Liberty: Альбом Duran Duran 1990 года

1990 studio album by Duran Duran

Liberty is the sixth studio album by English rock band Duran Duran, released on 20 August 1990 by Parlophone. The album reached number eight on the UK Albums Chart, and spawned the singles "Violence of Summer (Love's Taking Over)" and "Serious".

Duran Duran had emerged as one of the most successful bands of the 1980s, helping to both spearhead the so called 'Second British Invasion' of the American charts and making increasingly striking music videos to promote their singles via MTV. By the end of the 1980s, however, the band had lost both Roger and Andy Taylor, who had quit shortly after their 1985 Live Aid performance. Subsequent studio albums released including Notorious and Big Thing were not well received either critically or commercially, selling in far fewer quantities than their predecessors. Whilst the 1989 Decade compilation managed to chart in the Top 10 around the world, it was seen as a temporary stop gap and an opportunity for the band to decide what musical direction they wanted to explore in the 1990s.

After recording was completed, the band made the decision not to tour the album, making Liberty their first LP not to be performed live. There were, instead, some short promotional trips to Australia, New Zealand and Florence and additional TV appearances in the UK. Lead single "Violence of Summer (Love's Taking Over)" was additionally seen as a weak single to launch the album with, a decision that producer Chris Kimsey in particular felt was poor. In a 2020 interview with Paul Sinclar, the editor of website Super Deluxe Edition, Kimsey noted that either the songs "Serious" or "Liberty" should have been lead singles and the whole album may have seen more commercial success. Critical reception to Liberty was mainly negative with a number of music journalists slating the album; Trouser Press magazine described it as "a senseless collision of tuneless guitar raunch, Motown inflected soul pop and numbing dance grooves" whilst Q Magazines reviewer Andrew Martin suggested that only three tracks—"Liberty", "Serious" and "My Antarctica"—were worthy of inclusion, a view echoed in 2020 by producer Chris Kimsey, who said: "if you took all the crap off this album and had an EP, it would have been huge[ ] the other stuff was, like, panic, pressure." A positive review appeared in Spin in November 1990. Reviewer Mark Blackwell wrote "Liberty shows the band in its most appealing form in years ( ) Duran Duran once again successfully straddle the line between dance and rock". Blackwell noted that "the new songs are charicastically slick, yet stripped down. Effects and samples are minimal. The guitar is prominently back and the music is diverse", while admitting that "a couple of the songs, like 'Hothead', are stupid and meaningless."