The R.E.M. song Michael Stipe wrote to outdo Nirvana
The heart and soul of R.E.M. always lead back to the lyrics of Michael Stipe. While it might not have been easy trying to discern what he was trying to say half the time, Stipe’s words painted abstract pictures of what it was like to feel like a misfit in the 1980s, making his fans feel a little less alone on tracks like ‘Talk About the Passion’ and ‘Radio Free Europe’. Even though Stipe had his style down to a science by the 1990s, he was still pulling from what the grunge scene had to offer.
When working on the group’s later albums like Green, R.E.M. started to look like elder statesmen of the alternative scene, with artists like Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder counting them as significant influences for them. While the rest of the grunge scene was turning up their guitars and screaming out in pain, Stipe was taking a completely different approach on the album Automatic for the People.
Being far more subdued than their previous effort, Stipe had started to take a world-weary approach to his lyrics, painting pictures of people who were either entering their twilight years or going through a massive midlife crisis on songs like ‘Try Not To Breathe’ and ‘Sweetness Follows’. While most of the album was about extending a hand to those who needed a friend, ‘Man on the Moon’ took a few cues from what groups like Nirvana had done.
Written as a tribute to comedian Andy Kaufman, Stipe’s lyrics evoke images of days gone by and how simple life had been before coming back to reality where nothing is cool and everyone is concerned about where to go. Even though the lyrics are pretty dark, the end of every verse was a subtle in-joke about Kurt Cobain’s lyrical style.
From day one, Kurt Cobain never concerned himself with deep lyrics, penning songs like ‘Breed’ with words that could seem incoherent from one line to the next. While many grunge fans had trouble understanding what Cobain was saying half the time, Stipe noticed the overabundance of Cobain using the word “yeah”, especially in the song ‘Lithium’, where that one word occupies the entire chorus.
When working on ‘Man on the Moon’, Stipe had attempted to beat Nirvana at their own game by including as many “yeahs” as he could into the verses, ending off every line by saying it four times. Since the rest of the lyrics had a melancholy tone, Stipe’s “yeahs” represent his dissatisfaction about not wanting to hear the constant barrage of information on the radio and TV anymore.
While Stipe never meant the song as a jab, Cobain operated on a parallel track, simplifying the sound of Nirvana’s songs and emphasising acoustic material on their sublime live album MTV Unplugged in New York. Stipe may have been toying with the mechanics that went into Nirvana’s material, but there’s a good chance that Nirvana may have ended up pulling ideas from songs like ‘Man on the Moon’ had Cobain survived to do another project.
