Billy Idol was never my favorite. Not even close. He was more of a punchline than anything else when I was a kid. We said something like “PEAS AGAIN?!?” and then made the Billy Idol sneer.
Our parents, of course, thought he was a bad influence and so we weren’t allowed to listen to him but, like, we didn’t want to because he was so goofy looking making that sneer all the time.
By the time I was in high school, he came out with the song “Mony, Mony” which was a remake of one of the Tommy James songs in occasional rotation on WHND “Honey Radio” AM 560 and, as such, I saw it as completely extraneous. I mean, even now, if someone asked me “would you rather listen to a Tommy James song or the remake”, I’d pick the original in a heartbeat. Why wouldn’t you?
Remember when The White Stripes came out with “Fell in Love with a Girl” in 2001 and then, two short years later, Joss Stone covered it as “Fell in Love with a Boy” and it felt like it was waaaaay too soon for a remake?
That’s how I felt about Billy Idol’s “Mony Mony”. And it didn’t help that the school dances all involved this song because the students did this thing where they all pogoed and yelled obscenities every time the words “Mony Mony” were uttered. Which was often. (I was still young and innocent enough to be offended.)
In 1990, he came out with “Rock the Cradle of Love” which struck me as yet another friggin’ Billy Idol song until he got to the “these are the wages of love” part of the song and a switch flipped in my head and I thought “Huh… he’s pretty good at this.”
By the time he was in The Wedding Singer, he was not really “Billy Idol” anymore but “That MTV guy” and the VH1 “Behind the Music” episode pretty much sealed his fate. Yep. He was going to be huge instead of big, but wild living did him in. Kids, don’t do drugs.
So I was kinda shocked to hear that he had a new album out with a new single and everything.
And, get this, the album has a remake of his 2008 song “John Wayne” which shocked me by being really good:
When I first heard “Still Dancing”, my first thought was “Who is the target audience for this?” but, a couple of bars into John Wayne, I realized that the answer was “Me.”
Huh.
So… what are you listening to?
Wait, with Weird Al covering both Billy Idol’s cover of “Mony Mony” and Tiffany’s cover of “I think we’re alone now”, does that make Tommy James the guy that Weird Al has covered the most after Michael Jackson? (Polkas don’t count.)
Being a white dude of roughly the same age bracket as as you, I too am the target audience for Billy Idol’s new song. And I like it! And I like seeing the comeback from the abyss stories too; Billy Idol’s is one such story, Steven Tyler’s is another… It’s a much better story than, say, Amy Winehouse’s, and one that gives us more music (or perhaps some other kind of art) to enjoy.
Unlike you, I’ve always enjoyed Billy Idol. I don’t think he was ever trying to be meaningful or deep. He was trying to be fun, and the route was to be naughty — “make Tipper Gore clutch her pearls” kind of naughty, not actually evil or malicious. He’s winking at us even as he puts ALL the gel in his hair to spike it into the stratosphere while he’s pushing seventy. Of course, I also don’t mind at all that the Rolling Stones are still at it in their eighties. Gives me hope, you know?