Billy Idol: Punk Never Dies
A new album that sounds like an anthology even if it contains only unpublished songs, a documentary that will retrace its life as a supervision, A summer tour that will see him sharing the stages with his always friend Joan Jett and his Blackhearts for a real revival of the punk rock of the late 70sthe candidacy for the rock & roll hall of hunger, or the golden register that collects the names of the icons that have made the history of the genre. At 69 Billy Idol finally passes to the collection, after an extraordinary career that was a tour On a roller coaster more than forty years long. Eleven years after the release of his latest album, “Kings & Queens of the Underground” of 2014, tomorrow William Michael Albert Broad will send in the “Dream Into” stores, “a conceptual work” that takes stock of his “whole career”. It is not a “Greatest Hits”: it is an unpublished album, the first collected by Rockstar in an album after the EP “The RoadSide” of 2021 and “The Cage” of 2022writing retracing “in chronological order” all the stages of his ascent, from inept to absolute icon, Among the first artists to guess the power of the image in the new media panorama of the 80s, those of MTV, and to exploit it. Platinum blonde hair fired in the air, leather jacket, Sugardo Ribelle, a grin that enclosed all his irreverence, that of a boy to whom the teachers, at school, They had given the nickname “Idle”, “lazy”, before he reworked and transformed him into his name of art, “idle”, “idol”: So the then Frontman of Generation X conquered everyone.
The songs of “Dream Into It”, with which Idol aims to reiterate his transversality, after his “Rebel Yell” is (re) became a catchphrase in recent years thanks to commercials for which he has acted as a soundtrack and after duets with a new generation pop star like Miley Cyrusrepresent a sort of “compaion album” of the next publication documentary. It is as if the songs to which Idol worked together with authors like Joe Janiak (one of the co-authors of “gossip” of “our” Maneskin), Nick Long (co-author of some of the hits of Machine Gun Kelly), The former suicide Martin Reverby and his historic right arm Steve Stevens, which over the years became a sort of Alter Ego della Rockstar, represented the soundtrack of the documentary. By the way: the film is titled “Billy Idol Should Be Dead”, the Rockstar presented it as The “final documentary” and will be previewed at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York Cityamong the events most awaited by dog lovers, next June 10th.
The project was curated by Jonas åkerlund, Swedish, born in 1965, who in addition to directing music video clips for pop star as Madonna (starting with “Ray of Light”), Christina Aguilera, Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Shakira, Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Kesha also worked the colossal films of Paul McCartney, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Taylor Swift and Madonna herself: «Billy in his career had an incredible timing – he lets it know – he was in London when the punk -rock was born, then he moved to New York just as MTV was exploding. And now he lives in Los Angeles. I love his story, the incredible events of his life. His music touched many people». «We were turning this documentary and so when I started making the album I simply inspired me, because it was exactly what we were doing. I couldn’t help but think about my life and everything I lived. The times of punk rock, the arrival in America, the solo career, drug addiction and finally sobriety. We started writing the songs thinking about all this: a song on 1977, one on the arrival in the USA and as America was at that time. The album tells the story of my life, “adds Idol.
“I fought with my demons for so long that they became my friends,” sang in 2022 in “Cage” the former leader of Generation X. Today Idol enjoys the newfound affection of the public and colleagues. In addition to Joan Jett, who appears alongside the Rockstar in “Wildside”, Album are also Alison Mosshart and Avril Lavigne. The voice of “Complicated”, which in the early 2000s recovered the aesthetic of punk By combining it with more pop sounds, he engraved together with Billy Idol “77”, on the London debut of the star: «He came out in a fantastic way. Avril is incredible. The song was already good only with my voice, but with her it became three times better ». Idol arrived third in the vote of the public of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, behind the Phish and Bad Company. But the complete list of this year’s admitted will be revealed on Sunday. Where? In a TV program called “American Idol”. Do you have to add more?
