‘Nightswimming’: How R.E.M. forged the greatest nostalgic song ever made
Allow me to paint a picture for you. The year is 1991, and R.E.M. has been part of the alternative rock scene for nearly a decade. For any pop act, no one is guaranteed more than three years in the limelight if they were lucky, but Michael Stipe guided the alternative icons through the 1980s and even managed to bubble under the radar of the hit parade during that time. That’s a lot of good luck to have come their way, but being a musician means losing innocence along the way, and with ‘Nightswimming’, Stipe tried to get that wistful energy back.
Looking back on Automatic for the People as a whole, though, many of its best moments are about asking questions about what happens after youth. Whereas most people have an almost romantic relationship with members of the ‘27 Club’ in music, this record seeks to explore the outcome of making it past that age and whether or not Stipe still had something to say.
In fact, tracks like ‘Sweetness Follows’ and ‘Try Not To Breathe’ might be more poetically constructed, but ‘Nightswimming’ is the finest because of how much pure beauty is captured in those few minutes. None of the common R.E.M. tropes can be found outside of Stipe’s voice, along with an elegant piano part and some orchestral touches provided by Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones.
Then again, how does one talk about the vast poetic intricacies of a man who was barely comprehensible throughout the first half of his career? Well, the short answer is that you don’t. I’m not going to sit here and try to convince anyone that there’s a concrete story behind this song because that’s not how Stipe saw it.
He was convinced that the audience interaction with his lyrics was one of the most important pieces of his craft, so allow me to offer my own take on what this lyric sheet could mean. The title already implies some innocent trip to the riverside, but hearing Stipe describe everything from the moon being low in the sky to forgetting his shirt by the water’s edge conjures up nights out with friends as a teenager that will forever be ingrained in your memory.
Even though Stipe might be making his way back to those old stomping grounds, he knows that it will never be the same again. The most heartbreaking line of the entire song is ‘These things they go away/replaced by every day,’ which only gets more tear-jerking once you start getting older and try to convince yourself that that wasn’t, in fact, a grey hair in the mirror the other day.
If anything, the song is just a gripping tale about the fear of all those friends slipping away. Sometimes, it’s just the passage of time of life taking you in different directions, but there’s always that hope that things will one day work themselves out.
After all, even Stipe sings about the possibility of two moons side-by-side in the sky. Star Wars comparisons aside, the thought of the entire universe ensuring that not even natural satellites can be alone speaks to the human nature that everyone has. No matter how vicious we seem, none of us wants to be alone, and even if Stipe doesn’t know who he’s singing to, it’s like he’s extending a hand to help anyone who thinks that they don’t have that much time left after those glory days have come and gone.
Keep in mind that not everyone is going to have those same experiences Stipe had when listening to the song, but they will no doubt remember the sentiment of the time that they had when life seemed so much simpler. I transparently do not have that same riverside memory he sang about, but that’s where the raw beauty comes in. I have my version of those evenings at the water’s edge as everyone reading this does, but none of them are going to be the same. Because ‘Nightswimming’ isn’t just a tune about good-natured fun. It’s a bottled-up version of nostalgia for memories that are tucked away in the back of your subconscious.
