There’s always been a goofy charm about Billy Idol. As an implausibly chiselled Adonis shining out from the deliberate ugliness of the original London punk scene, he was a misfit among misfits. As a pop star through the ‘80s, he was visibly so spectacularly high almost all the time that he somehow made everything pantomime-ish around him. Latterly he’s been such a perfect encapsulation of the Brit rock star in LA archetype he could quite plausibly be starring in a Spinal Tap spinoff.
Along the way, though, he’s made quite a few really great records and remained absolutely, in every possible way, committed to the bit. So it is here, on his first album in 11 years, in which he doesn’t try to be anything but Billy Idol singing about being Billy Idol. And it’s… well, it’s goofily charming. “Too much too soon / almost led to my doom / I looked into my tomb / and walked away” goes a typical line, and it doesn’t really diverge much from that. Lots of tales of excess, explanations of how he’s still true to himself, his only regret is hurting “People I Love” etc, all set to a punk/pop chug.
His voice is naturally cracked these days, but his Bowie-does-Elvis croon and snarl are still ultra distinctive, and that constant unwavering commitment really is likeable. However, other than a scattering of tunes like the opening title track, the later “Gimme the Weight” and the closing single “Still Dancing”, which cleave closest to his classic early ‘80s new wave style, there’s too much adherence to bog-standard LA soft rock and pop-punk cliché here.
The thing is, his early solo work was truly groundbreaking, with glorious precision and gloss to its production, and vastly influential on all the mainstream rock and “hair metal” which followed, so it’s a bit sad to hear him beholden to those who imitated him in the first place here. Nonetheless, for all the doggerel, there’s real self-reflection and depth of character here. And those better tracks suggest that if he were to combine that commitment to being Billy Idol singing about being Billy Idol with music that was just as committedly Billy Idol sonically, he still has a truly great album or two in him. This isn’t it, though.
Listen to "Still Dancing":
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