Living Colour’s track “This Is The Life” off its 1990 album Time’s Up couldn’t be more timeless. So the rock band brought back the tune along with a new music video Saturday (June 6) that highlights the protests following George Floyd’s unlawful murder.
The track offers a glimmer of hope in a seemingly hopeless world infected by racism, praising how one can turn things around for themselves despite the powers that be working against them. And in a montage series of clips from old live performances and peaceful protests that turned violent when police charged their cars at civilians and threw tear gas, Living Colour echoes its 30-year-old words that people have the power to take charge of the life they’re living.
“Times Up was released 30 years ago and sadly we’re still fighting the same fight… If you don’t like the current agenda, it’s your responsibility to go out an VOTE!” the group wrote on for the YouTube video description.
On May 25, a Black man in Minnesota named George Floyd died from asphyxiation after a white police officer knelt down on his neck for nearly nine minutes, his death later being ruled a homicide and the officer receiving an upgraded charge of second-degree murder. The viral video demonstrating the cruel, racist treatment of Floyd sparked these protests over the last two weeks, but Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid described what happened as the “most depraved exercise in contemptuous disregard for human life I’ve ever seen” in a tweet from last Sunday (May 31).
Watch Living Colour’s restored “This Is The Life” music video below.
