Michael Stipe’s two favourite R.E.M. songs from the 1990s
As the 1970s drew to a close, four University of Georgia students, Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe, enlightened the new decade with a distinctive brand of rock music. Having named themselves R.E.M. in reference to the dream-associated sleep stage, the four-piece debuted their influential sound in the 1981 single ‘Radio Free Europe’.
The debut single’s jangling rhythm, courtesy of Buck’s seminal guitar work, struck a chord with the local youth and had captured nationwide imagination by 1983 with the arrival of Murmur, the band’s seminal debut album. That same year, The Smiths debuted a similar sound in the UK, joining R.E.M. as central progenitors of jangle-pop and the more ambiguous indie-rock genre.
After Murmur, the band released a studio album each year until 1988’s Green. Each release was met with a warm reception both commercially and critically, but the fractious lights of fame and lethargy of relentless performance began to take their toll on Stipe. After touring in support of Green, R.E.M. took a step back from touring for several years to take stock and channel more focus to studio work.
“We had done ten years of touring,” Stipe reflected in a 2018 conversation with The Guardian. “I was tired, adrenalised to my eyeballs and skinny as a rail. In 1989, we went around the world three times. My haircut during that tour should indicate my state of mind: it was the four worst haircuts of the 1980s combined into one.”
Fortunately, Stipe’s coiffure crisis wasn’t disastrous enough to repel the band’s expanding fanbase. In 1991, R.E.M. released Out of Time, their most internationally successful album, buoyed by ‘Losing My Religion’, ‘Shiny Happy People’ and ‘Radio Song’. These veritably accessible singles transitioned the group from a popular alt-rock act to a stadium-packing global force.
In his feature with The Guardian, Stipe picked out ‘Country Feedback’ as his favourite song from Out of Time and one of his two favourites of the 1990s. “Just a degree of confidence, for someone who is wobbly and insecure,” he said, referring to the swirling ballad. “I allowed sentimentality to creep in, which is something I really run away from. I don’t like cheesy, maudlin, overly sincere.”
Although R.E.M. took a break from touring through the early 1990s, they maintained popularity with the dour and reflective masterpiece Automatic for the People and its more energetic and extroverted follow-up, Monster. Although the former stands the test of time as one of the band’s finest LPs, Stipe picked out ‘Strange Currencies’ from the latter as his second favourite of the ’90s.
“It was our version of rock music,” Stipe said of Monster. “U2 had come out with Achtung Baby, where they had allowed themselves to become theatrical; there was an element of that. Grunge had happened, and there was something very freeing in that as well. So we went for something completely different, something more circus-like and over the top. It was glam rock, basically. It was going back to T. Rex and Mott the Hoople and pulling it forward into where grunge was, post-Achtung Baby. Those are movements and records that really impacted me and made me think: ‘Who are we within all this? The landscape has shifted, and where do we stand?'”
Continuing, Stipe revealed how INXS singer Michael Hutchence inspired ‘Strange Currencies’. “He raised the bar for both myself and Bono,” he said. “The middle eight of that is completely taken from INXS and from Michael. He was such an amazing rock star. I’m really a little embarrassed by the term rock star. When I met Andy Warhol, he called me a pop star. I said: ‘No, I’m the singer in a band.’ He said: ‘No, you’re a pop star.’ ‘No, I’m not.’ OK, well, he won. As it turned out, I’m a pretty good pop star. I’m not a very good rock star – I don’t have the voice for it. I think it’s an odd thing to reach for, to be a rock star.”
Listen to R.E.M.’s ‘Strange Currencies’ below.
