Dark days are in the rearview, the mirrorball is back. Duran Duran’s new era is all disco, baby.
The British new wave legends return with “Free to Love” (via Tape Modern), an ode to the era of party music that exploded from the late ‘70s, when tight rhythm sections collided with funk and glitter on the dancefloor.
If it evokes Chic’s “Good Times,” there’s a reason for that. “Free to Love” is a collaboration with Nile Rodgers, the latest in a working relationship that stretches back to 1984’s “The Reflex,” the first of Duran Duran’s two songs to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (“A View to a Kill” also topped the singles chart in 1985).
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On it, frontman Simon Le Bon sings: “Be free to win or lose / do what you want to do / be free to see it through / out there I’m free to love.”
“Free to Love” is accompanied by an official music video, that dropped in the small hours of Thursday, April 23. The live performance clip is framed like a throwback episode of Top of the Pops, the seminal British weekly music chart show on which Duran Duran were regulars in the 1980s. It all plays out with tongues planted firmly in cheeks, though the sight of founding bass player John Taylor with blonde spiky hair would’ve blown Duranie minds back in the day.
With “Free to Love,” Duran Duran appear to have moved on from their Halloween era, which dawned with their 16th and latest album, Danse Macabre, a collection that opened and peaked at No. 4 on the Official U.K. Chart in 2023.
The Rock Hall-inducted British band is locked in for a run of 2026 shows, including a residency next month at Bleaulive at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, arena and festival spots in North America and across Continental Europe, and a headline date July 5 at BTS Hyde Park.
Rodgers, too, has a busy itinerary in the months ahead with concerts booked for the U.K. and Europe, North America and elsewhere.
Duran Duran was arguably the biggest band in the world in the first half of the ‘80s, and have survived, and at times, thrived, when so many of their contemporaries were shafted by the changing sands of music. Along the way, the group has collected every conceivable award, including the Brit Awards’ Lifetime Achievement, two Ivor Novellos, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, two Grammy Awards, and, in 2022, long-overdue induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In 2024, Le Bon was been named a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by King Charles, a salute to his services to music and charity.
Watch the music video below for Duran Duran’s “Free to Love” featuring Nile Rodgers.
