TODD HOSEA
AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR & USAF VETERAN
MUSIC & THEATER
Duran Duran (1981)
By Duran Duran
Duran Duran’s self-titled debut is one of those albums I can put on more than forty years later and still enjoy from beginning to end. Ironically, it wasn’t the album that introduced me to the band. That honor goes to “Union of the Snake” from their third album, Seven and the Ragged Tiger. That song sent me backward through their catalog, and when I discovered Duran Duran, I became a lifelong fan. There are the obvious hits—“Girls on Film,” “Planet Earth,” and “Is There Something I Should Know?”—but what really hooked me were the deeper cuts. “Friends of Mine” remains one of my favorites, and I’ve always loved the atmospheric instrumental “Tel Aviv.” In fact, the B-side is probably my favorite part of the album. There’s a darker, moodier quality to it that hints at just how creative this band was going to become.
Duran Duran also gave me one of my favorite music memories. During their 1987 Strange Behaviour tour, I managed to sneak backstage before their concert in Indianapolis—and literally ran into Nick Rhodes. Instead of having me promptly escorted from the building, Nick was incredibly gracious. He walked me around backstage and introduced me to John Taylor, Warren Cuccurullo, and Simon Le Bon. Not bad for a kid from Indianapolis who just wanted to meet one of his favorite bands. It remains one of those wonderfully surreal moments in my life when I probably should have been asking myself, How exactly did I get here?
As memorable as that night was, though, my favorite Duran Duran concert came thirty years later when I saw them at Red Rocks in 2017. There was something special about hearing those songs surrounded by the Colorado mountains—a place I’ve always loved—and realizing how much of my life their music had accompanied. That's one of the things I find fascinating about music. An album can become more than a collection of songs. It becomes connected to places, people, memories, and different versions of ourselves.
And that brings me back to their debut. Trends come and go, production styles change, and plenty of albums become trapped in the era that created them. Duran Duran still works. It's stylish, strange, energetic, atmospheric, and unmistakably its own thing. I discovered it by working backward from a song on another album, but it helped turn a casual interest into a lifelong appreciation for the band. Not bad for a record I was late discovering.
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980)
By John Williams
If The Empire Strikes Back is my favorite movie of all time, John Williams’ score is a huge reason why. I own every soundtrack he’s ever made, and this is the one I return to more than any other. The score is practically a master class in musical storytelling. Of course, there’s the iconic “The Imperial March,” perhaps one of the most recognizable pieces of film music ever written. I was fortunate to see John Williams in concert and this piece brought the crowd to tears. The opening notes instantly conjure Darth Vader and the overwhelming power of the Empire. But the brilliance of this soundtrack is its range. Williams gives us the sweeping romance of “Han Solo and the Princess,” the mystery and playfulness of “Yoda’s Theme,” and the tension and sheer momentum of the film’s action sequences. The music doesn’t simply accompany what’s happening on screen, it tells us what the characters are feeling, sometimes before they fully understand it themselves.
My favorite track, though, is “Yoda and the Force.” It accompanies one of my favorite moments in the entire saga: Yoda using the Force to lift Luke’s X-wing from the Dagobah swamp. The music begins quietly and gradually builds into something majestic, capturing Luke’s disbelief as he watches the impossible become possible. When Luke tells Yoda he can’t believe it, Yoda answers, “That is why you fail.” It’s a perfect marriage of music, character, and story. Williams somehow transforms a little green Jedi raising a spaceship out of a swamp into something profound and almost spiritual. That’s what I love most about his work. He doesn’t just write memorable themes; he gives movies an emotional language. Decades later, I can put on The Empire Strikes Back soundtrack, close my eyes, and see the entire movie unfold in my imagination. For a storyteller, there may be no greater testament to the power of music.
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