Duran Duran release new album Future Past, 40 years after band’s debut

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British pop band Duran Duran have released their 15th studio album Future Past, 40 years after the group’s debut.

The album, which was released on streaming platforms at midnight on Friday (22 October), contains tracks featuring Tove Lo, and Mike Garson among others.

“We would never have expected to be still making music together after all this time. We were just kids and we came together in punk rock,” bandmember John Taylor told Reuters.

The song “Anniversary” from the new album celebrates the 40 years since the band – consisting of Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, John Taylor, and Roger Taylor – released their first album in 1981.

“‘Anniversary’ is a song that kind of celebrates the time that we’ve been together as a band, but it’s also open to everybody and anything anyone might want to celebrate,” Taylor said.

Looking back at their first album, Rhodes added: “We set our parameters very broadly from the very beginning. Our first album had dance songs on it... but it also had a six, seven-minute instrumental with an orchestra and some darker songs.”

“We always feel comfortable trying out different things in different genres musically.”

The group revealed that they started working on their new album in 2018, but the pandemic forced them to delay the project for 10 months.

“In some ways it was actually advantageous to have had a break because we’d never had that experience before, and we could look at it with fresh eyes and listen with fresh ears,” Rhodes said. “It’s got a whole new feel for us.”

In 2016, Duran Duran members lost a High Court battle over the US rights to some of their most famous songs.

Simon Le Bon and other members of the group had been arguing that US copyright laws gave them the right to call for a reversion of copyright after 35 years.

However, lawyers for Gloucester Place Music Ltd successfully argued that English laws of contract prevented them from doing so.