White Wedding
'White Wedding' needed several chart runs to become a hit -- bubbling under in 1982, No. 36 on the Hot 100 in 1983, No. 6 in the UK in 1985 -- for a song Billy Idol built on his sister's shotgun wedding.
By Song Reviews · September 24, 2026
Greatest of All Time!'White Wedding' needed several chart runs to become a hit -- bubbling under in 1982, No. 36 on the Hot 100 in 1983, No. 6 in the UK in 1985 -- for a song Billy Idol built on his sister's shotgun wedding.
Chrysalis released “White Wedding” in the UK on October 22, 1982, as the second single from Billy Idol’s self-titled debut album, and it did not arrive as a hit. In the US it first entered the Bubbling Under chart, peaking at No. 10 there on November 27, 1982. Only after a 1983 re-release did it reach No. 36 on the Billboard Hot 100 (July 2, 1983), alongside a No. 4 peak on the Mainstream Rock chart. A 1985 UK reissue tied to the Vital Idol remix album finally put it at No. 6 in Britain, and it had reached No. 1 in Canada along the way.
The song’s origin is more specific than its goth-wedding video suggests. Idol has said it was inspired by the wedding of his pregnant sister Jane, and that he then gave it a twist: he imagined “a crazed brother somewhere who was like Clint Eastwood and was coming back to murder whoever had defiled his sister,” as he told Louder. Guitarist Steve Stevens supplied the riff and producer Keith Forsey the drum-machine sound that gives the track its stiff, marching pulse – the band-and-machine combination that carried Idol from British punk figure to MTV regular.
The video, directed by David Mallet with Idol’s then-girlfriend Perri Lister as the bride, helped the song along in the US, though MTV initially censored a scene in which Idol places a barbed-wire ring on her finger. What the release history shows is a record that worked by persistence: three separate chart runs between 1982 and 1985 for the same song.
Greatest of All Time. A song the charts needed several tries to catch up with, powered by a riff, a drum machine and a very dark wedding.
Hero image: “Billy Idol” album cover art, Chrysalis Records. Used under fair use for editorial commentary.