10 Artists That Ended Their Career With One Album

In the era of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, the music world didn’t have any real use for someone like Billy Idol anymore. While his usual cartoon punk schtick may have worked in the MTV era, it was going to be a miracle trying to sell that same guy to the crowd that were losing their minds over grunge bands coming from Seattle. It wasn’t impossible to make that leap though…it’s just that Billy took it in the wrong direction on Cyberpunk.

Before we even start this, we need to address the Fly-shaped elephant in the room. Around the same time that Billy was starting to make his glitchy electronic rock sound, U2 had already beat him to the punch and launched themselves into the new decade with Achtung Baby, which left Billy looking like he was trend chasing. The main difference between both of these albums is tone, and Billy is really out of his depth on this one. Whereas Bono was playing up the phoniness that comes with being a larger than life rock star, Billy seems to be taking this very seriously, as if he’s trying to get people to swoon over his dystopian tale of living in a Blade Runner-esque society.

Even though there are still some decent Billy Idol songs thrown into the mix like Shock to the System, the main idea of the album just throws two different genres together without trying to integrate them in any way, which makes the whole project sound incredibly disjointed. You can tell that Billy really wanted to make this work and reinvent his career, but when you have only a partial understanding of what you’re doing, it becomes more pretentious than groundbreaking.