The liquid mentioned in Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” is wine. The reference appears in the song’s vivid lyric describing a mouth that is “alive with juices like wine,” using liquid imagery to intensify the song’s theme of desire and pursuit.
Written by Duran Duran and produced by Colin Thurston, “Hungry Like the Wolf” was released in 1982 on the band’s second studio album, Rio. Its energetic mix of synth-pop, rock guitar and dance rhythms helped make it one of the defining songs of the New Romantic era.
The song’s lyrics are deliberately impressionistic rather than a literal story about an animal. The wolf is a metaphor for instinct, appetite and romantic pursuit. Listeners sometimes misremember the line as referring to blood, water or “juices” alone, but wine is the specific liquid named in the lyric. The song’s striking video, filmed partly in Sri Lanka, also helped turn it into an international MTV breakthrough.