Cult of Personality (Living Colour). 40 Songs for 40 years (1990)

1990 was my first year of college, and my roommate stocked our dormroom with one important piece of gear: a CD player. While the format had made its debut eight years earlier, it was just beginning to go mainstream.

CDs cost twice as much as cassettes, so it was a significant commitment to change formats. Years later, I squinted at the fine print on the Wonder Stuff CD The Eight Legged Groove Machine (released in 1988) and saw this: "ENJOY YOUR C. D (you payed enough)" (sic). And this from a record with a track called “It’s Yer Money I’m After, Baby”. 

But the superior convenience of CDs convinced me to switch formats. My roommate graciously agreed to let me use his stereo, and that inaugurated an expensive 20 years of CD collecting.

The first CD I bought was Vivid by Living Colour, largely on the strength of their hit single Cult of Personality. The song has since become a minor classic, although the muddled politics of the lyrics grated on me even then. But still, the musicianship is top notch, and Vernon Reid’s solo sounds as great to me now as it did back then. 

Not long after this was released, Billy Joel evidently decided to get into the "song that lists a bunch of stuff from history" game by releasing the insipid (even for him) We Didn't Start the Fire. He ditched the opening quote from Malcolm X, stripped out the politics, and chant/shouted his way through a song with all the moral force of a grocery list. This idea is so bad that it became a #1 hit and and earned Joel a Grammy nomination.