[Official Video] Duran Duran - Girl Panic!

These days, 'extended' cuts of music videos are ten-a-penny. Not content to let the song in itself do the talking, bands plough ever-increasing amounts of cash and time into creating videos that are not so much promo events and more fully blown films. Now, normally I'm not that big a fan of this style of video-vignette; I find the cuts between song and 'extra-narrative' jarring, breaking up a perfectly decent pop track. But with Duran Duran... well, I'm more than happy to make an exception.

You see, what they have delivered in the form of Girl Panic! is the extended music video to end all other extended music videos. We're talking a nine and a half minute beast here. Yup, NINE and a half minutes. Oh, and did we mention they've packed a load of dolled-up supermodels in as substitutes for the band, including none other than Naomi Campbell?

On paper, the concept already sounds incredible - in reality, it's positively jaw-dropping. Duran Duran play up to every aspect of themselves, touting picture-postcard images of London, dropping product placements for the Savoy hotel, Swarovski and Harper's Bazaar plus a sly montage of their past hits. Come into the video half-way through and you'd be forgiven for thinking it was the latest glossy M&S fashion ad - all smouldering eyes and vibrant lippy.

As for Girl Panic! itself, it's good to see another single release from the band's sublime All You Need Is Now album. Around its original digital release in December last year, there was a mass of hype over its Mark Ronson production and it was rightly hailed as a real return to form. But since then, things had gone a little hushed and with the band's cancelled UK tour dates, it seemed that the album might already have shut up shop.

As with any band of their era, Duran Duran face the trouble of mass exposure for their single releases, and be association, chart positions to match their glory days. The likes of Radio 1 refuse to play them, millions of potential listeners written off at the drop of a hat. But with a promo video of this scale, and with obvious viral-esque appeal, maybe - just maybe - Girl Panic! might just manage to snowball itself into a surprise hit. God knows, it deserves to.