Release date: 07/03/11 | Length: 5:46 | Release: Collapse into Now | SuE: #197

I am made by my times, I am a creation of now

One would’ve thought that Blue, essentially R.E.M.’s farewell song, would’ve left a bit more of a legacy than it has done. It’s the final track off their final album, but I suppose a reason for this is that it’s not a rip-roaring send off, but a muted and understated affair that blends Country Feedback and E-Bow the Letter. 

It has the delivery of the old Out of Time classic, a spoken word dialogue that feels off-the-cuff and more often than not reels off thoughts coming out of Michael Stipe’s head: ‘I don’t mark my time with dates, holidays, fate, wisdom, luck, karma, or whatever’s convenient’ and ‘Breathing with you, touch, change, shift, allow air, window open, drift, drift away, into now’ most prominently exemplifying this. You’re almost anticipating Michael singing ‘It’s crazy what you could’ve had’ after each line.

It’s thankful that the idle strumming of the guitar and reverb that hovers over the entire track pushes Michael’s vocals to the background, because otherwise it would feel too much like trying to resuscitate Country Feedback. Patti’s Smith’s brilliant reprise of her previous work with R.E.M. is not the only reason for the comparison with E-Bow the Letter, as the moody music is almost a mirror to 15 years previous. It’s also worth noting that in addition to the guitars and Patti Smith, there’s a lyrical throwback to the 1996 single: ‘Subway, 4am’ is an abridged memory of ‘The bus ride, I went to write this, 4am, this letter’, purportedly about Michael’s late friend River Phoenix.

Whilst the song doesn’t exactly feel melancholic, it’s certainly introspective and a fitting cast back to the band’s life and career. We see this most from the final lines that Michael Stipe sings on an R.E.M. track:

I want Whitman proud, Patti Lee proud, My brothers proud, My sisters proud, I want me, I want it all, I want sensational, Irresistible
This is my time and I am thrilled to be alive
Living. Blessed. I understand
Twentieth century collapse, into now

There we also have the album’s title, Collapse Into Now, immortalised in words, something that’s rarely seen in an R.E.M. song. It feels like a tying up of loose ends, and pronouncement that the narrator is complete and content, and ready to bring this part of one’s life to an end. Whilst Michael has always in the past drew a line between the singer and the song, this does come across as richly autobiographical.

One would now think that the song is over, but in fact Patti Smith delivers the final original verse heard on an R.E.M. album, as the guitars die down and replaced by a sparse piano passage and the song’s title repeated deep in the mix. Bizarrely enough, in James Franco’s music video for this (released over a year later), as Michael finishes off his last line, we’re treated to a glamour shoot with Lindsay Lohan for a reason that’s still lost on me.

…and we’re still not done. The song fades away only to be picked up again by a typical R.E.M. riff, which is in fact a return of the album’s opening song Discoverer. The fuses together works remarkably well, when one considers the stark contrast of the powerful harmonies of the opener, and the improvised fuzz of the swansong.

It’s not a song that has an immediate or lasting impact, but in the moment Blue is one of the stronger tracks from Collapse into Now, and for a song that effectively ends R.E.M. as a band, it’s difficult to see how they could’ve done much better.