“More surface and pop and bubble-gummy”: Michael Stipe on why Madonna was the opposite of REM
Which singer would you say was the opposite of REM, a band so bland that they are named for the phenomenon you experience having fallen asleep when trying to listen to them for more than five minutes at a time? A band who are less alternative rock than they are an alternative to rock.
Well, it would have to be someone who could sing, for starters, somebody who could counteract the maudlin melodies and drone of REM singer Michael Stipe’s nasal intoning, somebody fun, joyous and upbeat who doesn’t take themselves too seriously. Someone who has got both lightness of touch and depth of character and meaning, not just some kind of pseudo or faux-intelligentsia, who experiments with their sound and their style and mixes things up, instead of retreading the same sludgy, dirge-like backing on seemingly every song ad infinitum and ad nauseam.
Well, we don’t need to look too far, because Stipe himself has told us who the opposite of REM is, and she certainly ticks the boxes above, and more, and that’s Madonna.
Stipe was talking to Pitchfork in 2021 about a selection of songs that had been important to him over the years when he started discussing Madonna’s 2005 hit ‘Hung Up’.
“This was one of the first times ABBA allowed anyone to sample one of their songs”, Stipe said, “And it’s Madonna of all people, who I’ve always really admired as a lyricist and artist”.
Sounds like something of a backhanded compliment, and it’s really not such a wonder that the best pop act of the 1970s might have granted permission to sample one of their songs to the best pop act from the decade that followed.
Stipe then elaborated on ‘Hung Up’, which he thought was “just an incredible pop song”, and the fact that Madonna has provided the world, year after year, with great pop music, adding, “I think ‘Ray of Light’ might be my favourite song of hers, and I really love that album too. I love pop music. It’s all the same thing: REM were very earnest and sincere, and Madonna was more surface and pop and bubble-gummy. But I love a good pop song. It doesn’t matter where it’s coming from.”
Madonna certainly has always been more pop and “bubble-gummy” than anything REM ever made, but that doesn’t mean that her music is more “surface”. We can’t all write with as much depth and as much earth-shaking profundity as Stipe did when he came up with the words “Meet me in the crowd, people, people / Throw your love around, love me, love me / Take it into town, happy, happy / Put it in the ground where the flowers grow / Gold and silver shine”.
Give me ‘Like a Prayer’ over ‘Losing My Religion’, ‘Material Girl’ over ‘Man on the Moon’, and Madonna over Michael Stipe any day.
