40 years ago today, Duran Duran released Rio, an album that is as emblematic as any of the early &ls

40 years ago today, Duran Duran released Rio, an album that is as emblematic as any of the early ‘80s, with cover art even more so. The British yacht-rockers* brought the work of artist Patrick Nagel to international attention, but he wasn’t an unknown previous to Rio. His illustrations had been appearing in Playboy since 1975, and the “Nagel Woman” was to some extent the Vargas girl of her time. Thanks to Playboy and Duran Duran—and just based on its own eye-catching merit—Nagel’s art became ubiquitous bachelor-pad decor. (It was also massively counterfeited, with the artist receiving his financial due on only a fraction of the prints that bore his images and name.) Nagel died of a heart attack in 1984 after participating in a celebrity “aerobathon” to benefit the American Heart Association.
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Here’s the cover of Rio, a shot of the band using the artwork on stage, the sleeve for the UK release of “Hungry Like the Wolf,” an alternate Nagel cover that was included in a 2001 CD re-release of the album, a Vampirella parody by comics artist @cliffchiang and a shot from the Rio video, which was nearly as iconic in the early MTV era as the album cover.
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*wait, is “Rio” even yacht rock? The video has a yacht in it, but does the song itself fit the vague parameters of what we call yacht rock? It’s debatable (it has a bit more get-up-and-go than most yacht rock), but it’s often considered yacht rock and the video may be the main reason.
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#duranduran #rio #patricknagel #albumcover #nagelwoman #playboy #1982 #hungrylikethewolf @duranduran
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