Music has always been about relating to a listener on a visceral level. As much as people just listen for the catchy tune, having the right song means a bunch of memories flooding back to you in the right context, either remembering your days of growing up or meeting your first love somewhere between those few notes. Dave Grohl always had an eclectic taste in music, but when it came time to pour out his heart, one of his saviours in his time of need was Duran Duran.
Granted, it’s not like Duran Duran was considered one of the worst bands ever or anything. If anything, a lot of their greatest moments in the 1980s have actually held up as immortal pieces of pop music, albeit with maybe a touch of dated production every now and again.
That wasn’t what Grohl was going for when he had his heart crushed for the first time. By then, Duran Duran had become yesterday’s news, and their reinvention with their self-titled “Wedding” album gave them a career resurrection with ‘Ordinary World’. Whereas most people saw this as Duran Duran maturing, it wasn’t hard to see them trading in one form of cheesy for another.
Since they had gone from boys to men within the span of their career, half of their monster ballad sounds like it’s something that could be playing out of a Lifetime movie. In this case, that’s actually not a bad thing, with Simon Le Bon’s voice actually mixing well with the soft guitar line and the kitschy set of strings.
As Grohl began separating from his ex-wife, he ended up hearing the track at just the wrong time, saying, “Every time I think of my ex-wife, I think of that song. It was because of our honeymoon, and we were going around Ireland, and that song was playing, and it was beautiful… and now when I hear it, it makes me want to fucking puke! I wish I was cool and could say I fell in love to Goldie’s last single or I broke my heart to James Brown, but it’s true, I’m a sucker for crap, I really am!”.
Though this easily crosses over into the realm of pop-flavoured junk food, that kind of heartache actually ended up being a sort of fuel for Grohl later in his career. During that separation, Grohl managed to channel his grief into his own masterpieces, coming up with tracks like ‘Monkey Wrench’ and ‘Everlong’ when combing through his own back pages.
This was a far cry from the pristine production that Duran Duran had, but Grohl’s attention to detail felt a lot closer to the bone as if he was telling you about the darkest corners of his mind as he was singing. If we look at the timing of everything, ‘Ordinary World’ might be responsible for why ‘Everlong’ exists in the first place. The Foo Fighters ballad is already about being able to relate to someone when they sing along with you, so is that song ‘Ordinary World’?
