Release date: 28/07/86 | Length: 3:28 | Release: Lifes Rich Pageant | SuE: #8

Birdie in the hand, for life’s rich demand

It’d be remarkably uncouth of me to kick things off on any song but Begin the Begin. After all, it opens R.E.M.’s keystone album Lifes Rich Pageant, and it’d be pretty stupid to have it anywhere else on the album. So in terms of accuracy, Begin the Begin gets 10/10. And honestly, the song’s pretty good too.

It’s a sharp turn from the Michael Stipe of previous albums as you can actually kind of hear what he’s saying. Whereas lots of R.E.M. until this point had frequently sounded vocally loose, Begin the Begin is direct, disciplined and perhaps even sinister sounding at times. There’s a great contrast in the song from Michael’s slow and measured words at the start to him cramming in twice as much come the further verses.

Typically for an R.E.M. ditty, it’s politically charged, taking aim at capitalism and the power structures within: ‘Life’s rich demand, creates supply in the hand / Of the power, the only vote that matters’. What we have musically is quite an unusual structure, with the beat stopping and starting after every couple of lines courtesy of a Peter Buck mini-riff, and some guitar thrashing at the end.

Introspectively this is a great song to mark a more fine-tuned R.E.M., one almost ready for the commercial world. It’s a political statement but also one from the band themselves, and seeing as how Lifes Rich Pageant was the virgin album for many fans, it’s not surprising to see this song as being so well regarded.