New subject: "White Wedding" by Billy Idol

This is, of course, not meant to be part of those posts about love songs. That's done. But I wrote this for the message board and thought I should post it again here. So here we go.

Everyone knows this. Never really impressed me much, but like a lot of songs, you kind of laugh at it because you secretly like it, and it simmers in the back of your mind for years before it can finally be admitted, flower, and die through your open obsession. It's like when everyone realizes who you're attracted to before you do.

Like "The Boys of Summer," this is an art piece on its own when taken as a music video. The sound and visual are deeply related and this should be viewed as a film in its own right. It's a great horror movie: solid music, lots of sex, action, and old buildings. The video's even tinted. Bonus.

The imagery is so obvious in this, yet so perfect. Look at the nails being driven into the coffin when Billy arrives at the church with his bride. Err, duh. But beautiful. Many layers: sex and death. If a troubled rocker wrote it, it would be pored over. And Billy's so tight, so desirable, so badass, he can't even arrive with his chick. He appears like a vampire, with those red eyes and dead skin inside the motorcycle helmet, pulling up behind her quaint but somewhat erotic automobile. And she's in the car trapped by all the mirrors. He only seems to exist in glass: the rear view, the church window. I guess that's what vampires do when they're rock stars: anything.

I'm going to indulge myself by continuing my obsession from the love songs and time. It's all Paglia aping, anyway. What I'm saying is, I can't get over how he appears like a mummy in the church, but stylized. He's not just trapped in rags, they're lightly draped over him. He's the only pharaoh to actually come back from the dead. He's sexual, but looks so young, which adds to the damage and the horror overtones. That and he looks like a Nazi, which is important, because obviously he's trying to overtake you. He wants to be your sexual commander. The best part is when his image is superimposed on the stained glass and he crashes through the window on his bike. This is the realization of every kid's dream: to take adult authority and stamp your own image all over it while destroying it. The motorcycle is every kid's dream toy: a gun, a guitar, a tattoo, a skateboard. And inside the church is his cult, which everyone secretly wants when they're stuck at the stage he is. He is president, dictator, lord, and savior. These are the teen ideals of pop music. Yin and yang as chain smoking angel criminal.

Billy speaks to me because he looks young, thoughtless, like a beast, but he's saying a lot. "There is nothing safe in this world." "It's a nice day to start again." "Take me back home." When he says the latter, he looks quite pained. In some ways he's not just wounded, but deliriously fucked up: he seems to like the idea of the white wedding sarcastically, like he realizes all this innocence and sanctity is a joke. But he partakes because he wants it, and can't admit it to himself. Purity is another adult ideal he wants to break apart--that's why he's going to take the girl and break through her stained glass windows, too. He's experienced too much in a short life, which is what so many of the great pop music symbols try to embody. Hence Cobain's "Rape Me" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit," Brian Wilson singing to us about the symbolic infinity of the colonial lands, Lou Reed's raking over the Factory for hot coals to drop in his songs, as if he lived it all himself. Hence "Death Trip" by the Stooges. One guy to play up to this and then give us a brilliant example of actually living through it is Lydon. "Death Disco." But, I digress.

All of these ideas are made more powerful by how casually they're thrown out there in "White Wedding," and also by the music. The song has the cool surf intro with the dance music beat and early 60s ballad lead guitar melody. It's an incredibly clever meshing of the past (he uses that old archetypal pop love, the Little Sister) with some forceful sexual abuse from the present. And in the end he's stuck in that little house with the exploding wedding presents. Nothing lasts forever and as long as we're here to talk about it, it hasn't ended, either. We're always trapped in the world of the living while conceptualizing the world of the dead. There is no escape. And you wouldn't want to.

Some people see this as just a cheesy, nostalgic 80s token to drop sarcastically into conversation, but it's a pretty exciting, even moving, piece of work. It speaks more to me than the more acceptable form--Ian Curtis--and shouldn't be taken lightly. But, like I said, sometimes we laugh at the stuff we know is real.