I have a confession to make. It's likely to get me into trouble in some circles (when am I not in trouble with someone out there??), but I'm going to share anyway.
I haven't listened to Paper Gods since the beginning of November.
In my defense, I have a seven-year old. I know that doesn't sound like much of an opening line – but wait! When the album first came out, I listened to it day and night. Any time I was in the car it would be on, and when I was at home and could put in ear buds without fearing that the house would go up in smoke without my noticing, I'd be listening. I wrote blog after blog about the album. I wrote, changed my mind, and wrote again. And then my youngest started listening. She plays Minecraft in her spare time, and when she's playing she listens to music. Admittedly I didn't know this for a while (which is another blog for another day), but she found the album on YouTube and started playing it while she'd "craft". You can't obviously see my dining room table right now, but I'm on one side of it and she sits at the very end of it, close enough so that I'm able to see what's going on should I feel the need to intervene, or just remind her that "real life" is still going on around her. One day I was writing or working on something and all of a sudden I recognize that she's humming and partially singing…and it is a song I know. I stop and listen – she's singing Last Night in the City (as apparently one does while they're playing Minecraft). My eyes got wider and wider as I listened. Not only does she know the words, she knows Kiesza's part and isn't afraid to belt it.
I should probably mention that my little one takes singing lessons, too. She's in something similar to Glee (Yeah, I do question my own judgment sometimes…) so I get the joy of hearing them sing songs like "What Does the Fox Say" in their "Glee" sort of way each week. Nope, not kidding. (Again, the whole judgment thing…) So, as I take her to and from school twice a week and then when we go to singing, she has taken to requesting music be played as though I'm not only her chauffeur, but also her personal DJ.
So where was I? Oh yes, Paper Gods. It quickly grew from requesting one song to asking for many songs off the album – and not necessarily in the order presented. All day, every day, she would ask for "Last Night in the City" and "Pressure Off" to be played. Sometimes she'd request "What are the Chances", and other times it would be "You Kill Me with Silence". She'd groan at "Danceophobia" (Yes! She IS my child), and after about the 1,000,000th time I had to play "Pressure Off" for her, I decided I was finished. I needed a break. I needed to hear other music, for crying out loud – no offense to Duran Duran, but I was sick of it (and it takes a lot of nerve for me to admit that, but really – I needed a change of pace!) So, I told her no. (A collective gasp heard 'round the world falls over the crowd…) There would be no more mom playing DJ in the car. We were going to listen to other things. Period. She protested. I stood firm. She is obviously the better fan (but I have better tickets to the shows, so there!). Only joking, people…and remember, she's seven.
This continued for about a month. Until Monday night when she caught me at a low point. It had been a rough weekend, I was tired, and I just wanted to get home. She came bouncing out of Glee class as I dragged my mostly dead body to the car. She jumped in, buckled up (she never does anything quickly so this was unusual), I fell into my seat, threw my bag beside me, buckled the safety belt and started the car, sighing deeply as I considered what I was going to rush home to make for dinner. Just as I'd settled on the fact that I didn't care, a small, ever-so-kind voice from the back of the car requested "Pressure Off".
My little one has grown up with Duran Duran being constant in her life, even more so than my older two because I didn't start blogging until just after the youngest was born. She thinks she knows them even though her MOM doesn't even know them. This is funny to me.
It had been quite a while since I'd heard the whole album and I was curious about how I'd feel after being away from it. Did I really love Paper Gods in the same way that I love Rio or the first album?? Paper Gods still presents a formidable challenge in that it really forces the listener to fully open up and push old perceptions of Duran Duran aside. It's not like anything else they've done, collectively speaking, yet it's still them. Does that make it well-loved, or does it make it an album that I will continue to appreciate and grow with over time, but maybe not one that I grab immediately when I think of Duran Duran?
I put the album aside again for a while, figuring that after the holidays, I'm going to sit down and give it a dedicated listen, hopefully without my little back-up singer so that I can concentrate. (I don't dare say that to her!) I'm curious to see how I feel about it after more time away, and I'm wondering if others have done similar – either with this album or others. Chime in if you care to share!
Duran Duran Streaming Paper Gods!
Countdown to Paper Gods – NINE!!!
No, it's not just you who gets like that sometimes with Duran Duran. No matter how much or how long you love something, and I've loved Duran for 33 years, there are times when your ears just need a change. The songs from the first album and Rio have been a daily thing in my life since I was 13, but once in a while, I'll have maybe just a day or a couple of days where I don't listen to either of those 2 albums or any Duran at all and you know what? When you come back to listening to them again after a little break, you are just amazed by how great they are, almost as if you're hearing the songs for the first time. When Paper Gods first came out, I listened to the whole album 4 times a day for the first two weeks, then up until the end of October, it was about twice a day, then I had a couple of weeks when I didn't listen to it at all. I think that with Duran albums, you really do need to listen to them as a whole to really appreciate them, and real life gets in the way and you don't always have 45 minutes in which to do nothing but listen. You've inspired me – I'm now off to listen to my vinyl copy of Paper Gods, headphones on, phone off the hook!