Cult of Personality

Last night, or more accurately early this morning, I had one of the strangest experiences of my entire life.

At approximately 1:50 AM I was brushing my teeth and also thinking about that song where the chorus goes "Cult of personalityyyyy." I didn't know whose song it was but I kind of wanted to listen to it, it had something of an interesting guitar riff, however I was just about to go to bed and didn't feel like going to the trouble of looking it up on Youtube and delaying my sleeping. So at about 1:55 I lay down on my bed, iPod in hand. I usually listen to music for a while before going to bed, it helps me go to sleep, music hath charm to soothe the savage breast. (Do I have a savage breast?) Anyhow, while scrolling through my library I noticed a band I didn't recognise, called Living Colour. I assumed it was just one of those artists I had one song by from a mixtape or something. I clicked on the unknown entry, and it revealed to me a song called Cult of Personality. At this point I was confused, maybe it was a different song or a remix or something. But I listened to it out of curiosity. Sure enough, it was that fucking song, the one I thought about while brushing my teeth. I had absolutely no recollection of when or how it got on my iPod. I am still almost certain I didn't put it there, or at least don't remember doing so. I immediately decided this needed further investigation.

The first hypothesis I formed was that I somehow had a mental connection to my iPod and could put songs on it by thinking about them. That would make no sense, but it would be cool. So I thought pretty hard about a different song I don't have on my iPod, Dancing in the Dark by Bruce Springsteen. I went to check but it wasn't there, so that hypothesis was defeated. My next idea was that God had something to do with this, putting some kind of Immaculate Song on my iPod, born without the original sin of me stealing it from the internet, because I needed to hear it so I could have a spiritual experience or some kind of conversion maybe. So I listened to it again for clues. The lyrics weren't particularly pertinent to my life or anything, they were just about how people get obsessed with celebrity, and I don't think I'm obsessed with any celebrities nor am I one myself. It wasn't even that good of a song. It's OK I guess, but 80s funk metal really isn't my kind of thing. Faith No More is better. So the God hypothesis was out too. This left but one explanation: Some kind of spectral manifestation. A ghost, a ghost with gay-ass taste in music. I decided today to check on Wikipedia to see if I could figure out anything about the band that would lead to a clue.

None of them are dead or anything. Most of them are still in bands. They are all black. The lead guitarist is from Britain, which explains why they use the British spelling of "colour." The album Cult of Personality is from was their debut album. It went double platinum. Good on them. Apparently they were discovered by Mick Jagger. None of this, however, explained the presence of their damn song on my iPod. I decided I need to take steps to contact one of the band members and see if they could tell me anything. Actually I just think it'd be fun to talk to someone kind of famous, but also ask them about this. Apparently Corey Glover, lead singer, still lives in New York. I looked in the white pages, turns out there are only two Corey Glovers in New York. Called one of them, who denied he was Corey Glover and I think I also woke him up. Oops. The other number was in Manhattan and I'm pretty sure he lives in Brooklyn. So then I looked up Vernon Reid, the guitarist, and I found his email. I sent him an email about this. He's got some explaining to do.