How Living Colour’s “Cult of Personality” Broke Barriers on MTV and Rock Radio

There are only a few dozen songs that came on the radio and rearranged our brains; they smacked us upside the head and changed the way we looked at the world. Today, we have the two principals from Living Colour behind one such song: Cult of Personality. It exploded onto MTV and Radio in the late 80s with an epic riff and a revolutionary message that had us seeing double. Corey Glover and Vernon Reid behind this force of nature song tell the story of Cult of Personality, a song that became a thinking man’s hard rock… At first, MTV wouldn’t play it until the biggest star in the world, who loved their music, threatened MTV, if they didn’t put this classic song in heavy rotation, he would hold back his new #1 Video. They gave in, and the rest is history. Coming up, a song that had so many famous soundbites in it, the band had no clue if they could get it released. Find out how they did it next on Professor of Rock. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .