John and I have one thing in our whole oeuvre we feel we really got wrong, and that’s the Liberty album.” Yes, 1995 covers LP Thank You may have been treated like a crime against not just music but humanity in general by much of the press, but in a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone, it was Duran Duran’s oft-forgotten sixth studio effort from 1990 that Nick Rhodes cited as the band’s ultimate misstep.
As the ever-present keyboardist infers, he’s not alone. John Taylor, in the midst of his drug addiction at the time, has freely admitted that his hash oil habit is the only thing he can remember about its recording. And although Simon Le Bon still has a “lot of fondness” for the album, Duran’s frontman acknowledges that it didn’t always have the group’s utmost attention. The quintet didn’t even bother touring the record and appeared to further show their disdain on triumphant follow-up The Wedding Album, with Love Voodoo’s lyrics (“The queen of sensuality/ You shelter me from liberty/ It’s nothing short of piracy”) interpreted by many as something of a self-effacing jab at its predecessor.
And although Liberty became their highest-charting UK album since 1983 No.1 Seven And The Ragged Tiger, it nosedived out of the Top 40 within a fortnight and was the first Duran Duran LP that didn’t spawn a UK Top 10 hit.