The R.E.M. song Michael Stipe called “my take on Leonard Cohen”
In 1980, four University of Georgia Students, Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe, formed R.E.M. At the time, local band The B-52s were all the rage with their danceable new wave sound; meanwhile, R.E.M. brought “alt” to rock for the very first time, debuting 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 seismic debut LP.
Prescient of The Smiths, R.E.M.’s early sound was gradually developed alongside the colourful whim of frontman and lyricist Michael Stipe. Following Murmur, the band released a studio album each year until 1988’s Green.
Although the band maintained its melodic guitar and bass rhythms throughout the 1980s, they experimented with a heavier sound, especially in Document cuts like ‘The One I Love’ and the Wire cover ‘Strange’. This nod to the previous decade’s punk scene would prove instrumental in the establishment of 1990s grunge and indie acts, including Radiohead, Nirvana and Pavement.
When creating his top 50 albums of all-time list in the early 1990s, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain named R.E.M.’s 1988 record Green. Although the LP is best known for its leading singles, ‘Orange Crush’ and ‘Stand’, it stands as one of the group’s most balanced and consistent offerings.
Stipe recalls this period of the late 1980s as a turning point for the band. “I didn’t know the bass player made the low notes until the second album – I was that naive about music and how it’s made,” he revealed in a 218 interview with The Guardian.
Continuing, the frontman explained how as the band’s chemistry developed, so too did their stage presence. “We didn’t have LED screens, so I started dressing in brighter clothes on stage. I started allowing gestures to be larger, which I wouldn’t in the early 80s because I thought it was fake and stupid and popstarish.”
During the interview, Stipe was challenged to pick out his eight favourite R.E.M. tracks. Most of the selections hailed from the band’s lauded and prolific spell in the early-to-mid-1990s, but his one pick from the ’80s was the Green cut ‘World Leader Pretend’.
Explaining his choice, Stipe recalled the song as a proud lyrical breakthrough. “It was the first song I felt so confident about that we printed the lyric on the sleeve, allowing people to read it before they heard it,” he beamed. “I realised it was my take on Leonard Cohen. I was trying to be as smart as he was in his lyric writing.”
Over the subsequent decade, Stipe would reach a peak of lyrical consistency in the band’s 1992 magnum opus Automatic for the People. Four years later, he was joined by esteemed punk poet Patti Smith for the stream-of-consciousness masterclass that is ‘E-Bow the Letter’.
Listen to R.E.M.’s ‘World Leader Pretend’ below.
