R.E.M. - Perfect Circle

GREEN (1988)

POP SONG 89

Irs had sown the seeds of that success, waiting patiently for it, album after album. But, as the merciless script of rock history dictates, when a phenomenon explodes, it's almost never the original architects who reap the benefits. For R.E.M., leaving the small label that had discovered and launched them, granting them maximum autonomy, would be "the hardest decision we ever made." But by now it was inevitable. Irs would have to console itself with two compilations, "Dead Letter Office" (with B-sides, rarities and covers) and the more substantial "Eponymous." Because by now the Georgians were the most coveted prey in the rock business, with major labels competing to sign them. In the end Warner Records won out, with a staggering contract: ten million dollars.

R.E.M., however, were still proud of their difference. They didn't want to roll over, and they laid down precise conditions: control over the product, the ability to refuse interviews, TV appearances, concerts, and so on. In short, they wanted to stay true to the maxim coined by that megalomaniac Buck in a moment of euphoria: "We'll be the best band in the world, but on our own terms." Were they really aspiring world leaders (World Leader Pretend)? Buck, aware of the pitfalls of this new role and the inevitable criticism from a decision that risked alienating longtime fans, backpedaled: "We're not the best band in the world, nobody is, so who cares? And as for all the people who think we've sold out, well, I don't care about them either. There's a lot of people who like bands when they're not that big, and I'm one of them. I really like the Replacements; I've seen them play in front of twenty people about fifty times..."

Stipe was more pragmatic: "The winning card was the guarantee Warner gave us that we would become their top priority band for promotion abroad. And by abroad I mean mainly Europe. Plus they had a lot of great artists under contract, like Van Dyke Parks and others, without burdening them with marketing demands, without forcing them to churn out albums for commercial reasons. They knew our conditions perfectly well. And we needed a new starting point. We needed to feel like beginners again, like green newcomers."

A title that says it all, for the first album of the Warner era. Because "Green" isn't just a metaphor for a fresh start. It's the color of the environmental movement, which R.E.M. enthusiastically embraced, but also the color of dollars. A sardonic nod to the pile of banknotes that had just rained down on them? Perhaps, if you go by the band's self-deprecating humor, but for Stipe it had to be, above all, a message of hope and moral rearmament in the face of the era's cynicism. A hopeful green, then, despite the unfortunate chronological coincidence: the album was released on November 8, 1988, the day of the presidential election that saw Republican George Bush (Sr.) defeat Democrat Michael Dukakis, for whom R.E.M. had publicly campaigned. But for Stipe, now was the time to "get moving," to offer "positive visions."

In the name of this euphoria, "Green" embraces breezy, catchy pop-rock sounds, further smoothing out the (remaining) rough edges of the past. The epitome of this new direction is the carefree opening of "Pop Song 89," all blazing riffs and festive backing vocals, with a circular hook impossible to resist. The perfect icebreaker for the charts.

Hello, I saw you, I know you, I knew you

I think I can remember your name... name

Hello I'm sorry, I lost myself

I think I thought you were someone else

Should we talk about the weather? (Hi… hi, hi)

Should we talk about the government? (Hi… hi, hi, hi)

A tribute to "Hello, I Love You" by the Doors? The music and the opening line certainly suggest so, while the closing dilemma is subtly ironic: Stipe wonders whether a pop song can tackle political matters, or just idle chatter about the weather. The answer will come in the following tracks…

YOU ARE THE EVERYTHING

R.E.M., however, hadn't suddenly turned into shiny happy people. Melancholy still lurks within the folds of Stipe's songwriting, pouring entirely into the rustic elegy for banjo, accordion and cello that is "You Are The Everything". An exquisitely delicate ballad, in the style of "Wendell Gee", laced with openly autobiographical and intimate details. As Gianni Sibilla recalls, live Stipe would sing it with his back to the audience, "as if wanting to blend in with the crowd itself", or perhaps in an attempt to hide the emotion of verses so unusually romantic by his standards.

Sometimes I feel like I can’t even sing (say, say, the light)

I’m very scared for this world

I'm very scared for me

A full-blown confession, then, with the unusual use of the first person revealing doubts and fears perhaps too big to fit into a single song. So, the best part of the lyrics lies in the wonder of that starry sky, most likely admired by Stipe during his 1986 trip from Seattle to Boulder, in the company of Georgina Falzarano.

Eviscerate your memory

Here's a scene

You’re in the back seat laying down

The windows wrap around

To sound of the travel and the engine

All you hear is time stand still in travel

And feel such peace and absolute

The stillness still that doesn’t end

But slowly drifts into sleep

The stars are the greatest thing you’ve ever seen

And they’re there for you

For you alone you are the everything

Eviscerate your memories

The music fully embraces the sense of pastoral stillness that comes through in the lyrics, and to best convey this bucolic enchantment, the sound of crickets recorded in Memphis was even added.

STAND

A shot of adrenaline, but also – let's be honest – one of the most banal choruses ever produced by the Athens outfit. Teetering on the edge of kitsch, with that pompous sound and that guitar solo built around a built-in wah wah, the song holds itself together on the irony of the lyrics, in which Stipe sketches a mocking, direct dialogue with his listener, constantly toying with steering and wrong-footing them.

Stand in the place where you live

Now face North

Think about direction

Wonder why you haven’t

Now stand in the place where you work

Now face West

Think about the place where you live

Wonder why you haven’t before

If you are confused check with the sun

Carry a compass to help you along

Your feet are going to be on the ground

Your head is there to move you around

A metaphor for the impossibility of offering guidance to one's own fans? Or perhaps a kind of hymn to reason, as one of the following lines seems to suggest? ("If wishes were trees/ The trees would be falling/ Listen to reason", "If wishes were trees/ The trees would be falling/ Listen to reason"). The question remains open, despite lyrics that are among the most straightforward and simple in the whole R.E.M. catalogue. The fact remains that what the band themselves called "the dumbest song we've ever written" became a hit single in the United States and, even more unexpectedly, a heartfelt anthem of rebirth for the city of San Francisco, wounded by the October 1989 earthquake. The episode - recounted by Milena Ferrante in R.E.M. 1978-2009 - took place during a show at the Pavilion in Concord, California. Michael Stipe and his bandmates dedicated the song to the people of the Bay Area, freshly struck by that catastrophe. And "Stand" changed skin, moving people and drawing more than one tear. Miracles of music.

WORLD LEADER PRETEND

But while "Stand" was conceived as a moment of pure pop escapism, the following "World Leader Pretend" brings R.E.M. back to their most lyrical and profound dimension. A poignant ballad that takes flight on Mills' enchanted keyboard riff, opening up into one of the most powerful and moving refrains in their entire catalogue. Stipe adds the finishing touch with one of his finest performances: a vocal that seems understated on the surface, yet brimming with pathos and melancholy.

Who is the aspiring master of the world referenced in the title? Perhaps the leader of one of the global superpowers, a skilled mystifier at a time when the Cold War is about to crumble along with the Berlin Wall. But it's hard not to glimpse, in Stipe's lyrics - the first to be officially printed on an R.E.M. record - an autobiographical, self-mocking metaphor for his new status as a global star, achieved at the cost of a few pretenses and artifices along the way.

I sit at my table and wage war on myself

It seems like it's all… it's all for nothing

I know the barricades, and

I know the mortar in the wall breaks

I recognize the weapons, I used them well

This is my mistake. Let me make it good

I raised the wall, and I will be the one to knock it down

So it's Stipe himself who erected a wall between himself and his audience, constructing a character who perhaps doesn't even exist. This reading is reinforced by an interview from a few months earlier with NME, in which the singer acknowledged that his public image was "an accurate representation of what I've put on display, which obviously isn't an accurate representation of me — they're two different things. I'm aware of the power of this image and I know how to manipulate it... I think I'm conscious of how people perceive me". These, then, are the "weapons", but also the "finest defenses" and the "devices" mentioned in the lyrics. Stipe lives out a permanent conflict between self-glorification and fear of his audience, between the (legitimate) desire to become a star and the fear of losing his identity and sincerity. But this path of self-awareness widens into a broader vision, acknowledging everyone's need to tear down the wall of cynicism that stands in the way of human relationships. As Stipe tells it: "To me, World Leader Pretend represents the voice of the common man, whose enemy to face and defeat lies within himself. A voice that gives shape to the confusion and uncertainty of our times, a time when everyone asks questions but no one answers. I think World Leader Pretend gathers together everything Green is about. It's a song about an inner battle... Not Michael Stipe's personal battle, but everyone's... It's about all the walls a person has to get over".

A kind of catharsis and personal liberation, then, sublimated into one of R.E.M.'s masterpiece songs, extraordinarily heartfelt and evocative. For Stipe it's simultaneously "the most political and the most personal song" he's ever written. Live, on the Green tour, he would sing it standing rigidly at attention, introducing it with an a cappella rendition of "We Live As We Dream, Alone" by Gang Of Four, and every time ending by smashing a stick against a chair.

THE WRONG CHILD

Childhood returns in Stipe's imagination. A "wrong" childhood, tainted by those physical and psychological limitations that society rejects, out of cynicism and fear of difference. The protagonist of "The Wrong Child" is a disabled boy desperately trying to come to terms with his condition. Stipe's source of inspiration was the book "Eye Of The Clock" by the Irish writer Christopher Nolan, a disabled boy born with cerebral palsy who defied his handicap against all the laws of nature. Nolan, who died at just 43, was also the subject of a song ("Miracle Drug") by U2, his former schoolmates at Mount Temple School in Dublin.

The device of the two asynchronous voices now allows R.E.M. to express the full inner conflict of the child, who is forced to watch his peers run and play, and who tries in vain to console himself by singing "a happy song".

I've watched the children come and go

A late long march into spring

I sit and watch those children

Jump in the tall grass

Leap the sprinkler

Walk in the ground

Bicycle clothespin spokes

The sound the smell of swingset hands

I will try to sing a happy song

I’ll try and make a happy game to play

I've watched the children come and go

Then, the fierce awareness of one's own condition takes over, in verses of moved melancholy, addressed to the friend just met.

‘Come play with me’ I whispered to my new found friend

Tell me what it’s like to go outside

I’ve never been

Tell me what it’s like to just go outside

I’ve never been

And I never will

I’m not supposed to be like this

I’m not supposed to be like this

But it’s okay

A very subdued, minimal episode within the context of an album that oozes noise and exuberance. But maybe that's exactly why it sounds so much more authentic and true.

ORANGE CRUSH

Berry's drums fire off like a machine-gun burst, hurling us straight into the hell of Vietnam. The black hole of America's civic conscience takes on the color orange, the color of Agent Orange, the terrible chemical compound that stripped away vegetation to flush out the Viet Cong. A defoliant even more devastating than napalm, one that left irreparable damage on the land itself and ended up gravely poisoning people too, both Vietnamese civilians and American war veterans.

Follow me, don’t follow me

I’ve got my spine, I’ve got my orange crush

Collar me, don’t collar me

I’ve got my spine, I’ve got my orange crush

We are agents of the free

I’ve had my fun and now it’s time to

Serve your conscience overseas

(Over me, not over me)

Coming in fast, over me

[…]

And I was remembering

And I was just in a different country

And all then this whirlybird

That I headed for I had my goggles

Pulled off I knew it all

I knew every back road and every truck stop

"Orange Crush" is a fierce anti-militarist, ecological invective that conceals autobiographical details: Michael's father, in fact, a helicopter pilot, may have taken part in those very raids, during the infamous Ranch Hand operation. "My father had already been to Vietnam and Korea when I was a kid," he would tell Johnny Black. "That didn't change our relationship, but obviously it was hard for him, and it was hard for us too, him being away for so long. I think Orange Crush is about that too. About how you can get used to enduring war and military life, and then the moment comes to go home and you have to start all over again." In another interview, though, Stipe would rather stress that the song didn't stem so much from his own personal experience as from the fact that all four members of the band had grown up in the shadow of the Vietnam tragedy: "It's a song about war in general, the only angry and sad one on the album. A powerful track, and that's what we wanted... I hate violence. And this song sounded as deathly as the sound of a machine gun or a helicopter flying over a target zone."

Angry and deathly, then, with a forceful sound carved out by martial drumming and epic guitar work, never so close to U2 territory. Live, Stipe would introduce it by humming the U.S. Army's jingle-like slogan ("Be all that you can be, in the Army") and would deliver the chorus through a megaphone, as if to further heighten the drama of the lyrics.

I REMEMBER CALIFORNIA

A plunge into nostalgia, built on a melodic bassline, an unexpected mellotron (again played by Mills), and the finely psychedelic, disorienting guitar arpeggios. A close relative of "You Are The Everything", cradled in equally tender, dreamlike atmospheres, "I Remember California" is, according to Buck, "a love song, not for the state, but for a person who lives there." The lyrics drift haphazardly through memories and images, like a cinematic tracking shot with a bittersweet flavor. Like what's left after a beautiful story that ended badly ("History is made to seem unfair").

I remember redwood trees, bumper cars and wolverines

The ocean’s Trident submarines

Lemons, limes and tangerines

[…]

I remember traffic jams

Motor boys and girls with tans

[…]

History is made

History is made to seem unfair

I recall that you were there

Golden smile and shining hair

I recall it wasn’t fair

Recollect it wasn’t fair

Remembering it wasn’t fair outside

Ricordo le sequoie, l’autoscontro e i Wolverine

I sottomarini Trident dell’oceano

I limoni, i lime e i mandarini

Golden California, land of tanned girls and busy motorways, thus fades into a yellowed, melancholy postcard, turning into yet another "place of the soul".

It's undeniable, though, that Stipe's lyrics had by this point shed much of their crypticism, finding a new center of gravity in a more direct, narrative way of writing, suspended between an intimate streak and a political/social urge. The latter, in particular, would find fresh momentum during their first (and hugely successful) world tour, the Green World Tour, which featured stands from Greenpeace and Amnesty International. But the line between artist and activist is a tricky one, and Stipe is perfectly aware of it: "I'm not blind to the contrast between the idea of being a pop band — essentially junk culture — and the desire to spread positive messages, to make people think. I know music and politics can't be mixed, they're like oil and water, but damn it, I try anyway, even if I'm walking a tightrope."

The introverted Michael has by now found his courage, and alongside the greater clarity of his lyrics he also brings a bolder, more assured use of his voice. As if he'd come out of his shell. "These days I'm much more comfortable with writing and singing," he would reveal. "Back at the time of Murmur and Reckoning I was shy, I hid the words behind the music. Now that I know the technique, I no longer want to be a victim of my own voice and of technology." For Stipe, in short, there's no longer any point in hiding. Not even when it comes to his sexual leanings, long the subject of gossip. "Since I've been sexually active, I've been attracted to both men and women, so I have sex with both," he would let slip in an interview.

Musically, on the other hand, "Green" marks — as was only logical — a shift toward a more streamlined, accessible pop-rock, one aimed at the mainstream audience too. The sales boom — four million copies, more than double "Document"'s tally — bears witness to this. The Byrds-esque jangle and the slender folk inflections of their early days keep losing ground to an ever fuller, more forceful guitar sound. The productions grow gradually richer and more polished. But it's not a betrayal. Because the heart of this Georgia band's art is still very much alive. And a single track like "World Leader Pretend" is enough to set it beating again at full pulse.

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05/05/2026

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Claudio Fabretti, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition