Don’t Let the Door Hit you in the ass on the way out, Duffy!

“Kiss Me” by Stephen Duffy (a.k.a Tintin) from the album The Ups and Downs
First week of February, 1983

What do you do when you’re a founding member of Duran Duran and aren’t named Simon LeBon or have the last name “Taylor”? Easy. You drop out of the band right before their popularity explodes and they get more money, fame and women than the five of you could have possibly imagined when you were sitting around the table at that shitty London pub and speculating over a room temperature lager what life would be like after you all hit it big. After that, you record a mildly popular, but niche synth-pop hit and then fade into obscurity.

Stephen Duffy could have enjoyed the raging success of Duran Duran, but he had slight creative differences, so he left and made the music that he wanted to, and I can respect that. This song is good, not great, but it’s worth a listen if only for the over the top chorus that powers the song. Just like everything in the 1980s, it’s totally overdone. It’s fucking nice.

My memories of this song are limited, so I’ll just wax poetic a little about what it was like being a ‘DRE listener in a ‘PLJ world. I had to hunch over the one crappy little radio in my house that could actually get ‘DRE (I grew up in Rockland County which, though not far from Long Island, might as well have been in Alaska with respect to receiving radio signals from the Island) with my ear to the small speaker, so I could get my Joy Division/U2 fix. I was wildly out of place among most of the people that went to my elementary school and junior high (I seem to remember the Jets “Crush on You” being huge in like 5th or 6th grade), until the Joshua Tree brought U2 back into the mainstream and I had to keep explaining to everyone that War and Boy were just as good, if not superior.

Best part: The totally ridiculous opening line of the chorus, “Kiss me with your mouth” (0:46)

-G.W.