Living Colour – Flying | 2026InSongs #163

Flying is one of those Living Colour songs that can fool you at first. The band is mostly remembered for heavy guitars, funk grooves, political lyrics and songs like Cult of Personality, but Flying takes a very different road. It is lighter, almost beautiful, and has this strange feeling of being happy while something terrible is happening at the same time.

The song was released in 2003 on Collideøscope, the band’s fourth studio album and their first album after a ten-year break. The album came after Living Colour had reunited and returned to recording with a very different world around them. It is also an album heavily influenced by the atmosphere after September 11, 2001, and Flying is probably one of the most interesting examples of how the band approached that subject without making a traditional protest song.

Living Colour and Collideøscope

Living Colour had already built a very particular identity before Flying existed. The New York band mixed hard rock with funk, punk, jazz and soul and did not seem very interested in staying inside one genre. Vernon Reid’s guitar could sound heavy and aggressive one minute and funky or experimental the next, while Corey Glover could move from a powerful rock voice into something much more soulful.

The band had a huge moment with their debut album Vivid and Cult of Personality, followed by Time’s Up and Stain. After Stain, the band broke up in the 1990s and spent years doing other things before coming back together. Collideøscope arrived in 2003, ten years after Stain, which makes the album feel almost like a second chapter for Living Colour.

The album itself is all over the place in a good way. There is hard rock, funk, reggae, experimental sounds, electronic textures and songs that feel almost like completely different bands. Flying sits right in the middle of all of this and gives the listener a moment to breathe before the album gets noisy again.

What is Flying about?

This is where the song gets interesting.

The story is about a man who is apparently trying to get the courage to ask a woman named Carmen out. Then something happens and suddenly he is falling through the air. The lyrics describe him jumping from a window and writing the song while going down, with the chorus treating the situation almost like an enjoyable flight.

It sounds ridiculous when you describe it like this.

And that is exactly what makes the song so strange.

The first time you hear it, the chorus can almost feel optimistic. The sky is clear, the sun is shining and the narrator talks about having wings. But when you understand what is actually happening, the entire song changes. What sounds like freedom becomes a very dark situation.

There is also a very particular contrast between the romantic story and the disaster around it. He was gathering the courage to ask Carmen out and suddenly they are holding hands, but not in the way he imagined. The song turns a romantic moment into something tragic without completely changing its happy musical surface.

Flying and September 11

The song becomes even heavier when you place it inside Collideøscope.

Living Colour returned to the studio after September 11, and several songs on the album deal directly or indirectly with the political and social atmosphere of that period. AllMusic describes Flying as a light, soaring funk song that becomes disturbing because of the perspective behind it. The contrast is very Living Colour: beautiful music carrying something much darker underneath.

The song has commonly been interpreted as a fictionalized story connected to the World Trade Center attacks. The narrator is falling from a building while the lyrics deliberately refuse to describe the situation in a conventional tragic way. Instead, the song keeps the bright language of flying, sunlight and wings.

That contrast is probably the most important part of Flying.

It is not just a sad song with a happy melody. The music almost forces you to experience the confusion of the character. Something horrible is happening, but the brain is still trying to make sense of it.

The sound of Flying

Musically, Flying is much softer than the Living Colour songs most people know.

The guitar is still there, but Vernon Reid does not need to turn every moment into a heavy riff. The groove is more relaxed and the bass and drums give the song a funky movement underneath the vocal. Corey Glover is also much more restrained than on some of the band’s heavier material.

That is important because a more aggressive arrangement would make the story too obvious. If Flying sounded like a traditional metal song, the listener would immediately understand that something bad is happening.

Instead, the song almost smiles at you.

Then you listen to the words.

And suddenly that smile becomes uncomfortable.

This is also a good example of why Living Colour is difficult to put into one genre. Reviews of Collideøscope have described the band moving between hard rock, funk, reggae and experimental music, while other critics have highlighted the combination of Glover’s soulful vocals and Reid’s guitar work. Flying takes that mixture and puts the lighter side of the band in front.

More Living Colour songs

If Flying is your entrance into Living Colour, these are three songs I would listen to next:

• Cult of Personality – probably the essential Living Colour song and the track that introduced many people to the band.
• Love Rears Its Ugly Head – a much funkier side of the band with a catchy groove and one of their most accessible songs.
• Open Letter (To a Landlord) – one of the songs that shows the band’s socially conscious side and the combination of rock with a much deeper message.

These songs also make it easier to understand why Flying feels so different. Living Colour never really had only one sound. The band could be aggressive, funky, political, experimental or surprisingly gentle depending on what the song needed.

Why Flying stayed with me

Flying is the kind of song that gets better when you know what is underneath it.

At first it can sound like a relaxed funky rock song. Then you pay attention to the story and realize that the entire thing is built around a terrible moment. The sunny chorus, the romantic situation, the idea of having wings and the relaxed groove all become part of the joke, but it is a very dark joke.

That is probably what I like most about Living Colour. They can make you listen to a song for the music and then give you another reason to come back because of the lyrics.

Flying is not the first Living Colour song I would recommend to somebody who has never heard the band. But once you know Cult of Personality, Time’s Up or Love Rears Its Ugly Head, this is one of those songs worth going back to.

It is a strange little song about flying, love, fate and a terrible thing that happens in the middle of a beautiful day.

And sometimes those are exactly the songs that stay in your head.