Maybe it helped that people never took the song that seriously: The New Wave bands of the time were so busy being mocked for their big hairdos and wimpy demeanors that the idea that any of them could be sexual predators never crossed people’s minds. (Listeners have spent decades figuring out how you straddle the line in discord and rhyme.) But while “Hungry Like the Wolf” had a carnal vibe, the singer’s desire didn’t seem especially aggressive or dangerous. Le Bon kept the images evocative but also a bit oblique. And that was certainly the case with “Hungry Like the Wolf.” Here’s how he sets the scene:Īnd catch my breathing even closer behindįrom there, the song leads into its big chorus: “As each band member arrived through the day, the song was built and by the evening it was pretty much complete.” But it was also prompted by Rhodes and Le Bon feeling hungover after a night of partying - their guilt at overindulging inspired them to go into the studio and do some work:įor as long as Duran Duran have been around, Le Bon has been teased about the fact that his lyrics don’t make much sense. “I started it in the morning with a sequencer,” Rhodes later said. “Hungry Like the Wolf” was one of the tracks they wrote for the record, and it came about quickly. It wasn’t until the following year’s Rio that things started turning around for them here. thanks to hits like “Girls on Film” and “Planet Earth,” while America remained indifferent to them. Their 1981 self-titled debut did well in the U.K. That was me, that wasn’t me pretending to be David Bowie.” When ‘Planet Earth’ was finished and my voice was in the mix, I could hear the power and the emotion in it. As soon as we started writing our own songs, the songs gave me the voice. I imitated Bowie, Peter Gabriel and I wanted to sound a bit like Patti Smith as well. “I was trying to imitate David Bowie, I just did a very bad job of it,” the singer said recently. They were as concerned with image as they were with music, and in the early days, Le Bon tried to latch onto his own sonic identity. The band came together in the late 1970s, eventually settling on a lineup of Le Bon, keyboardist Nick Rhodes, bassist John Taylor, drummer Roger Taylor and guitarist Andy Taylor - with none of the Taylors related to each other. Why are you making it weird by reading too much into it? It’s about a guy who really wants to get with a gal.
“Hungry Like the Wolf” was too cheery to be gross, too fun to be ugly. It’s a come-on whose sleek keyboards and big guitar riff came to symbolize the giddy, empty thrills of 1980s pop. A song about desire, the Rio cut made the art of seduction seem like one big glossy dance party. “Hungry Like the Wolf” wasn’t Duran Duran’s first single, but it was their first big smash in the States, making them huge on radio and (especially) MTV. Does it help that the song is so vague - and undeniably catchy - that it mostly just feels harmless? Almost certainly. Is it mostly just another variation on the perennial “Girl, I’m really into you” tune? Oh, probably. Is it a song about treating your mate like prey? Possibly. For all the years that “Hungry Like the Wolf” has been in the world, listeners generally haven’t wrestled with what Simon Le Bon has been singing about. It’s important to suss out the iffy connotations of certain songs - how their declarations of true love are actually tangled up in gross macho attitudes or potentially stalkerish behavior - while also acknowledging that, sometimes, the lyrical content is so dopey that it’s more innocuous than actively troublesome. They think the song is stupid and sexist, and they do nothing to hide that fact. They play “Hungry Like the Wolf” in a jokey, snotty way. The cover is less a tribute than a driveby dunking that seeks to call out what they perceive as the song’s gross sexual/primal metaphor - carnal desire boiled down to its animalistic, predatory urges.
And when I catch her - being the predator, the hunter - I’m gonna kill her,” he says with sarcasm in his voice. Their version kicks off with frontman Aaron Barrett “explaining” the song’s lyrics.
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