Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut

by Rob Sheffield Narrated by Scott Sheppard

Overview

The author of the national bestseller Love is a Mix Tape returns, with a different-but equally personal and equally universal- pin on music as memory."No rock critic-living or dead, American or otherwise-has ever written about pop music with the evocative, hyperpoetic perfectitude of Rob Sheffield."So said Chuck Klosterman about Love is a Mix Tape, Sheffield's paean to a lost love via its soundtrack. Now, in Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, Sheffield shares the soundtrack to his eighties adolescence.When he turned 13 in 1980, Rob Sheffield had a lot to learn about women, love, music and himself, and in Talking to Girls About Duran Duran we get a glimpse into his transformation from pasty, geeky "hermit boy" into a young man with his first girlfriend, his first apartment, and a sense of the world. These were the years of MTV and John Hughes movies; the era of big dreams and bigger shoulder pads; and, like any all-American boy, this one was searching for true love and maybe a cooler haircut. It all here: Inept flirtations. Dumb crushes. Deplorable fashion choices. Members Only jackets. Girls, every last one of whom seems to be madly in love with the bassist of Duran Duran.Sheffield's coming-of-age story is one that we all know, with a playlist that any child of the eighties or anyone who just loves music will sing along with. These songs-and Sheffield's writing-will remind readers of that first kiss, that first car, and the moments that shaped their lives.

Editorial Reviews

Jen Chaney

…a breezy ode to growing up in the '80s…
—The Washington Post

Anne Thomas Soffee

Sheffield's love letter to the songs that saw him through will resonate with anyone who ever took solace in the radio when no one else seemed to understand.
—The New York Times

Entertainment Weekly

Humorous, heartbreaking, and heroic.

Publishers Weekly

In this tuneful coming-of-age memoir, the glamorous New Wave band Duran Duran presides spiritually over the all-consuming teenage male efforts to comprehend the opposite sex. Music journalist Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape) chronicles his passage through the 1980s in a series of chapters in which period groups—from headliners like Roxy Music and Prince to one-hit wonders like Haysi Fantayzee of “Shiny Shiny” semifame—provides musical accompaniment to his adolescent angst. They are the soundtrack to his fumbling attempts to dance or make passes at girls, to weather a winless stint on the high school wrestling team, to survive a summer job as an ice-cream truck driver. The relationship insights he arrives at—chiefly, the imperative of unquestioning submission to female whims—are no more or less cogent than the song lyrics he gleans them from. The book really shines as a collection of free-form riffs on the glorious foolishness of Reagan-era entertainment—the movie E.T., he writes, was about “a sad muppet who thought he was David Bowie”—and its weirdly resonant emotional impact. The result is a funny, poignant browse from a wonderful pop-culture evocateur. (July)

Kirkus Reviews

Prequel to Rolling Stone contributing editor Sheffield's Love Is a Mix Tape (2007). There's a truism in rock that a breakthrough hit the first time through will often lead to a sophomore slump. The author's second attempt to use favorite songs to reflect on and illuminate his life isn't really a disappointment, though it necessarily lacks the emotional power of Mix Tape. Where that memoir of the 1990s had a natural narrative arc, from the birth of love to the heartbreaking death of the author's young wife, this successor, which focuses on the '80s-the musical culture and the author's formative years-is more of a hodge-podge collection of essays straining for cohesion. Proceeding chronologically, with 25 chapters titled after songs released during the '80s, Sheffield pursues a general theme of how girls and boys talk about, think about and feel about music differently. There are incisive chapters on Hall & Oates, Paul McCartney and the Replacements ("they made good imaginary friends"), along with revelations about how the author was an altar boy until 16, never had a girlfriend until 19 and had a traumatic experience clipping his grandfather's toenails. Though the reader learns in passing about the author's remarriage, much of the talk about girls concerns his younger sisters, "the coolest people I knew." Where Sheffield's debut felt cathartic, some of this book seems comparatively glib-for example, "There are times in a man's life that can only be described as ?times in a man's life.' The first time he experiences A Flock of Seagulls is one of them"; "MTV was, roughly speaking, the greatest thing ever."Those who loved the author's debut should enjoy this follow-up.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171960421
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	07/15/2010
Edition description:	Unabridged

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