Billy Idol – Hot In The City

todayAugust 11, 2019 801 9

Oldies '80s

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“Hot in the City” – Single by Billy Idol from the album Billy Idol
Released: May 27, 1982
Songwriter: Billy Idol
Charted: No.13 in UK, No.24 in US

“Hot in the City” is a song by Billy Idol, released as the lead single from his 1982 self-titled debut album. It charted at No. 23 in the US and No. 58 in the UK. A remix of the song was released in 1987 and reached No. 13 in the UK.

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An early Billy Idol song, the punk rocker wrote it himself. It’s all about running wild and free in New York City on a summer night, something Idol did plenty when he moved to New York from London in 1981 after his band Generation X split up. Idol found himself once again moving to an unfamiliar city to follow his dreams: in 1976 he left his hometown of Bromley, England and moved to London. This song reflects his optimism and assurance:

Don’t be afraid of the world we made
On a hot summer night

There are two versions of the video. The first version (the 1982 version) starts off with a girl walking into a record store. She picks up a Billy Idol record and the song starts to play. The video features scenes from New York City, interspersed with stock footage of nuclear bomb tests. The second version (the 1987 version) depicted Idol’s girlfriend Perri Lister bound to a cross; it was banned by MTV.

video

This was Idol’s second single as a solo artist, following his cover of “Mony Mony” (an earlier single, “Dancing With Myself,” was credited to “Billy Idol and Gen X”). That one stalled at #107, which Idol blamed on the packaging: the cover art showed him as a full-fledged punk rocker with spiked hair and his trademark snarl. This apparently dissuaded American program directors, most of whom were unfamiliar with Idol, from giving it a chance. So, the “Hot In The City” single was issued in America with no Billy on the cover, just an overhead shot of a city street.

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The ploy apparently worked. The song got plenty of airplay and rose to #24 in America, clearing a path for Idol’s successful solo career.

Many of the lyrics aren’t that easy to understand, but Idol is very clear when he sings the line, “I can really feel the heat now… New York!”

Idol’s record company, Chrysalis, created customized versions of the song with “New York” replaced with the names of various other cities, and those versions were sent to radio stations in those cities, giving them custom versions of the track for their local listeners. So if you were in Kentucky, you might hear Idol sing, “I can really feel the heat now… Lexington!”

Billy Idol - Hot In The City

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Vă oferă de la hit-urile anilor ’70 până la muzica de astăzi. In fiecare zi, 24 de ore de muzică!

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