Retro Review / Living Colour’s Cult of Personality: Bringing Punk to the Masses

Before bands like Ministry, Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana broke through and conquered radio pop with punk / industrial music, Living Colour showed the wide reach of punk with Cult of Personality in 1988. Even though Ministry, Nirvana, L7 and Nine Inch Nails had recordings prior to 1988, it was the runaway success of Cult of Personality that showed the music industry how punk could evolve beyond a niche genre. In my opinion, Cult of Personality is one of the most important songs of the late 80s and throughout the 90s.

Musically, Living Colour takes the hair metal of Poison, Def Leppard, White Lion, Dio and The Scorpions and turns it up to 11. They took the classic punk arrangements of Dead Kennedys and Black Flag and filled them out with more traditional guitar, deeper bass and keyboard riffs. This gave the classic 4/4 punk jam more warmth, depth and…most importantly…more radio appeal. The tinny ultra aggressive 80s style punk had almost no radio appeal; however, Living Colour’s use of keyboard and bass gave some pop aesthetics to their sound. The key movers of this sound within this track are bassist Muzz Skillings and drummer Will Calhoun. Moreover, the classic guitar solo and riffs from Vernon Reid had punk edge, but also resembled aspects of thrash metal. In that way, Cult of Personality was a witches’ brew of punk, jazz, dub and metal that took the world by storm.

The genesis of the track came from Vernon Reid’s notebook where he wrote “Look in my eyes / What do you see? / Cult of personality.” The classic hook that would make the song a timeless classic that hits just as hard now as it did in 1988. Nirvana would learn this lesson as well, which was to keep the punk edge, but add in a pop hook…Smells Like Teen Spirit I’m looking at you. That was the genius of the track. Reid wove in the social activism and political messaging associated with punk, but gave it a pop hook. Much like Bikini Kill, which was an all woman punk group tackling feminist themes, Living Colour was an African-American punk band tackling issues of society, race and class. In a predominantly white male genre, having an African-American band generate that amount of success shook up punk and paved the way for bands like TV on the Radio.

Living Colour would go on to have a well received sophomore record and went on to make music into the 2020s; however, nothing would live up to the success and impact as Cult of Personality. I remember listening to this track when it came out and feeling excited for such a new sound. This is a perfect song and worth having another listen.

Listen to Cult of Personality