Okay, I know I’m not the only fan of cyberpunk fiction, but I was afraid I was the only person who was a fan of Billy Idol’s ill-fated Cyberpunk CD until I ran across Michael Hanscom’s page extolling the virtues of the album.
This was the last studio album that Idol recorded, back in 1993, and it was a commercial disaster (its poor sales performance is probably one of the main reasons Idol hasn’t done another record since). Beyond poor sales, the album was just savaged by reviewers who tended to see the album as a pretentious effort to, as Hanscom puts it, “cash in on the new subculture that was gaining popularity.”
I received a reviewers copy of the album back when it was released, and it is one of the few albums I listen to regularly. The album’s title was probably a mistake in retrospect, but Cyberpunk holds up well with similarly inspired techno albums — I tend to put it and Information Society’s excellent Peace & Love, Inc. in shuffle mode and its a nice mix.
And Idol’s techno-tinged cover of Lou Reed’s “Heroin” is itself worth the price of the CD if you ever see it at a used CD shop.