Billy Idol – 11 of the Best Songs (1988)

1970's had been a time for concept albums where the individual songs were not as important as the album. 1980's saw the birth of MTV and the immediate effect was that the focus shifted from albums back to singles. That's why there are numerous good songs from the 80's, but it's more difficult to think of excellent albums. This is certainly true for Billy Idol. I really like a few of his songs, but none of the albums have really made an impression on me. That's why it's only natural that I only own a compilation album of Billy Idol's best songs. I bought this vinyl at a flea market in Helsinki. From the simple collector point of view, I just wanted to own Rebel Yell, White Wedding and Sweet Sixteen. Those are, in my opinion, the core of Idol's music repertoire. Of course they are also the most well known songs by him, but I feel like that's for a reason.



It's kind of difficult to place Billy Idol's music into any specific genre. It definitely has its roots in the 1980's new wave, but it's also more commercial than most of the music done in this category. That's why I also want to call it hard rock. There's something incredibly commercial about Idol's songs. Even though the sounds draw influences from new wave, post punk and electronica, which are not considered as overly commercial genres, the end result is really made for radio. Part of it is just the catchy hooks and simple melodies and part of it is the amazingly cleanly produced sounds.  Some of it may also have to do with Idol's slick appearance of combining the leather clad bad boy image and 1980's pop culture.

As I already mentioned MTV, it's only appropriate that I add a link to one of his music videos. Sweet Sixteen is probably my favourite song by Idol, so that's what I'm going to link here. The video is just a simple, yet stylishly black and white video of Idol performing the song. The white hair is quite phenomenal.

I don't really have that strong personal history with Billy Idol, but I have just liked a few of his songs and I thought it would be good to own some of his songs on a record. I've done quite a lot of DJ'ing back in the day and I thought it would be good to own some Billy Idol to play in discos. Some of these hit songs work nicely in parties where people want to dance to some retro tunes. I don't really play this album that often at home, but it was nice to come back to these songs and listen to something that I don't really listen to that often.

This compilation album is not on Spotify, but all of the songs from the album are, so I'm linking this blog post into a playlist with all of the songs.