It’s the end of R.E.M. as we know it and I feel okay. Well, okay, maybe, not okay, maybe, I feel a bit nostalgic at the news. I have been an R.E.M. fan for many years so the news this week that they are, in their words, “calling it a day” and ending their run as a band on their own terms stings a little, even fourteen years after drummer Bill Berry left the original line-up.
Granted, R.E.M. is not everyone’s cup of tea. Their lyrics can sometimes be hard to understand and sometimes those same lyrics can be hard to comprehend after you string all the words together. It’s not often been the lyrics that made me buy-in on R.E.M. though. R.E.M. has always been solid musically, whether it’s been songs driven by a piano, a mandolin or a smash crash splattering bash collision of drums and guitars. Sometimes, their songs sounded stark and foreboding while other times their songs jumped out from the speakers like an out-of-control party next door. From a vocal standpoint their often complicated dream-like harmonies, especially in selections from their early days, contrast yet still blend together enough to fit seamlessly like unsuspecting puzzle pieces. Michael Stipe, who sings lead on most of their songs, also has a very unique style, delivering one song mumbling like a slow-talking Southerner, another like a venom-spitting cobra and others like a slightly restrained lounge singer. The early gems “Radio Free Europe”, “Talk About the Passion”, “Fall On Me”, “Superman”, “Driver 8”, “Finest Worksong,” “Can’t Get There From Here” and “Green Grow the Rushes” are all songs I never grow tired of hearing.
Over time, R.E.M. became the next big thing and they released hit after hit. Soon “Losing My Religion” (the title is a great Southern phrase that had almost fallen away with my grandmother’s generation until this song revived it), “Everybody Hurts”, “Drive”, “Man On the Moon” (the lyric “Newton got beaned by the apple good” always cracks me up), “Nightswimming”, “Stand”, “The One I Love” (“a simple prop to occupy my mind” is such a great turn of a phrase), among other hits, all became pop songs of the finest order.
I have to admit though after the Automatic for the People album, R.E.M. kind of fell by the wayside for me. I don’t think I bought any of their music after the Monster album which featured the songs “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” and “Bang and Blame”. While Monster had some stuff I liked, it wasn’t compelling enough to make me want to buy the next album when it was available.
Maybe they changed. Maybe I changed. Maybe we all changed.
With the news of R.E.M. ending their run, I’ve spent parts of the last few days listening to a lot of R.E.M., old stuff and new stuff, reacquainting myself with an old friend and discovering some of what I missed or forgot while we were apart. While I mostly gravitate to the older stuff, I have realized there’s some newer stuff that I really enjoy. And maybe that is why R.E.M.’s breakup causes me to pause for a moment and wonder what might still lie ahead for them, if they only saw it through a little longer. It makes me wonder what I might like from them if they only continued because they can still produce music I like, and frankly, I can’t say that about a whole lot of new music these days.
Maybe there would be another ”At My Most Beautiful”. Here the lyrics and Stipe’s delivery are almost embarrassingly intimate: “You always say your name, like I wouldn’t know it’s you, at your most beautiful” and “I’ve found a way, a way to make you smile.” Then there’s other stuff I find myself playing again and again, songs like “The Great Beyond”, “Love Is All Around”, “Everyday is Yours To Win”, “Leaving New York,” “Animal,” “Walk It Back” and the delicate, aching “Oh My Heart”, written about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, but with lyrics sentimental enough to make a person miss any place and any people once known and left behind.
It’s sad in another way to me, as R.E.M. is associated specifically with Athens, GA and more generally to Georgia at large. Being from Georgia yet no longer living there, whenever I hear an R.E.M. song, I always think of Georgia and most often think of the northeastern and north central parts of the state where R.E.M. is most often identified. While the music R.E.M. played was unique to them, the harmonies they belted out always felt like a part of the state to me. The songs they were performing weren’t songs brought over from the old country but those harmonies were just similar enough to be something, style-wise, that might have been heard years before through those same hills and valleys. So, to me R.E.M.’s music was just an electrified and updated extension of the family-style harmonies passed down through the years from the area’s early settlers to the front porches and backyards of my people all the way down to the bluegrass groups I heard on the radio and the Southern gospel quartets I watched Sunday mornings on TV’s Gospel Singing Jubilee. R.E.M.’s music just felt, or maybe more correctly, just sounded like it belonged from where it emanated.
R.E.M.'s music also belonged to our generation, more specifically, the college kids of the 1980s, at least initially. You remember us…Polo cologne, Levis’s denim jackets, skinny ties, big poofy hair, neon colored clothes, Raybans. In my opinion, no other musical group, with the exception of U2, really consistently defined the college experience of those in the 1980s as much as R.E.M.
Maybe that is another reason why R.E.M. calling it quits hurts a bit. It’s just another sign of growing older, growing further away from that time and those songs, those people, those moments.
My all time favorite R.E.M. song is “Don’t Go Back to Rockville”. I can’t exactly tell you why it is my favorite. Sometimes you just can’t locate the words for why something is the way it is. It just is. To me, “Don’t Go Back to Rockville” is like sweet iced tea, I just like it. While it’s my favorite R.E.M. song, I have avoided listening to that song since hearing about R.E.M. deciding to finish up on their own terms. I have listened to the old favorites and the newer ones I somehow let slip by as I grew older. Still, soon enough I will crank up “Don’t Go Back to Rockville” and when I do I know I will stumble across a set of lyrics that will make me pause and wax more nostalgic wondering if there will still come some day when R.E.M. will be back…”I know it might sound strange, but I believe you’ll be coming back before too long.”
