His camera is destroyed and the Cyber-cops leave him unconscious on the ground, as they are busy trying to put down a riot elsewhere in the city. It depicted an individual who records the Cyber-cops beating a man, only to be noticed and attacked himself.

Adam In Chains (Music Video II) - 03:45Ī music video was created for the song, and was set in a dystopian future controlled by Cyber-cops (referred to as such by director Brett Leonard).

(Rock the system) Say it louder, the world still burns (Shock the system) Or I could be king, well, I gotta I say yeah, I say yeah, I say yeah, come on, baby

Yeah, well, you can rock this land, baby yow Here come the fire and my world burns stillĪww, fear, police and civil corruption, oh yeah It became a top-40 hit in six countries, including Idol's native United Kingdom, but did not make it onto the US Billboard Hot 100.Īh riot, rape, race and revolution, ah yeah The video and song were also heavily analyzed for the overtones of racial, sexual, and physical trauma presented within them by Thomas Foster, associate professor at Indiana University, in his 2005 book, The Souls of Cyberfolk.

Why do people need an actual riot to wake them up from something so fundamentally wrong with the system, when it is plainly clear that the world that has been burning with the fires of inhumanity since the beginning of history?' Critical reception

'Idol wrote the lyrics for SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM after witnessing the LA riots that were triggered by ''not-guilty'' verdicts in last year's King beating trial. Within the biography section of the custom floppy disk included with the press pack edition of the Cyberpunk album, the song was described by Mark Frauenfelder: Idol explained for MTV News, that he had originally created the song with an entirely different set of lyrics, but upon witnessing the Los Angeles riots of 1992 on television, he immediately rewrote and recorded them that day.

Shock the system intro