Songfacts®:

• In this song, space travelers have come top planet earth only to find it barren. Duran Duran frontman Simon Le Bon often writes lyrics with collections of images that can form stories in the listener's imagination. This one sounds like the starting point for a science fiction story about an astronaut who returns from a mission to find Earth in ruin.
  
  Le Bon has is very interested in outer space and often uses it as a theme. Duran Duran's 2004 album is called Astronaut.
• "Planet Earth" was Duran Duran's first single. It's a great example of their early sound, which combined synthesizers and guitars with thought-provoking lyrics.
• The song went to #12 in Duran Duran's native UK and did surprisingly well in Australia, where it went to #8 despite the band doing no promotional work there. Its Australian success was due to radio play and a stylish video directed by Perry Haines and Russell Mulcahy showing the band performing against a futuristic, glacier-styled backdrop.
• Drummer Roger Taylor was asked in an interview with Q magazine (February 2008) what inspired the band to latch onto the new idea of the promo video. Taylor replied: "The video for Ultravox's 'Vienna' came out and (manager) Paul Berrow said, 'You can do one of those.' Paul was very switched on and ambitious and so we did the 'Planet Earth' video."
• Duran Duran were seen as poster boys for the New Romantics, and one of this song's lyrics, "Like some new romantic looking for the TV sound," namechecks the early '80s musical movement before that moniker was in wide usage. The band took it from the headline for a newspaper article on Spandau Ballet that read: "Here Come The New Romantics."
  
  Bassist John Taylor recalled to the A.V.Club in a 2012 interview: "I remember reading it and thinking, 'Wow, it sounds like they're doing exactly what we're doing,'and calling the journalist in London and saying, 'Hey, if you like them, you're gonna love us!'[Laughs.] And then in the meantime, I thought, 'Let's put that 'New Romantic' phrase into one of our songs.'"
• Duran Duran went on to become video stars, but they had more modest goals when they made their first one, the video for "Planet Earth." When the song started getting support in Australia, they decided that they needed to get some television presence down there, so it was suggested that they make an accompanying promo. John Taylor admitted to The A.V. Club, "that was the primary motivation for doing that video... to support the song in Australia."
  
  From this point forward, music videos became a powerful weapon in their promotional arsenal, even more important when MTV went on the air a few years later.
• Planet Earth is the name of a BBC nature series narrated by the celebrated naturalist David Attenborough. In 2020, The network released a video that used footage from Attenborough to show him reciting the lyrics to the song.