This month on Twitter, @sotachetan hosts #BrandedInSongs – which is a head-on collision of my personal world of music and my professional world of branding and advertising. The challenge is to simply pick a song with a brand name in its lyrics or title. I added one more criteria to my picks, which is this: the songs themselves must be as iconic as the brands they mention. No filler here.
Time keeps ticking. Years go by. Yet, an eighties hard rock / new wave blend icon like Billy Idol has managed to stay relevant and evolve. Last year, he and longtime collaborator Steve Stevens did a live performance of “Eyes Without A Face” for SiriusXM. The rendition was priceless and has garnered millions of views. Stripped down and reworked with a little flamenco flair, somehow the song was still 100% Billy Idol. Few artists have been able to pull off that level of staying power. Still, Billy’s reign of the eighties is what matters most. And “Rebel Yell” might be the epitome of that era.
The Billy Idol snarl and howl is ever present on this title track. The Billy Idol blend of hard rock and new wave is also ever present – from the monster guitar riffs that turbo-charge the verses and chorus to the synth accents that occupy the treble range. “Rebel Yell” is a clinic on doing it the Billy Idol way. It’s a powerful reminder that he wasn’t just a fixture on the eighties music scene. In many ways, he also helped shape it.
“I live in my own heaven. I collect it to go at the 7-11.”