David Stubbs invites Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe to talk about the 20 greatest singles of their major-label era. But which one does Stipe find “gross and disgusting”? And why does Mills think, “It’s amazing how many songs we’re playing now that we could have written yesterday...
8 ELECTROLITE
From the 1996 album New Adventures In Hi-Fi. Released: December 1996.
Chart positions: UK No 29, US no 96
Bedded in some simple but affecting piano work from Mike Mills, “Electrolite” proved to be a minor success for REM, not least perhaps because it felt like their quintessential early work – shades, for instance, of “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville”. A hoarse Stipe namechecks Jimmy Dean and Martin Sheen as he aerially surveys Hollywood and its icons, but there’s a feeling that he’s receding, leaving the 20th Century: “I’m outta here”, he croaks at the end, lending the song, and the album it concludes, a valedictory feel.
MIKE MILLS: I was surprised at the reception that song got. I knew it did well here on the radio but you never know how these things are going to go over live.
MICHAEL STIPE: With New Adventures…, even as we started the record, Peter said, “This album is going to represent a quieter, darker side of us.” And I said, “You mean like [Springsteen’s] Nebraska?” And he said, “Yes, exactly.” So we were trying to do Nebraska. And he said, those pictures you take out of the car window, that’s what the artwork should be for this record. A year and a half later, that was the landscape that was being used to reference the record.
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7 THE GREAT BEYOND
From the 2000 album Man On The Moon. Released: November 1999.
Chart positions: UK No 3, US No 57
A big hit in the UK, “The Great Beyond” sees Stipe take a second whack at the subject matter he’d first explored on the song which inspired Milos Forman’s biopic of the late American comedian Andy Kaufman (on which Stipe was an executive producer). With its huge, galvanising pop hook, it’s a resurgent example of quality REM bisecting with populist REM.
PETER BUCK: I think Michael tried to boil down what Andy was about in that song, rather than mention it by name. I really like that song. I thought it captured something about Andy. It really sticks in the mind.
MICHAEL STIPE: It was great working with Milos Forman, great working with Jim Carrey, Courtney Love – Danny DeVito was such a fucking professional. I admire ambition so much and if it’s ambition that they don’t know where it’s coming from or where it’s headed, take it and use it to create – that’s what you’re here for, create, so fucking do it. Cut the crap. And all those people that I mentioned recognise that. Like all artists, they occasionally fall on their face, they sidestep, they make wrong decisions and have to make them publicly, which ups the stakes – but wow, that was a great experience. It was also important for us as a band to work on something, to do something, without the pressure of an REM album. It was great to score a movie, writing music for someone else, and it put us in a place that enabled us to do Reveal. It was a great sidebar, and doing that really galvanised us as a band and brought us back together. It made us believe – our convictions were, fuck the difficulties, fuck everything, I want to be in this band with you.
