Impact
Sometimes cited as the first true funk song, "Cold Sweat" was recognized as a radical departure from pop music conventions at the time of its release. Jerry Wexler recalled that "'Cold Sweat' deeply affected the musicians I knew. It just freaked them out. No one could get a handle on what to do next." Cliff White described it as "divorced from other forms of popular music." Some musicians criticized it as simplistic. Fred Wesley recalled that before he joined Brown's band he "was very unimpressed with . . . It only had one change, the words made no sense at all, and the bridge was musically incorrect." Critic Dave Marsh, while acknowledging the song as pivotal, has argued that "the post-'Cold Sweat' de-emphasis of melody" was partly responsible for a "decline in the number of genuinely memorable songs" in the years since its release.
Brown would continue to develop the rhythmically intense, harmonically static template pioneered on "Cold Sweat" in later recordings such as "I Got the Feelin'", "Mother Popcorn", "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine", and "Super Bad".
Like many of Brown's funk hits, "Cold Sweat" has been extensively sampled by hip hop DJs and producers.
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