This remains one of my favorite music videos of all time. It’s a delightful combination of familiar and absurd and you can catch a lot of things over re-watch. The song itself doesn’t much lend itself to a narrative-based music video, so it’s the perfect opportunity for a theme-based one and it hits the mark. It on the one hand gives you a feel for pool parties you may have experienced in the past with a very familiar set of people that signal their identities in a matter of seconds (the woman who gets splashed deserves special attention as someone whose mannerisms so remarkably convey the lack of injustice there even as you know nothing about anything else about her). Some kids swimming just like the old days, then a dude just sitting there with a monkey. The guy on fire manages to be another thing going on as people dance a kind of dated dance.
Their video for Bad Day is also remarkably good.
You can tell that they watched a lot of local news reports in prep for this one. It strikes the right notes the same way the morning team does on The Onion News Network. Peter Buck is kind of stiff, but nothing is perfect. Just the sort of encapsulation of experiencing the sort of badness that makes you feel like a bleeds-leads news report. It was written in 2003 in response to George W Bush and Iraq, but it strikes a much wider vibes as the best songs often do. For a while it lived in my mind as an ode to some chaotic personal things that went on in 2003 in my own life, but as those memories and the feelings with them is distanced, the song pops in my head when I’m having one of those days where nothing seems to be going right and tomorrow seems even more bleak.
I was going through an REM phase when I was creating the Hit Coffee blog and trying to decide a name. Two finalists were “Best Imitation of Life” (pulling from the REM song and also Ben Folds Five’s “Best Imitation of Myself”), and Worst Joke Ever. That song was never made a single as far as I am aware and never got a proper music video of it, but here they are singing it.
It was written in 2003 in response to George W Bush and Iraq, but it strikes a much wider vibes as the best songs often do.
I remember reading the liner notes from their greatest hits album that finally had it on there (remember liner notes? What were we thinking?) and I wanna say that they wrote it earlier than that…
From Wikipedia:
Ah, so the first version of the song was from Life’s Rich Pageant and it was an outtake.
Then they finished it in 2003.Report
Dang, kinda sorta honestly didn’t realize REM made a song after 1989. Saw them at ND (of all places) in, well, 1989.
First video makes me think that Michael Stipe has taken his dance vibes from Morrissey… but in a janky American sort of way. If you know what I mean.Report
Automatic for the People wasn’t *BAD*. Sure, “Everybody Hurts” was execrable, but the rest of the album had some serious high points.
Try Not To Breathe? That was a *GREAT* song.Report
No, You’re right… Mr. Google shows me that I really tapped out in 1992. Definitely didn’t buy Monster. But in my mind they were a mid-80’s band — then they totally sold out dude.Report
Automatic ended with “Find the River,” which was the song that finally enabled REM to get their hooks into me (I could play guitar to it). “Everybody Hurts” is a fantastic song, and also an easy tune to practice your finger style to (that’s what SHE said).
My first introduction to REM was “Losing My Religion,” which led me to ignore them for a very long time.Report
The B-52s ‘cover’ on Out of Time in 1991 left me fatally conflicted.Report
It’s a great album. I had some friends play Sweetness Follows at my wife’s memorial service.Report
Nice. Great song, excellent choice.Report
It looks like I saw them two days earlier in Champaign. I think Stipe once described the three stages of R.E.M. as underground college act, stadium pop stars and band making music for fans of the first two groups to grouse that it wasn’t as good as their older stuff. This could be fake news, but seems like something he would have said anyway.Report
Back in the olden days we counted our ‘likes’ in person every night for 5 months in a row… for a decade.
[Psy lauging as Gangnam Style approaches 4.5B views]
Re: apocrypha… yeah, sounds like Stipe.
Meta comment: The 80s bands spent their energy being metaphorically political… except Natalie Merchant. Like, you kinda thought one thing, but could totally pretend it was another thing.Report
I’ve had various R.E.M. songs stuck in my head since reading this story, so I’m now listening to _In Time_ trying to chase the demons away.Report