Lorde has really eclectic taste, and I’m glad for that, because her young age, this amazingly talented singer knows what she’s doing, or at least seems to know what she’s doing as curator for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 soundtrack. She doesn’t shy away from speaking her mind, and she doesn’t limit her musical taste to one genre or one generation. She has the wherewithal to recruit talent that might have been overlooked otherwise, and that’s where Duran Duran lead singer Simon Le Bon comes in!
I have no qualms in saying that I am a Duran Duran fan. I don’t listen to them as much now as I did when they were all over MTV (when MTV actually played music videos), but I still remember their lyrics and I still enjoy hearing it when they are played.
Lucky for me that Lorde enjoys 80s music as well, because she was able to get Simon to be featured in one track with one of this generation’s talent, Charli XCX. Simon was grateful for the opportunity.
“I‘m a big fan of Charli XCX,” Le Bon continues. “I think she‘s got something very special. And then I‘m told that Rostam Batmanglij was producing it—I really like [Batmanglij‘s band] Vampire Weekend and their sound. I don‘t know whose idea it was, but it‘s a bloody good one.“
Simon hasn’t personally met Lorde but as shown in the video below, they had kept in touch via e-mail. As for the song, this is what he said:
“Kingdom” [is] “really different…very out-there.” Musically, it has “a nursery-rhyme sort of melody,” he says, but, lyrically, it‘s “very, very, very dark.” Charli XCX sounds “like this beautiful little caged bird singing. I played against the innocence, sweetness, and naiveté—I’m the dark lord in the [lyrics] I wrote. She’s the lightness and I‘m the slightly scary thing.“
Is there another 80s icon that will be featured on the soundtrack? Why, sure! Multi-talented Grace Jones, will have a track titled “Original Beast.” Coincidentally, Grace played the villain in James Bond’s A View to a Kill, which Duran Duran performed the title track on.
Read the complete article at Yahoo Music.