Interview: Annie Zaleski
Her new book explores ‘Rio,’ Duran Duran’s iconic 80s album
Annie Zaleski is a Cleveland, Ohio-based author, editor and journalist. Her work has appeared in dozens of publications including The Guardian, Rolling Stone, Stereogum, and Cleveland Plain Dealer. She was featured in the 2005 movie Punk’s Not Dead and in a 2014 Ovation TV special on the band Blondie.
Her 33 1/3 book on Duran Duran’s 1982 album Rio was published on May 6.
Interview
As a lifelong music fan and journalist, you must have had a million 33 1/3 book ideas. How did you land on Duran Duran’s Rio?
Believe it or not, Rio has pretty much always been my one and only choice for a 33 1/3 book. It’s indisputable that the album is a classic, from both a musical and aesthetic perspective. (The Patrick Nagel artwork on the cover!) But at some point in the ’00s, I stumbled upon Rio’s unique backstory: It was remixed and reissued a bunch in the U.S. before it became a hit, and “Hungry Like the Wolf” also took a long time to become a smash. I always wondered why that was. And then, of course, the music videos from Rio were closely associated with MTV, so I knew there were great stories there too. Rio wasn’t just a fantastic album; it had a compelling backstory too.
