Happy Anniversary: Duran Duran, “Hungry Like the Wolf”

34 years ago today, Duran Duran released a single in the UK which proved to be a career game-changer for the band on both sides of the Atlantic and remains one of their signature songs.

When Duran Duran first came on the scene in their native England, they earned no small amount of attention straight out of the gate, with their debut single, “Planet Earth,” hitting #12 on the UK charts in 1981. Before the year was out, they had released three additional singles and, in turn, had three additional UK hits – “Careless Memories” (#37), “Girls on Film” (#5), and “My Own Way” (#14) – but in America, they still hadn’t made any headway on the Hot 100.

That all changed with “Hungry Like the Wolf,” which tied the performance of “Girls on Film” in the UK by also hitting #5, but in America it was the breakthrough that Duran Duran had been looking for. You can credit a good chunk of that to the video for the song, which was positively inescapable on MTV for a ridiculous length of time (thank you, Russell Mulcahy), but the song also became ubiquitous on top-40 radio, making it all the way to #3 on the US singles chart. It also hit #36 on the US Dance chart and #1 on the US rock chart, thereby proving that pretty much everybody liked Duran Duran. The rock reception shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who listens back to the track now, however, as it’s got some pretty fierce guitar in the mix.

When one mentions Duran Duran in discussion, “Hungry Like the Wolf” is still one of the first songs – maybe the first song – that’s brought up as an all-time favorite track, but there’s a very simple explanation for that: it’s awesome.