Author: Chris Bickley

Moon River

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Release date: 1992 | Length: 2:21 | Release: Reckoning (1992 reissue) | SuE: #177

I’m crossing you in style someday

The year was 1992. R.E.M. had just become one of the biggest bands on the planet thanks to Out of Time, so it’s forgiving that this triggered a number of reissues of their hitherto ‘obscure’ IRS albums. Reckoning was fleshed out with five (5!) extra tracks, including a cover of one of the most well-known songs of all time, Moon River.

Originally the product of composer Henry Mancini and writer Johnny Mercer in the early 1960s, it’s been replicated by all sorts of artists including Frank Ocean, Barbara Streisand, and The Killers, in addition to the early favourites of Audrey Hepburn and Andy Williams.

The studio version for R.E.M.’s take is slightly comparable to Nightswimming, their gentle opus on Automatic for the People. Michael Stipe’s voice sounds weary and often drifts out of reach to the listeners, though that was par for the course in R.E.M.’s premature days. It’s tastefully done, and there’s no bombast to it, though it does conclude with a retro flurry of synthesizers not unlike something from the second half of David Bowie’s Low album. If anything it’ll make you furrow your brow.

What is interesting is that this was a live staple for the band during the mid-80s, and typically performed a cappella, with Mike Mills adding the harmonies. You can see a segment of this on the BBC’s classic Old Grey Whistle Test. It didn’t last long, but you’d often be able to hear a pin drop as the group abandoned their usual ramshackle energy for a minute or two.

Untitled

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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.r-1289867-1494082753-8846.jpeg

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.

Tongue

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Release date: 21/08/95 | Length: 4:13 | Release: Monster | UK: #13 | SuE: #132

Don’t leave that stuff all over me

Tongue was an odd choice to be Monster‘s final single (in the UK only), and even more surprising is that it charted at a healthy #13. For a song that went so strongly against the grain of the album and the times, this was a fair coup for the band, no doubt helped by the band’s return to touring and increased relevance.

r-1378274-1282152090.jpegMonster is utterly packed with guitar distortion, so Tongue is a refreshing about-turn from this, as Peter Buck plays only a supporting role with some mini licks after the chorus. Compared to the full-frontal assault that he performs on the rest of the album, less is certainly more on Tongue. It’s Mike Mills who’s the star here, playing an organ that holds together the whole track, one that’s described as “soulful” by producer Scott Litt in retrospect.

The single also continues R.E.M.’s sexual mood that worms itself onto so much of the album, though whether one deems Tongue as a result to be sexy or depressing as a result is a matter of opinion. It’s wholly sung in falsetto, and Michael Stipe quite frankly sounds amazing. When compared to some later work on Reveal that flirts with falsetto again, you can sense the thoughtfulness and purpose behind his voice on Tongue, as he sings from the perspective of a female always resorting to the whims of her lover. There are some rather blunt lines here that really don’t need much dissecting, and whilst the song might be sexy to some, it lacks the passion for that and simply comes across as horny.

One cool thing that the 25th anniversary edition of Monster included was a completely new album, in that Scott remixed all twelve tracks on the album to incorporate aspects that he feels missed out on its initial release. No song sounds radically different, but they do offer a new take on things. Mike’s organ and piano are turned up on Tongue‘s remix, and his Beach Boys-esque backing vocals are also included towards the end of the song. It actually makes the song aesthetically very pretty on the ears, but in the process of making the song sound sweeter, it doesn’t seem to fit the non-platonic relationships that exist in the song.

9-9

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Release date: 12/04/83 | Length: 3:03 | Release: Murmur | SuE: #105

Got to punch, Right on target

So much of R.E.M.’s oeuvre has been a stubborn refusal to fit into any prescribed genre. Whilst ostensibly they’ve always been a rock band, it’s never been possible to definitively pigeonhole them into one category, and debut album Murmur confounded the critics upon release in 1983. It was a mysterious and enigmatic record, difficult to unwrap and figure out its identity. There was not the aggression found with alternative rock, and it was all too obscured and obfuscated to be jangle pop. It was its own thing.

Post-punk was another label thrown at the band, and on the evidence of 9-9, it’s tough to say that this was unwarranted. Mike Mills’ opening bass line is an elegant thing, but then it’s all thrown out of the water with a spiky three minutes of sharp, unfinished guitar licks. It’s as if, for a few minutes, we’ve been transported to a Gang of Four record, with the angular sounds coming from Peter Buck’s guitar a sound of frustration and letting rip.

Maybe it’s the jarring music that also makes 9-9 one of the most impossible songs to decipher across the group’s whole discography. Kudos to whoever has accurately scribed most of Michael Stipe’s words down, since R.E.M.’s lyrics were never printed in LP liner notes back in the day, a practice that continued right up until Monster I believe. Harder still is interpreting them: ‘Twisting tongues, Got a stripe, Down his back’. There’s definitely words and noise being made from 1:43-2:03, and I’d hazard a guess that not even Michael knows what’s said.

This all leaves 9-9 in a rather precarious state. It’s the peak of Murmur‘s confusion and mystery, but the lyrics are so far flung on the cryptic cline that it’s such a challenge to even grab onto anything in the song. Nice as an anomaly on an already anomalous album, but weak as a standalone.

 

Blue

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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.86e91081

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.

Organ Song

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Release date: 05/02/93 | Length: 3:25 | Release: The Sidewinder Sleeps Toniter-1096722-1511644853-1564.jpeg | SuE: #267

Over the course of their 31 year career, R.E.M. recorded roughly 310 songs. That works out as ten songs a year, which at a very simplistic level could equate to 31 ten-track albums. Obviously this isn’t the case, as there’s b-sides, bonus tracks, covers, and all kinds of gubbins making up that number, but even still it’s a damn impressive amount.

This however means that there will be recordings like this, a b-side to Automatic for the People‘s 3rd single The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite. To return to the maths briefly, this album spawned six singles, and based on a rough approximation of three b-sides per single (added on top of the 12 tracks already on the album), this means that the band recorded 30 tracks in this short period. Therefore, I think it’s fair to let them off for including a rather dormant instrumental song, under the elementary name of Organ Song. 

It is the sound of an organ playing, no more, no less. I said I’d write about every R.E.M. recording, and that includes stuff like this. It’s actually objectively nice, as if it’s the soundtrack to walking through a cathedral. However, there is nothing incisive to say about this. There are numerous other songs like this tacked on to the singles of this era, so prepare for more insightful excerpts like this, such as the delectably-titled Fruity Organ, the side-dish to Man on the Moon.

The One I Love

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Release date: 08/85 | Length: 3:17 | Release: Document | UK: #16; US: #9 | SuE: #11

A simple prop, to occupy my time

The One I Love was such a pivotal song in R.E.M.’s career. Before this, they’d had a smattering of commercial success, but they’d yet to have that all-important breakthrough required to really infiltrate the consciousness of the masses. Cue a simple song that sounds nice, but in true R.E.M. fashion was anything but.

To look at this from the idle listener, this is a love song. After all, the opening line is a sweet dedication – ‘This one goes out to the one I love’. There’s no need to listen any further, just accept this for the sweet rocker that it is.02dec14fea7373ec16530406b24337d4.500x500x1

Now to look at the song for what it actually is, a bitter sideswipe at a former lover. The following line gives us a sense of this, and for those who kept listening after the opening line may be a little perplexed about how the song is to continue – ‘This one goes out to the one I left behind’. And then the killer line – ‘A simple prop, to occupy my time’. It’s brutal.

Even though without this song, the future history of the band would have been very different, this song isn’t a favourite of mine. It feels like a classic rock song, but not a classic R.E.M. song. It’s the favourite R.E.M. song of people who know little outside of Losing My Religion and Everybody Hurts, which isn’t to deny that it’s a great song, but to me it exists in a realm outside of the vintage R.E.M. tracks. The drumbeat/guitar combo to open the song doesn’t feel very R.E.M., if that’s really a thing. The only part of the song that’s truly great is Michael Stipe screaming ‘Fire’ during the chorus, and cryptic and unconventional refrain that’s symptomatic of what R.E.M. were.

It sounds like an 80s song and it’s difficult to shake off the fact that this song would’ve been on every US commercial radio back then. For a further taste of how 80s this song is, it reached the US Billboard top 10 when Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven is a Place on Earth took the crown. In the UK, it wasn’t until Out of Time made R.E.M. household names that The One I Love truly made an impact with a timely re-release.

Life and How to Live It

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Release date: 10/06/85 | Length: 4:06 | Release: Fables of the Reconstruction | SuE: #47

When you tire of one side, the other serves you best

First off, Life and How to Live It is such a cool title for a song. I’m not sure why it affects me like it does, but it just oozes coolness. It’s slick, and certainly does hold an interesting tale behind it.

In Athens, Georgia, there lived a man called Brivs Mekis who lived in a house of polar opposites. One side decorated in one way, the other on the contrary. The song effectively details this, remarking on how Brivs would live on one side until he got bored, and then move to the other area of his house: ‘Two doors to go between the wall was raised today,
Raise the walls to chide its flaws, the carpenter should rest’.r-11514453-1517690794-8925.jpeg

The opening chords of this song are a little misleading, perhaps in a similar vein to how I Believe opens with a deceptive banjo strum. We then get a moment of silence, before an almighty surge of energy bursts in and the track begins to really sound like vintage R.E.M. Probably the highlight of Life and How to Live It is that it’s such a turnaround from the typically grey feel of parent album Fables of the Reconstruction. The harmonies in the chorus are uplifting and the song feels, well, fun. Mike Mills’ bass work in the verses stand out and form a tight rhythm section with Bill Berry, and this song is a joy to hear.

Going back to the start of this entry, and that’s the title. The most curious aspect of the Brivs Mekis story is that after his death, hundreds of his books were found in his cupboards entitled ‘Life and How to Live’; a book described as being “at times racist and antisemitic” on the item’s eBay page. Yep, you can buy this piece of R.E.M. history for only $999, though quite why you would is beyond me. The book is obviously not authored by any of the R.E.M. boys, but I can’t imagine why you’d snap up a copy of an old man’s ramblings for any other reason, would you?

Begin the Begin

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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.

Inside the moral kiosk

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve always liked R.E.M. The rollercoaster of a track that is It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) was almost certainly the introduction for me, and many more began to slowly filter through like the rather obvious Losing My Religion and Man on the Moon.

It was only really a few years ago that I properly decided to delve outside of the singles, and only as recently as 2017 that I’d finally listened to all of their records. And then 2018 became the overload, even listening to an R.E.M. podcast for my sins. So it became this, a blog to unload all my thoughts and opinions on the band’s entire discography, as nobody I know cares enough to listen to me. 15 albums and over 300 songs, in most likely a slow, arbitrary order.

The thing I find so endearing about the band was their ability to confound the musical landscape in the 80s and adapt to adversity in the 90s, and managing to end on a high in the 21st century. Some of their work from their IRS era was inimitable, and it’s rare that it takes seven albums for a band to become the biggest on the planet. Contrary to popular opinion, I also think that some of R.E.M.’s most intimate and creative work is featured on the post-Bill Berry albums. It’s quite neat that R.E.M.’s career can be neatly chopped up into three equal(ish) segments: the IRS era (1980-1987, Murmur – Document), the global domination era (1988-1997, Green – New Adventures in Hi-Fi), and the post-Berry era (1998-2011, Up – Collapse Into Now). Each has five albums apiece, and you can sense some overriding themes amongst them all.

The entries here will be on each R.E.M. song I can find, with my facts and thoughts on display. Any data from the songs such as releases, year and chart position will also be included when possible, along with the ranking from this epic Slicing Up Eyeballs poll from 2017.

I also (rarely) write at Neon Loneliness – a similar journey through the Manic Street Preachers’ discography – and musicisalright – a scatterbrain musical ramble.