SwanShadow Thinks Out Loud

Artist: Billy Idol

Why this song is an adrenaline rush: Chalk it up to Steve Stevens’s alternately ringing and driving guitar lines, coupled with Idol’s bitter, sardonic vocals. You have to be packing a ton of sack to dub yourself “Billy Idol,” but the former Generation X front man born William Broad (now there’s irony for you) earns the right. Easily one of the most recognizable rock songs of the early 1980s.

Lyric line that’s fun to belt at maximum volume:

Hey little sister, who’s your superman?
Hey little sister, who’s the one you want?
Hey little sister, shotgun!

Fun factoids:

• The complete title of this song is actually “White Wedding (Part 1).” The little-heard “White Wedding (Part 2),” which also appears on Idol’s eponymous album, is a mostly electronic reprise — sort of like the alternate version of a hit song that might find its way onto the B-side of a movie soundtrack album. Assuming there were still such things as albums and B-sides. Which there aren’t. Man, I feel old.
• When my best friend from high school got married, I spent the better part of two days parked in front of a TV set watching MTV while the bride and groom bustled about with prenuptial preparations. The “White Wedding” video — featuring the singer and his then-girlfriend Perri Lister — was then in heavy rotation on the video music channel, and I must have seen it a half-dozen times in the 24 hours before the actual wedding took place.

Other songs by the same artist that I could have chosen instead: “Cradle of Love,” “To Be a Lover.”

[Late to the party? Here’s an explanation of 36 Days of Adrenaline.]

This entry was posted on January 10, 2011 at 2:40 pm and is filed under 36 Days of Adrenaline, Soundtrack of My Life, SwanStuff, That's Cool!. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.