In the run up to Duran Duran’s second British Summer Time show at Hyde Park in five years, Simon Le Bon caused something of a stir online when he said that the band want to play Glastonbury – but only if they headline. “We shouldn’t be below anybody on the bill,” he said, revealing over the years they have refused inferior offers. There was a bit of scornful pushback (something they’ve long been used to), which tended along the lines of: does this 80s band really think they can compete with Olivia Rodrigo et al at pop’s top table?
But Le Bon is 100 per cent right. What do people actually want in a Glastonbury headliner these days? Increasingly, a show with a bit of pizzazz, some star quality and tunes everyone knows and can sing along to. If it’s fun and pop-facing, all the better. At Hyde Park, Duran Duran showed they tick all the boxes: hits and hooks galore, intermittent dancers, fire and hi-tech production values. This was a Pyramid Stage-ready show.
It’s a wonder they haven’t been asked before: 100m album sales and 12 top 10 hits – including two number ones – would normally get you a shot; over 15 million monthly listeners on Spotify shows people are still listening. Perhaps their historical lack of cool was once an issue; even in their 80s pomp – and pomp couldn’t be a more apt word – they were often dismissed by critics as empty suits for their unapologetic aspirational glamour.
Dom Brown and John Taylor of Duran Duran at BST Hyde Park 2026 (Photo: Jo Hale/Redferns)But that attitude has served them well. Not only has the unashamed, precision-tooled pop, led by Nick Rhodes’ signature synth lines, endured long beyond its era, but for a band that traded on youthful good looks, they have weathered well into their mid-60s: bassist John Taylor still oozed pop heartthrob; besuited and ghostly Rhodes was androgynous as ever; Le Bon, voice in good nick if occasionally strained, began in cream suit jacket, white trousers, and black shirt with glittered pin stripes, hi-kicking and pirouetting his way through.
Most of the set was inevitably drawn from their first five years of megahits: the Bond-goes-synth-pop theme “View to a Kill,” the knowingly OTT “The Reflex”, breakthrough hit “Girls on Film,” nicely segued with Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer.” But “Ordinary World”, their stadium-sized, elegiac ballad that saved the band from ruin in 1993, was a moving highlight. Even noting it wasn’t appropriate – it is about the death of a close friend – Le Bon dedicated it to the England football team.
“How many of you are planning on staying up all night?” he asked. “You going down the pub?” The largely – though it must be said not entirely – middle-aged crowd didn’t exactly sound up for a 4am finish.
One brand new song, “Free to Love”, is passable enough disco-pop on record and, with its unicorn and rainbow AI graphics. Here it was helped by a guest turn from its co-writer Nile Rodgers, who also gave their 1986 funk-pop collaboration “Notorious” the requisite swing. “That makes us sound old,” Le Bon said talking about making the track, sounding slightly embarrassed before correcting himself. “No – music keeps you young.”
The show wasn’t flawless; across two hours there were the lesser moments when they delved deeper than the hits, while the newer songs are a mixed bag, and they still can be very silly.
But the encore displayed everything great about their peak: the industrial pop of “The Wild Boys” complete with fire dancers; the lush and moody synth-ballad “Save a Prayer”, surely their best song, for which Le Bon asked the crowd to get their phones out and “turn Hyde Park into the Milky Way”; the closing “Rio”, which sounded as big and brash and colourful as ever, the exotic dancers making for a carnival-esque finish.
Somebody get Emily Eavis on the phone.
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