R.E.M.

R.E.M. – “Nightswimming”

(dall’Lp “Automatic For The People”, 1992)

Despite its playful title, inspired by the slogan of an Athens soul food restaurant, “Automatic For The People” is by far the most brooding and funereal album by R.E.M. The retreat into ballad form is now complete, in a sort of ideal continuation of the previous album. But this time there are no shiny happy people around to clear the mind. Because themes like grief, memory and death are scattered liberally throughout lyrics that had never been so dark and introverted. An almost chamber-like austerity merges with stately orchestral arrangements courtesy of John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin and Knox Chandler of the Psychedelic Furs. But amid the album's melancholy grooves there's also room for a photo album of memories, yellowed snapshots of a time when Michael Stipe and co. weren't rock stars yet, just a Perfect Circle of friends, tucked away in the small-town Georgia setting of a welcoming little Athens. The college town where the future R.E.M. had become the main draw of the late-night parties that packed the old abandoned church on O'Connee Street right up to the bell tower. “Nightswimming” captures the definitive image of that period, through an almost cinematic sequence.

Swimming Under the Moon

They were just four guys, a group of friends and boisterous nights out, which ended with swims under the stars in the calm waters of Ball Pump Lake. “It was a few miles out of town, we'd go there with a few friends to swim naked after the bars closed. There was us, Paul Butchart, DeLoris, Love Tractor and the girl 'Camera' was about, Carol Levy.”

Carol, a photographer and friend of the band, died in a car accident on the very fateful date of April 12, 1983, the release day of "Murmur". R.E.M. dedicated "Camera" to her. She often collaborated with the group and also shot the back-cover image for "Radio Free Europe". Her death marked almost a watershed in R.E.M.'s history: the end of the age of innocence, the days of college hangouts and wild parties on Oconee Street, and the arrival at a more mature, self-aware dimension. "Between 1979 and 1981 there were only 50-75 people interested in this music. We'd go to the parties, we'd go to the clubs, and we'd go to the Ball Pump, where there were always some of those same 50 people." It was the Perfect Circle of the days of youth and innocence, before the specters of drugs and AIDS loomed over an entire generation. In Mike Mills' recollection, as quoted by David Buckley, lies the essence of "Nightswimming", a suspended ballad of memory and nostalgia.

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night

The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago

Turned around backwards so the windshield shows

Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse

Still, it's so much clearer

I forgot my shirt at the water’s edge

The moon is low tonight

The opening scene is idyllic: the quiet night, lit only by scattered streetlamps, the barely rippled waters of the lake, and that old photo on the dashboard. But these are memories now yellowed by the wear of adulthood and all its fears. What does it cost to turn thirty and leave behind those days of freedom and carefree living? What's the price of a fame that has upended one's habits and way of life forever?

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night

I'm not sure all these people understand

It's not like years ago

The fear of getting caught

Of recklessness and water

They cannot see me naked

These things, they go away

Replaced by everyday

A cyclical, descending piano line, recalling the one in "Perfect Circle" itself, is the backbone of a ballad made even more poignant by the hushed, trembling swell of the strings and Stipe's moved delivery. Written in 1990 under the title "Night Swim", it was meant to be part of "Out Of Time" (1991), but it found its ideal home among the dark, melancholy grooves of "Automatic For The People".

The album's twilight themes and the song's shadowy reflections are distilled into the music video created by filmmaker/video artist Jem Cohen, halfway between video art and experimental cinema. Four tableaux capture the fleeting nature of the late-night swims taken one summer evening, while an adult man, presumably on a work trip, tries to revive the memory of that same moment in the pool of the motel where he's staying. In the first tableau, some voices and old photographs stir that visual and sonic memory, which also becomes tactile and olfactory as the summer-warmed naked bodies gather around a crackling improvised bonfire. In the boredom of the empty hours of small-town summer evenings, time and the ages of these bodies blend and blur together in the water, especially in the gorgeous black-and-white sequence that splits the song in two, where bare, unformed young bodies move underwater in the half-darkness, accompanied only by the sounds of nature from outside the water. The grain of the Super 8 film and the documentary clarity of the 16mm footage, combined with the treatment of time and photographic parameters within the video, render these fleeting memories intense and fragmented, flashes of images standing in for flickers of the mind and glimpses of emotion.

Cohen had already collaborated with the Athens quartet on three previous occasions: he had re-edited an excerpt of his work "This Is A History of New York" (1988) into a music video for "Talk About The Passion"; he had contributed to the live cinema show that accompanied the dates of the Green Tour; and finally, he had created two art videos for two songs from the B-side of "Out Of Time", "Belong" and "Country Feedback", all works produced by C-Hundred, the independent audiovisual production company Stipe had founded with Jim McKay in 1987. The original video version of "Nightswimming" was censored by Anglo-American TV channels like MTV, which aired a shortened version with most of the nude scenes cut, while in Italy it could be seen in full late at night on VideoMusic. Besides releasing it on the "Parallel" VHS (1995), to mark the album's 25th anniversary R.E.M. decided to re-release it in full on their YouTube channel.

We want to remember them this way, the four friends from Athens: happy and excited, swimming in the lake under the moon, still unaware of the bright future awaiting them.

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night

The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago

Turned around backwards so the windshield shows

Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse

Still, it’s so much clearer

I forgot my shirt at the water’s edge

The moon is low tonight

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night

I’m not sure all these people understand

It’s not like years ago

The fear of getting caught

Of recklessness and water

They cannot see me naked

These things, they go away

Replaced by everyday

Nightswimming, remembering that night

September’s coming soon

I’m pining for the moon

And what if there were two

Side by side in orbit

Around the fairest sun?

That bright, tight forever drum

Could not describe nightswimming

You, I thought I knew you

You, I cannot judge

You, I thought you knew me

This one laughing quietly underneath my breath

Nightswimming

The photograph reflects, every streetlight a reminder

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night, deserves a quiet night

Ride the wave of great music

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03/05/2026