad relationships. "Ordinary World" is about loss in general, while "Come Undone" is a heart-breaking song about a marriage turned sour. "Someone Else Not Me" cuts too, [[IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy as it's about accepting that someone you romantically love is choosing someone else, and that it's okay to wish for their happiness while still being broken about it.]]
* VindicatedByHistory: "Serious" was their lowest charting single up to that point, performing so poorly that a proposed third single was shelved the day before shooting began for the video. Today most fans consider it an ignored classic and one of the main reasons ''Liberty'' manages to avoid FanonDiscontinuity.
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids: In the early 1980s, millions of preteen and teenage girls were greatly moved as they sat by their record players and listened to the band's hit single "Save a Prayer", and when they saw Duran Duran perform said song live they flicked their Bic lighters on and swayed to and fro. All of this raw emotion was for a song singing the joys of one-night stands. It doesn't help that the song sounds like a beautiful melancholy "break up song"-type ballad (even if it does mention "a one-night stand") and the band's lyrics tend to be varying degrees of "word salady". It sounds like a beautiful, loving, romantic, sensitive ode to a one-night stand... or something.
----