Band launch (1981–1982)

The band's first album, Duran Duran, was released on the EMI label in 1981. The first single, Planet Earth, reached the United Kingdom's Top 20 at Number 12. A follow-up, Careless Memories, stalled at Number 37. However, it was their third single, Girls On Film, that attracted the most attention. The song went to Number 5 in the UK, before the notorious video was even filmed. That video, featuring topless women mud wrestling and stylized depictions of other sexual fetishes, was made with directing duo Godley & Creme in August.

The video was filmed just two weeks after MTV was launched in the United States. The band expected the Girls On Film video to be played in the newer nightclubs that had video screens, or on pay TV channels like the Playboy Channel. Kevin Godley explained the thinking behind it:

We were very explicitly told by Duran Duran's management to make a very sensational, erotic piece that would be for clubs, where it would get shown uncensored, just to make people take notice and talk about it.

The raunchy video created an uproar and was banned by the BBC and heavily edited for MTV. The band unabashedly enjoyed and capitalised on the controversy.[citation needed] The album peaked in the UK Top Twenty at Number 3.

Later in 1981, the band embarked on their first United States club tour, followed by more dates in Germany and the UK. This second tour of Britain coincided with a wave of riots sparked by unemployment and racial tension, including those of Moss Side and Toxteth. The band played an eerily quiet Birmingham the day after the Handsworth riots.

Duran Duran began to achieve worldwide recognition in 1982. In May, they released their second album, Rio, which scored four UK Top Twenty singles with My Own Way, Hungry Like the Wolf, Save A Prayer, and the title song Rio. A headlining tour of Australia, Japan, and the U.S. was followed by a stint supporting Blondie during that band's final American tour. Diana, Princess of Wales declared Duran Duran her favourite band, and the band was dubbed The Fab Five by the British press.

However, the Rio album did not do well in the United States at first. EMI in the UK had promoted Duran Duran as a New Romantic band, but that genre was barely known in the U.S., and Capitol Records (EMI's American branch) was at a loss about how to sell them. After Carnival (an EP of Rio's dance remixes) became popular with DJs in the fall, the band arranged to have most of the album remixed by David Kershenbaum. Only after it was re-released in the U.S. in November, with heavy promotion as a dance album, did Rio begin to climb the American charts, six months after its European success. MTV placed Hungry Like the Wolf and then several other Duran Duran videos into heavy rotation, pushing it and Rio into the top twenty on the U.S. charts in early 1983; the seduction ballad Save A Prayer also did well. The band was a natural for music television, noted Rolling Stone magazine. They may be the first rock group to ride in on a video wave. In the end, the album peaked at number 6 in the U.S. and remained on the charts there for 129 weeks — almost two and a half years. In 2003, Rio was listed at number 65 in the NME 100 Greatest Albums Of All Time.