527. Billy Idol / Idol Songs: 11 of the Best. 1988. 3/5

Sometimes - not always, but sometimes - it is just far easier to go out and buy an artists' Greatest Hits album than to get all of their albums, because in the long run all you want are two or three songs. Of course, in this day and age, you can just go to iTunes and buy only the songs you want! However, in a previous age that wasn't possible.

Thus the reason I own this CD. Because in the long run, there was only two songs of Billy Idol that I HAD to have in my collection. One is “White Wedding”. The other is “Rebel Yell”. Sure, they now appear more as 80’s cliches and the kind of radio fare that could be found in the day. But to a middle-aged 1980's teenager they are both still great songs, no matter what you think of the rest of his career. They still bring out the fist whenever they come on the radio, or someone's stereo, or more disturbingly at club karaoke.

As to the remainder of the album, all of his ‘hits’ are here, and the majority of it is still quite listenable. Songs such as “Flesh For Fantasy” and “Hot in the City” and “To Be A Lover” are still catchy enough that I can find myself singing along to them, and not always when I am alcohol-induced. For me however, he was always hard pressed to beat the success of the first two tracks I mentioned, and in many ways that has always coloured my perception of his later work. In the long run, the average rating of a greatest hits album can only reflect somewhat poorly on the majority of available material.