REM Songs You Don't Know

I don’t write here much anymore, do I? That’s what you think! Summer approaches with frightening speed, and with it comes free time (I do NOT have an internship), and this is what I do with free time! Until then, I'm just a monthly blog writer.

Finals season approaches, but I haven’t written about music in a long time, so I’m just gonna tell you guys about some REM songs I’ve discovered that you probably don’t know. I know, kind of boring, but I promise every one of these songs is worth listening to.

Walk Unafraid – Up

Up was the first R.E.M. album to disappoint me, and I do still think of it as their first miss. Generally speaking, it’s not great. On an individual basis, Up deserves a far more thorough analysis.

Daysleeper and At My Most Beautiful are both incredible songs, and they’re accordingly popular, the two most streamed tracks on Up according to Spotify. Walk Unafraid lags far behind these two songs as well as tracks like Lotus and You’re In The Air; both of these tracks are alright, but I don’t see them ever measuring up to Walk Unafraid, which boasts more compelling lyrics and better (read: less obnoxious) production. Most of the tracks on Up follow a formula: relatively modern R.E.M.-style production with quirkier lyrics and weird sounds every once in a while in the background, which is why this album loses me most of the time. Daysleeper, At My Most Beautiful, and Walk Unafraid have a few things in common that make them outliers, but Walk Unafraid gets missed in assessments of this album because it’s less unique. I guess it’s better to characterize it as the best out of the remaining Up tracks, even if that fails to fully encapsulate how superior it is in comparison. 

The good parts of this song: Michael Stipe (per usual), the mood changes from the verses to the chorus, the moody guitar, and the lyrics. It’s an acquired taste because it comes off as overdramatic, but it’s a bright spot on a dim album. 

Leaving New York – Around The Sun

This song is like Walk Unafraid if it was even better, and it comes on an even worse album, Around The Sun. The second most popular track on the album is The Outsiders, featuring Q-Tip (who? I’m discovering in real time that this is a great song until he starts rapping on it) – this track has over 2 million streams. Leaving New York has over 20 million streams, a gap that represents the gap in quality between this song and everything else on one of the least-acclaimed R.E.M. albums of all time. 

Speaking of moody guitar, Leaving New York is full of it! The reason I say that this track is the better version of Walk Unafraid is the moody guitar and lyricism at the beginning that shifts into the uplifting chorus, done with far fewer musical cliches than Walk Unafraid (which is still an excellent track, to clarify).

You might have succeeded in changing me,

I might’ve been turned around

It’s easier to leave than to be left behind,

Leaving was never my proud

Leaving New York, never easy (it’s pulling me apart)

I saw the light fading out

I love thinking about the idea of that third line, “It’s easier to leave than to be left behind,” mostly because of how true it is. Initiative makes things easier, when you feel like things are within your control even if they would’ve happened either way, and I think Stipe articulates this beautifully. Is it really true, or is it helpful to think this way? Questionable. We may be driven to take actions we shouldn’t out of fear of being left behind/missing out on the opportunity to take control of the outcome, but we may also benefit from taking our hands off the reins occasionally, letting things happen to us. Just a thought, one that this song always makes me overanalyze. It’s a beautiful song. 

Try Not To Breathe – Automatic For The People

We switch, now, to what is perhaps REM’s most critically acclaimed album, and a track that gets overlooked despite having over 13 million streams (well into the lower half of the album in this regard). Rick Beato, a popular music theory/guitar YouTuber, listed Try Not To Breathe as the track that he thinks is R.E.M. 's best ever in a livestream filled to the brim with stalling and plugs for his paywalled music theory book. While I don’t think this song is even in the top 10 all-time for R.E.M., I can see how Rick arrived at this conclusion, even if he’s definitely wrong. Try Not To Breathe is in 6/8 time, featuring guitar that almost sounds like a strings section and consistent tambourine, but the time signature is the key to the whole thing. The song feels like going on a journey, outlined by Stipe’s haunting lyrics in an oddly upbeat context. 

I will try not to breathe

I can hold my head still with my hands and my knees

These eyes are the eyes of the old

Shiver and fold

…

And these are the eyes that I want you to remember

(I have seen things that you will never see) 

The entire track is entrancing and dark somehow, evoking thoughts of death and memory. Does the narrator want to be remembered? He “will try not to breathe” but he also needs “something to breathe.” It’s contradictory, hypnotic, and gorgeous in every regard, and although it’s not the best of the best, it’s definitely a masterpiece in an album full of masterpieces. 

Country Feedback – Out Of Time

I cannot express how disappointed I was to see that after Losing My Religion (over a billion streams), Shiny Happy People was the most streamed track on Out Of Time by a landslide. Over 316 million streams for a great song, one that does not even crack the top 5 best tracks on the album. After SHP, you get Radio Song, Half A World Away, and finally Country Feedback. 

My theory: this song makes people uncomfortable. It’s slow, incredibly raw, and packed with so much regret and remorse that it’s almost difficult to listen to sometimes. If it’s a bad day, this is not the song to listen to. There’s a case to be made for this song as the most masterfully written on Out Of Time, however, and that case becomes even more interesting when you discover that Stipe basically improvised the lyrics in one take. 

You come to me with a bone in your hand

You come to me with your hair curled tight

You come to me with positions

You come to me with excuses

Ducked out in a row

You wear me out

You wear me out

…

I was central, I had control

I lost my head

I need this, I need this

…

It’s crazy what you could’ve had

It’s crazy what you could’ve had

I need this, I need this

Sorry for the excessive lyrics, but this is an impossible song to describe through writing. Stipe said it was his favorite R.E.M. song of all time at a concert, and I can see why; Stipe loves dramatic songwriting, and this takes it to the extreme without being obnoxious or trite in the slightest. It conjures anger, regret, frustration and bitterness. There’s no hope in this song, and that’s what makes it beautiful, in a way. Hope comes in the morning, and Country Feedback was written in the dead of night. It’s hard to believe it’s on the same album as Shiny Happy People. Speaking of Out Of Time…

Belong – Out Of Time

So many incredible songs on this album, and so little time. Belong is hard to understand, and I definitely still don’t understand it, but I really disliked this track for a second. In the same vein as Radio Song, there’s just random narration and different voices on Belong that don’t make sense, perhaps taken even further on the latter song. The “verses” are just Stipe speaking about an apocalyptic event for a mother and her child, whom she repeatedly commands to “belong.” The lyrics could be interpreted in so many different ways that I’m not gonna bother trying to tell you what they mean; you can come to your own conclusions, if you can get over how weird this song is.

The “chorus” is just Michael Stipe and Mike Mills singing “woah, oh, oh” in harmony, and it sounds relaly beautiful and uplifting but it’s also just that, just beauty and no words. Usually, I would hate that. I need lyrics to sing along to, or something to draw meaning from, but I think the sound of the chorus is supposed to be extra context for the verse, which sounds dark and desperate somehow. I don’t really know, but it’s a brilliant song if you can get over its quirks. 

King of Comedy – Monster

A dramatic departure from albums of the past, R.E.M. fully committed to reverb and electric guitar on Monster. I could’ve talked about a lot of tracks on Monster that I love which go almost entirely unnoticed (honorable mentions: I Took Your Name, and I Don’t Sleep, I Dream) but King of Comedy gets the nod here because of how weird it is. I know, I know: why bother highlighting deep cuts  that aren’t even in-line with their other stuff? I think it’s important to acknowledge the weird stuff because R.E.M. is not and was never a normal band. They’ve always experimented, but they’ve almost always been successful anyway, which almost no other band can say. 

King of Comedy is a case study in weirdness. Stipe almost never leaves his lowest octave and the lyrics are almost impossible to understand without many, many listens. 

I’m not the king of comedy

I’m not your magazine

I’m not your television

I’m not your movie screen

I’m not commodity (all together now)I’m not commodity

Is this a point about Stipe feeling commercialized/objectified? Hard to tell, but the song is aggressive, lurching and electrifying. The background vocals almost make the track alone, but I just love the intensity and weirdness surrounding the track. King of Comedy takes a long time to grow on you, but once it does it’s what you’ll want to wake up to in the morning. 

Thanks for reading. Hopefully I’ll be back in the swing of things soon, but until then, read my softball (and other sports) stuff on the Cavalier Daily! 

Emory