Retro Video of the Week: "Eyes Without a Face" by Billy Idol

Today, the 2025 nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were announced.  It's a pretty good list: Bad Company, The Black Crowes, Mariah Carey, Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Billy Idol, Joy Division/New Order, Cyndi Lauper, Maná, Oasis, Outkast, Phish, Soundgarden, and The White Stripes.

It's been a while since we've had a Billy Idol song for Retro Video of the Week, so to honor his nomination, I'm going with his 1984 hit "Eyes Without a Face," off of his second solo studio album, 1983's Rebel Yell.  Inspired by the title of a 1960 French horror film -- Les Yeux Sans Visage, which, as you guessed it, translates to "eyes without a face" -- and his life in New York in the '80s and sexual indiscretions on the road, Idol wrote a brooding, ballady song that wasn't the typical uptempo punky song that audiences had grown to expect from Idol.

Whatever he did, it worked.  "Eyes Without a Face" became Idol's first Top 10 (or Top 20) song in the U.S., reaching #4 on the Billboard Hot 100.  It also reached the Top 10 in Canada, Germany, and New Zealand, and was Top 20 on the pop charts in six other countries (including #18 in his native UK).

I was today years old when I discovered what the haunting female backing vocals were saying.  It was Idol's then-girlfriend Perri Lister, who was singing "Les yeux sans visage."  That makes me like the song even more.  And the video has a fun little story.  It was a marathon three-day shoot, and on the plane ride after the shoot, Idol discovered that his contact lenses had fused to his eyeballs, requiring surgery to remove them and three days of wearing bandages over his eyes until his scraped corneas grew back.  So for a few days, he was -- wait for it -- a face without eyes.