Release date: 07/11/88 | Length: 3:10 | Release: Green | SuE: #120

This light is here, to keep you warm

From an album that gave us silliness (Stand), seriousness (World Leader Pretend) and sweetness (You Are the Everything), it only seems apt that Green ends with one of the most wholesome moments in R.E.M.’s great discography. It was the biggest indication of the group’s internal experimenting, switching around instruments and producing what sounds like a jam.

The title of the song is actually shrouded in a little mystery. Most copies of the album do not list the track on the back of the record, and the disc has a blank space after the track number. This has led to numerous different titles, mostly along the same line: ‘Untitled Eleventh Song’, ’11’, ‘Untitled Eleven’, but the vast majority of places entitle this Untitled.

Peter Buck takes over on the drumkit, and produces a primitive yet charming beat that an accomplished drummer such as Bill Berry probably wouldn’t have been capable of. Mike Mills adds a fun organ jolt as the song restarts, and it just feels like such a happy song. The whole vibe of the Mike’s overlapping harmonies and Michael’s clean vocal takes conjures up an image of the band at their most cohesive and tightly-knit.

The lyrics are a message to Michael’s family whilst on the road, hundreds of miles away from them: ‘I stayed up late, to hear your voice’, ‘I made a list, of things to say…All I really want to say, hold her’. So many songs have been written about life on tour and the chasm that opens up between home-life and road-life, but usually they’re tinged with anxiety and depression. Untitled is a flip of this, seeking optimism and appreciation of family ties when they seem to far away. It’s slightly criminal that this was Green‘s lowest ranking song on Slicing Up Eyeballs’ public poll of R.E.M. songs back in 2017.