Election Day by Arcadia

Album: So Red The Rose (1985)

Charted: 7 6

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Arcadia was formed as a side project by three members of Duran Duran: Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, and Roger Taylor. So Red The Rose is the only album they released as Arcadia. The trio composed this song.
With Duran Duran, Simon LeBon wrote fairly straightforward lyrics, but here we get:

Opening eyes impale neon flickers
She moon, she turning away
The city's her slave but he's cheating his mistress

The lyrics are rather dense, and quite open for interpretation. It doesn't seem to be about an actual election, but more of a metaphor for some kind of reckoning. It might also be LeBon exercising his clever wordplay muscles.
Grace Jones is the voice of the narrator. Jones starred in the 1985 James Bond movie A View To A Kill. Duran Duran had a #1 hit with the theme song to the movie that year.
Nick Rhodes took the name "Arcadia" from a Poussin painting showing shepherds around a tomb that said: "Et in Arcadia ego." It roughly translates as "Even in Arcadia, there I am" and he took it from a phrase found in Virgil's fifth eclogue. Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) was a French artist who spent most of his career in Rome. Influenced by the romantic Classical past, he composed his landscapes with mathematical precision and peopled them with noble, heroic figures.

Arcadia is a central plateau of southern Greece. Its inhabitants in antiquity, somewhat isolated from the rest of the world, were romanticized by later writers and poets who idealized their simple, pastoral life.
The video was directed by Roger Christian, one of the top set directors in Hollywood. He won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction for his work on the movie Star Wars, and was nominated for his work on Alien. "Election Day" was one of the few music videos he worked on; it was a big-budget affair shot in Paris over five days. Like the song, it doesn't make a lot of sense: there is some kind of catacomb, pretty girls, and candles.

Comments: 7

Andrew Craig from WiltshireEt in Arcadia ego means "I, too, am (or was) in Arcadia" - not "Even in Arcadia, there I am". It's a chapter title in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, describing the happiest time of the narrator's life.
Barry from Sauquoit, NyOn this day in 1985 {December 14th} a video of Arcadia's "Election Day" was aired on the ABC-TV Saturday-afternoon program, 'American Bandstand'...
At the time "Election Day" was in its first of two weeks at #6 on Billboard's Top 100 chart, and that was also its peak position on the Top 100...
As noted above, "Election Day" reached #7 on the United Kingdom's Singles chart...
Arcadia had one other Top 100 record, "Goodbye Is Forever", it peaked at #33...
Tommy Mac from AthensThis song is about the 2020 election and the attempted coup by dark forces...Wild & scheming
Barry from Sauquoit, NyOn December 8th, 1985, "Election Day" by Arcadia peaked at #6 (for 2 weeks) on Billboard's Hot Top 100 chart and spent 14 weeks on the chart...
It reached #7 in the United Kingdom and Norway.
Tara from Nashville, TnI had this on Vinyl when it first came out, 20 plus years later I looked everywhere and FINALLY found it on cd. I love this album, my faves on this are The Promise, Keep me in the Dark and The Flame.... very Seventh Stranger/Chauffeur from the Arena album.
Scott from West Palm Beach, FlThe dreaminess of this album at the time was simply fluid. I used to fall asleep listening to this with my headphones (that's a good thing). The haunting backgrounds and almost inaudible intricacies made you melt into and become one with the music. This and The Cult's "Love" were my favorites of the day :)
Geri from Nova Scotia, CanadaSting and David Gilmour also guested on this album, So Red the Rose.

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