The song Michael Stipe wanted to rewrite: ‘I would have made it stronger’
Given how influential he and his band were to the modern indie rock world when they first emerged, it should go without saying that Michael Stipe and his work with REM are up there with some of the finest songwriting of all time.
When the band first emerged in the early 1980s, their approach to rock music was radically different at the time. Neither sitting firmly in the post-punk wave that had been dominant towards the end of the previous decade, but far from being your typical rock group, the Athens, Georgia, band were quickly labelled as being ‘college rock’, owing to the fact that they had a reasonable amount of success in getting airplay on college radio stations.
However, it didn’t take long for the masses to realise that they were far greater than a niche band only appealing to college kids, and by the end of the ‘80s, by which time they’d released six albums of high quality, many other guitar-led groups were citing them as a major inspiration for their sound. Acts like Pixies and Pavement would probably have never stood a chance of succeeding if REM hadn’t laid down the groundwork for them, and there’s little doubt that they have maintained this influence over the modern indie rock scene.
Their longevity is something that they ought to be noted for, given how, even towards the end of their time together, their status as being some of the finest songwriters in this realm didn’t show any signs of waning. There may have been a handful of underwhelming records, such as Around The Sun, but to be fair to them, everyone is allowed to miss every once in a while, especially when a group is as consistent as REM have always been.
I’ll regularly find myself defending records like Up and Reveal as being late-period REM albums that are tragically overlooked and unfairly criticised for not being a patch on their early work, and even though they’re also definitely not the best examples of the band’s abilities, they’re still miles better than what their contemporaries were able to produce.
Ever since their breakthrough, Stipe’s lyricism has been the main focal point of the band’s output, and his ability to convey so much emotion through poetic turns of phrase and wry humour has always delivered to the highest standard.
However, while Stipe himself isn’t usually the sort of person to be overtly critical of his own work, there’s one song from their 1994 album, Monster, that he feels a little underwhelmed by, and if he were given the chance to revisit it, he’d do some tweaking and make it considerably stronger.
During a 2019 interview with BBC, Stipe argued that he doesn’t like to criticise his own work, stating: “I never talk about the songs I don’t like because it might be someone’s wedding song,” but, he did note that one particular track from this divisive ninth album could have been better than it was, and that it felt rushed. “‘King of Comedy’, I could have put a bit more back into that one and made it stronger.”
It’s an interesting take, and by no means a terrible song, but Monster is an album that came during one of the toughest periods for the band that almost led to them breaking up, so you can perhaps understand why it might be a tough listen for him all these years later.
