Professor of Rock Examines Living Colour's "Cult of Personality"

 

Some songs really hit you from the first time that you hear it. They become the defining songs - or at least one of them - of an entire era. To me, Living Colour's "Cult of Personality" was a lot like that.

Now, I admittedly don't remember the first time that I heard the song. However, I remember that at some point - it must have been sometime in 1988, even though I actually associate this song more with 1989, for some reason - it started to be played frequently on the radio. Remember, we didn't have cable, so I never saw the video on MTV, and only saw it years later (well, more like decades later) on Youtube. 

I was blown away.

First of all, the song has a raw energy and intensity to it which really appealed to me at the time. Also, the lyrics were thought provoking, which was something that I always looked for (yes, even back then, although I was on the young end of my teenage years). Apparently - although I did not know it at the time - the video also was quite impactful. In short, this song was the complete package.

So of course, it was not long before I got their first album, "Vivid," although that was on cassette. It wore out within a couple of years or so. Yet, their second album, "Time's Up," was one of the first cd's which I ever got (probably among the first three, certainly within the first five). It may have been a gift, either for my birthday or for Christmas, although the details now are a bit fuzzy (Hey, you're talking about more than three and a half decades ago now!).

I continued to be a fan and obtained their albums over the course of the years. I was very happy when they released Collideøscope in 2003, which was their first album in a decade. Once again, they had some hard rocking stuff and intelligent lyrics at a time when I was very hungry for exactly those things. For some reason, it hardly seemed to make a blip on the popular musical radar at the time, although that remains one of my favorite albums from this band, and one of my favorite albums from that time period.

But I digress...

Back to the 1980's, and their big hit "Cult of Personality."

Yesterday, in one of his "Revelations" series, the Professor of Rock dedicated a video focusing on this song, with band members Vernon Reid and frontman Corey Glover elaborating on the thought process, how they came up with the groove, and quite a bit more. It's a great video, and recommended for any fans of the band or, for that matter, people who are not familiar with them. They're a great band, and this is truly one of the great and defining songs of the late eighties, a time that was largely otherwise dominated by pop and hair bands. 

Take a look:

 It’s BULLSH*T…I’m at HALF the TRAFFIC I Usually GET Cuz I DARED to COVER This SONG-Professor of Rock