Who sang the backing vocals on REM’s ‘Me in Honey’?
It’s often forgotten just how long REM had been slogging the indie circuit before their early 1990s explosion on the mainstream charts.
You can basically chalk up REM’s two halves as before and after 1991’s ‘Losing My Religion’. Forming ten years previously in Athens, Georgia, the founding quartet orbited the same jangly college rock underground as the likes of The Replacements or Hüsker Dü, forming an indie counter to the day’s stale new wave synths or hair metal buffoonery dominating MTV. While garnering a cult following, REM would persist as a firmly alternative outfit, before Document’s ‘The One I Love’ would chart a course to the popshere in 1987.
It was Out of Time four years later that stood as REM’s serious breakthrough, however. While superstardom awaited from follow-up Automatic for the People, REM’s seventh album effort landed during a pitch-perfect moment in music’s rapidly shifting upend, their accessible pop universalism winning a happy presence on the Billboard Hot 100, while enjoying an underground pedigree amid the grunge explosion, Kurt Cobain an open fan of the band’s melodicism and lending an influential shape on pieces like ‘About a Girl’ and ‘Dumb’.
To those familiar with Out of Time, a recurring backing vocalist forms a distinctive character throughout their US and UK album number one, plucked from punk’s early burnish only a handful of years before REM’s introduction to the music world.
So who sang the backing vocals on ‘Me in Honey’?
The closing track on Out of Time, frontman Michael Stipe alleged that ‘Me in Honey’ was written in response to 10,000 Maniacs’ ‘Eat For Two’ two years earlier, shifting the lyrical perspective on pregnancy toward the male point of view and exploring all the emotional turmoil that often lies with scant outward expression.
The basic guts of ‘Me in Honey’ were worked out by bassist Mike Mills, amounting to a very brief sketch of a one-chord riff, later demoed with Peter Buck’s guitar and Bill Berry’s backing drum beat, all amounting to little more than 30 seconds. Stipe saw something in the piece, however, prompting a pang of lyrical inspiration once Buck had added a second chord that led its way to the chorus.
During the sessions, fellow Georgian Kate Pierson was roped in to lend her powerhouse vocals to several tracks. A decade earlier, Pierson was one of the leading forces in The B-52’s, the beehived singer injecting a dose of zingy kitsch to the day’s new wave across essential records from their eponymous debut to Wild Planet.
Then, in 1989, Cosmic Thing landed, unleashing the dizzyingly silly pop gem ‘Love Shack’ to global top tens and thrusting the group to a renewed chapter of popularity.
In the afterglow of The B-52’s’ late-career smash, Pierson lent her powerhouse lungs to REM’s ‘Shiny Happy People’, the sugary slice of sunny optimism that gave ‘Love Shack a run for its money for spirited cheer. Credits would also include Out of Time’s ‘Near Wild Heaven’, ‘Country Feedback’, and ‘Me in Honey’, imbuing the introspective stomper with its extra, uplifting heft.
