[John Taylor goes track by track on the band's new release "All You Need is Now"; keep checking back to the blog section for the latest installment ]

Track six: 'Girl Panic !'

Aha... 'Girl Panic !'. You ought to know that we would not have this song on the album if it were not for Nick's extraordinary tenacity. And Mark's. Buggars both of them. Out of all the music first written with Mark for this album, this is the one that got him most excited. It reminded me of The Prodigy, but It reminded him, he said, more than any of the other musical ideas, of what he really loved about early Duran Duran.

This goes back to the first paragraph I wrote about everyone having a fantasy of their own about where each song or the album as a whole is headed. Mark was always quite clear, that he wanted a return to 'Rio'. I wasn't sure how we were going to pull that off, especially without Andy, but followed along. It was nice to be asked questions like 'What amp did you use to record 'Rio'? And 'Would you mind terribly bringing one in to try?'.. I rather liked being asked that. I suspect Don Was asks Keith Richards questions like that a lot.

'This song needs to be about girls,' Mark would say, over and over, even after Simon delivered a perfectly poised lyric based on the ideas of Carl Sagan entitled 'Pale Blue Planet'. Thankfully, one member of this band is still footloose and fancy-free. Mr Rhodes was able to bring a lyric to the table based on his late night cavortings around the capital, and finally satisfy Herr Producer. I guess he was right. Only yesterday Dom said to me, "'Girl Panic !'... it's kind of spooky... it's so much like the 'Rio' era band..."

So much for The Prodigy.