So why is Living Colour’s Time’s Up on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
I’m going to make a wild proclamation right here and it is this: Time’s Up, Living Colour’s second album, is one of the more underappreciated hard rock albums of all time.
Exhibit A for said wild proclamation comes in the form of two of the most insanely great rock songs of all time: “Type” and the title track, “Time’s Up.”
Let’s start with “Time’s Up,” which kicks off the album with the cacophonous sound of a bunch of clocks chiming at once before an explosion of guitar rages off and the song rockets along at a dangerous pace. Corey Glover’s vocals and Vernon Reid’s sizzling guitar work are just chef’s kiss great.
But then! But then things go next level when the tempo slows down into a dark, hard funk rock groove that we can imagine the likes of Rage Against the Machine drooling over.
Meanwhile, “Type” doesn’t waste any time in delivering a scintillating rock/metal groove, as Glover sing/raps a screed against the dangers of mindless corporatism.
Corporate religion
Televangahypnotism
Suffer ’til you die
For the sweet bye and bye
What’s wonderful is that “Type” then transitions into a much more melodic mode that gets the repeated line everything is possible and nothing is real pleasantly rattling around in your head for weeks at a time.
At 15 tracks that runs to nearly an hour in playing time, Time’s Up shows a surprising range, though maybe we shouldn’t be all that surprised, given that Vivid features such songs as the reggae rock of “Glamour Boys” (which I dig the hell out of).
While Living Colour is often quite serious in its messaging and intent, they show off a sense of sly humor in delivering a message about the exploitation of Black music and culture with “Elvis Is Dead” (and dig the featured rap section from Little Richard!).
Elvis está muerto!
I haven’t talked about how songs sequence from one to another on albums as much as I should have, perhaps, over the course of the best 1,000 albums ever, but I’ll call out how effectively the final Elvis is dead! on this track sequences into the opening riff of “Type.” Just glorious.
Oddly enough, of all the songs on Time’s Up, the one that I have the strongest memory related to is “Solace of You.”
It’s very different from the rest of the album, first of all, with its gentle Caribbean rock rhythm and personal lyrics. It’s also flat-out gorgeous, and noteworthy too in how much musical ground Living Colour can cover in one album.
The memory happens to be as mundane as it is specific. For reasons I can’t explain, I recall that it’s the song that was playing on my clock radio one morning during high school when I woke up. And this ties to an era that, once again for reasons I can’t explain, I was the cashier at my high school’s breakfast bar-type setup (which makes it sound vastly fancier than the reality), which I would man during homeroom.
Here’s a deep pop culture pull from the very early 1990s: it always drove me crazy that the crime drama, New Jack City, starring at the time A-List actor Wesley Snipes, Mario Van Peebles, Ice-T, and Chris Rock (in a very dramatic role!), did not include “New Jack Swing” on its soundtrack. Huge miss, says I!
Not everything on Time’s Up completely works, but there are many worthy efforts to push into new territory. For example, this short interstitial song, “Ology,” is a wild instrumental number that shows off how talented this band is.
Some stats & info about Living Colour – Time’s Up
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock Music, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, Alternative Metal, New York Bands
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 3.5 out of 5 stars
- When was Time’s Up released? 1990
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #137 out of 1,000
Living Colour’s Time’s Up on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from Living Colour’s Time’s Up that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
How you gonna stop the clock when the well runs dry?
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.