Actually, it was their first singer, Andy Wickett. =) And the song itself wasn’t so much co-written as cobbled together . . . but as I’ve said, it’s a great track, anyway!

Regardless of whether it means anything or not (I’m going to charitably say it does, but certainly D^2 have been known to record a lot of more-or-less-random lyrics), the video was clearly intended just to titilate and that’s it. No argument there!

Oh, dear! =P I was trying to reply Republibot, but it looks as if my comment had words which didn’t make it past the filter. That’s a real first for me!

Republibot: You’re more generous toward Simon LeBon and his lyrics than I am!

Girls on Film was always a great track, but I doubt there’s anything meaningful to analyse there. It was written by five different people, one of whom had left the band before the other two even got on board. One of the other two was LeBon, who joined up with a notebook full of poems he had written before he knew anything about Duran.

As for the video, Andy Taylor had this to say in his autobiography Wild Boy: My Life in Duran Duran:

The video was storyboarded around the idea of going behind the scenes at a fashion shoot, with Duran Duran playing at the side of the catwalk . . . I suspect a lot of the sexual content was actually the idea of Paul Berrow [Duran Duran's first manager], who was a hilarious character when it came to that sort of thing.

I can hear him now: “Let’s get a bloody pole, grease it up, and have a couple of dirty birds on it.”

Yes, yes, I’ll shut up now . . . =P

You know, the standard rags-to-riches-but-what-happened-to-your-soul angle. Of course the critical aspect of this is more than a little bit offset by having an amazingly (For the times) lurid video (This is the cleaned-up version). That’s what I always took from it.

BTW, the brunette chick at about 1:10 is giga-hot. I’ve always wondered who she was.

The video starts off with a POV shot of flying, and feathers, presumably a bird. Then we see a guy in the crowd who’s just going along, presumably, dreampt of flying. The thought police grab him, and pull him out, and put him on trial, presumably for daring to dream and aspire – thoughtcrime, if you will. This is all intercut with “Room 101″ stuff of him being tortured with various animals – his worst fears. This is done in an apartment rather than an actual torture chamber, and it might mean that the room with his worst fears in it happens to be the life he’s living already.

Anyway, the judge passes judgement, and they take him to hell/the bowels of the building to be beaten to death, but he fights back, and gets away. Atop the building, he’s confronted by the personification various animals that frightened him, and realizing he’s got no options left to him, he makes the virtuous teutonic choice of dying on his own terms. Throwing off the last of his fear, he resigns himself to his fate and jumps off the building, and he’s rewarded for this by turning in to the very eagle that he dreamed of, and gets away.

All of which is a conflict that takes place entirely within the protagonist’s own mind, as we see the ‘crowd walking to work’ scene again, but this time he stops, and goes the opposite way, taking responsibility for living his own life in his own way, rather than simply going along with the herd.

Really, it makes perfect sense.

The lyrics specifically mention the Eagle as a kind of metaphor for self-actualization:
“Watch it now/The eagle in the sky/How he’s dancing one and only/You – lose yourself
/No not for pitys sake/Theres no real reason to be lonely/Be yourself/Give your free will a chance/Youve got to work to succeed”

The only real poser of a question here, the only bit that doesn’t really fit is the chorus, but I think that’s meant to be ironic – “Better not to ask her out than to be shot down,” but I guess it could mean “Better to be alone and in charge of yourself than to be society’s plaything.”