Billy Idol
Cyberpunk

THE REVIEW

Probably one of the most underrated albums of the last 50 years.

Apparently, the album didn't even sit well with its author, as after this little masterpiece, he waited 12 years to record another album and, above all, he abundantly disavowed this experience of his at the limit of the visionary. Almost everyone knows Billy Idol: the bleached blond tough guy, he was one of the protagonists of the punk scene at the end of the '70s with the Generation-X and then broke through on worldwide charts with excellent rock (melodic?) albums for much of the '80s. Then he disappeared due to a bad motorcycle accident, and came back into the limelight with 'Charmed Life,' a decent and somewhat crafty record.

Then the turning point: Billy probably reads "Neuromancer", the manifesto book of the Cyberculture by William Gibson published in the USA in 1984, and goes on a tangent for everything Cyber. To be banal, one could say that Idol arrived about ten years before everyone else (the album was released in '93), attempting to make a world and a culture that had already existed for quite some time but was absolutely at the level of subcultures pop(ular).

The result is a beautiful album, where distorted guitars, Macintosh (the first album "made" with Protools and Mac? I'm not sure, but I think so), apocalyptic atmospheres, and chill out visions. Naturally, at the time the album was a half flop, and even now just hearing it mentioned causes people to turn up their noses a bit. Probably they are people who have never listened to it. I think it is an album that must be absolutely listened to in order to understand a good part of everything that happened afterward. Clearly, in those years, the grunge phenomenon was exploding, much noisier and more rambunctious, and in hindsight, it was logical that an album like this (especially made by someone like Billy Idol!) would not meet with the favor of the general public. It is very difficult to cite individual songs: the album is a true concept album and as such must be listened to from start to finish (and I am someone who normally hates concept albums), like a single dreamlike and hallucinated journey.

I would still point out the splendid "Wasteland", "Adam in Chains", and the fierce "Shock To The System", where the dirty and raw sound of that phenomenon Steve Stevens blends perfectly with Idol's voice, a new Casey screaming at the top of his lungs. It's impossible not to mention the Max Headroom citations (do you remember him? the first virtual DJ ever seen on the planet). A curiosity: the term "cyberpunk" was invented by Bruce Bethke, who titled a story of his published in 1983 in the November issue of the American magazine Amazing. A good many years later, the American author, speaking of the genesis of that name, replied as follows:

"[...] I mean, I had a basic idea [for my protagonist], he was fashionable and flashy with bleached hair. But the essence of his character was that he was an impostor! Rayno was a parasite living off the abilities of other people: a creature that was all style, pose, and image, without any talent. As mentioned, I had trouble visualizing him? until by chance, I caught some initial recordings of Billy Idol on MTV. I jumped up pointing at the screen: 'that's him!' Which makes it quite funny that in the '90s the real Billy Idol adopted the cyberpunk identity to the point of naming an album after it. If only he knew the truth? Do you think I should tell him?"

Visionary.