Living Colour - Cult of Personality

How many songs can you name that tore up the landscape of rock and metal and left an imprint that inspired some of the greatest rock acts that came after it?

Sure, there are genre firsts and there are genre peaks. We’ve had musicians who rewrote the definition of talent or eccentricity, or sometimes both at the same time. But cast your mind back, if you can, to the late 80s, when hair was still pretty big and diversity in rock was so difficult to find and you’ll discover a band that changed everything as we knew it.

Enter Living Colour, the four-piece band from New York City that blew the doors off on their way in and raised the roof on their way out. Their funk and jazz leanings in the early days did feature in many of their records in small doses, but for the most part made way for a new “funk metal” sound that bowled over anyone smart enough to stand too close. For a time, it seemed like everything they put out was solid gold and in that pile of ingots we find this week’s Rock Song of the Week, the inimitable Cult of Personality.

The song was a commercial tidal wave, rolling over everything in its path and it’s impossible to not see why – an insanely catchy, politically charged anthem that hooks you in from the word go and doesn’t let go even after the final notes have stopped ringing out. There’s no surprise that Tom Morello cites the song as one of the reasons he formed a band and we all know how that went.

Suffice it to say, Cult of Personality was a game changer in many more ways than one. It opened doors for the band that would have previously been completely inaccessible to them (though there were rumours of friends in high places, too).

If you’re a wrestling fan or anyone with a little bit of common sense, you might have already heard this song thousands of times. But there’s never an excuse to not open yourself up to one more go round with this one, because frankly it should be the law that it gets played in every teenagers bedroom at least once. Remember, “quiet” is just another word for “rubbish”.