It’s a mistake to open Rob Sheffield’s new book looking for another Love is a Mixtape, Sheffield’s Charlottesville-loaded debut about the sudden, unexpected death of his young wife. In that book a natural tension arises in the disconnect between Sheffield’s corny, pop-obsessed voice and the book’s dark subject. His second book, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, is a loose chronology that explores one of music’s great mysteries: In the 1980s, faced with the specter of a crumbling economy and nuclear war, musicians and industry folks collectively shrugged, turned to their synthesizers and created a decade of often ridiculous, disposable music under names like Kajagoogoo (known for “Too Shy”), and Haysi Fantayzee (“John Wayne is Big Leggy”).
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“I didn’t worry too much about what was going into the music,” Sheffield writes in his chapter on Fantayzee’s “Shiny Shiny.” “I was just enjoying what came out.” Two decades removed, Sheffield brings his postgraduate literature degree to bear on his youthful obsessions. Like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, Sheffield writes that Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry “took romantic obsession to the point where he disappeared into the Platonic conception of himself.” On the next page, Sheffield compares the five years shared by Axl Rose and his Sunset Strip groupie in “You Could Be Mine,” to Odysseus and Circe. Needless to say, Boy George (“Karma Chameleon”) has a lot in common with Romantic poet John Keats (“What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon poet.”)
Imagine it’s 1983, you’re driving to your grandmother’s funeral and J. Geils Band’s “Freeze Frame” comes on the radio. You would have to live the rest of your life with that association. Whatever the organ is that ties music to memory, Sheffield’s is bigger than most. “Purple Rain” triggers memories of his stint as an ice cream man, a time when sustenance came in the form of ice cream, and not wanting to die before finding a girlfriend. In one of the best chapters, The Replacements’ “Left of the Dial” triggers memories of seeing Bob Stinson and Paul Westerberg standing among the crowd while their opening band plays. Sheffield realizes that musicians don’t have to be “great imaginary friends,” but can be real people.
Talking to Girls also takes on the other half of The Great Mystery, asking why we ever listened, and why we still do. The short lesson is that women are simply hardwired to love bands like Duran Duran; men follow. Throughout music history, Sheffield writes, “Girls want things—to have fun, to be free tonight, to dance—and that’s the engine that drives pop music.” By 1988 Duran Duran is singing “All She Wants Is,” leaving the “what” to the listener, and beginning a game of wish-fulfillment Mad Libs that has tortured and delighted women in equal measure for 30 years now.
To quote Scritti Politti’s Green Gartside, “Fear of pop is an infantile disorder—you should face up to it like a man.” That’s as strong an endorsement for the book as you’ll find here.