ShareDuran Duran performing their Europe 2025 Tour at The Motorpoint Arena Nottingham on Sunday 26th October 2025.
Images and Review by Kevin Cooper
It is ten years since Duran Duran graced the stage of the Motorpoint Arena and on Sunday night the Nottingham venue was only one of two in the UK chosen by the Birmingham lads who had swiftly left the Midlands in the 80’s and hit Rio, making exotic videos all over the world, dating models and wearing the most colourful suits imaginable.
Transforming the Arena into a time machine that took the predominantly fifty plus crowd on a nostalgic trip, the show opened with keyboard player Nick Rhodes, bassist John Taylor, drummer Roger Taylor and front man Simon Le Bon appearing mid stage to walk down some steps and to settle in front of a screen that ran the width of the stage.
Opening with the atmospheric Velvet Newton intro, they followed up with the slow burning vintage cut of Night Boat before they sent the sold out crowd into raptures with the high octane The Wild Boys produced by Nile Rodgers, with its huge visuals inspired by the over the top music video that accompanied the song in 1984.
The set list was a journey through the band’s extensive history, from their iconic hits to their lesser played gems. Hungry Like A Wolf was as brash and as loud as ever whilst A View To A Kill was preceded by the James Bond theme on backing track and despite being forty years old, still managed to thrill.
They delivered a number of covers, including The Specials Ghost Town, ELO’s Evil Woman and Siouxsie & the Banshees Spellbound, but it was the hits that the crowd wanted to hear. Invisible was great with its very classic retro feel and Notorious had the crowd singing along.
Ordinary World was movingly dedicated to a quest for world peace, and a standout Come Undone was performed by Le Bon with his excellent vocals with a backing singer as a duet and was simply brilliant. The main set closed with an exhilarating string of hits which included Planet Earth, The Reflex and Girls On Film which impressively included a snippet of Talking Head’s Psycho Killer sung by Le Bon in French.
For the encore there was Save A Prayer that saw the Arena lit up by thousands of mobile phones and the raucous and frenzied sing along to Rio ended a night of pristine British pop of the highest order.
