Release date: 12/10/1988 | Length: 3:37 | Release: Up | SuE: #55 | UK: #6; US: #57

My night is coloured headache grey

There’s a lot of love for Daysleeper out there, and there’s certainly a claim to be made that this is R.E.M.’s best final-third era single. I won’t be making that claim, but it can be made. It served as the lead single from Up but wasn’t hugely indicative of the loops and drones that peppered the record. It was a bit of a bait and switch for listeners, who may have bought Up expecting a return to the maudlin Automatic for the People, but this was the most obvious and safe pick as it sounded like R.E.M.. Not much around this time did.

I hear Try Not to Breathe when I hear Daysleeper as both songs have a nautical beat, by which I mean they both drift and flow to a gentle beat, and ride a smooth wave in the chorus. I think. It makes sense in my head. Both open with a little jingle and there’s a tiny rise in the beat as the songs roll into their choruses. Peter Buck’s notes are elongated and curve around Stipe’s voice at its most vintage and clear.

The lyrics are both poetic and dry, reflecting on the disturbed mental state of a daysleeper and the mundanity of a night job. ‘My night is coloured headache grey’ is a grossly vivid line, whilst ‘I am the screen, the blinding light’ is a sad, damning eulogy.

Everything I have to say about this song is positive (though I find the ending to be a little too staged for my liking), but I will not make the claim that this is their best post-Berry single. Why? It’s not timeless. Daysleeper is a strange R.E.M. song in that it could be on a few of their albums. I’ve made the Automatic for the People case already, but it also has that breezy trajectory synonymous with Reveal. Yet it ends up being a curveball single from a curveball album.