SHOULD’VE BEEN A SINGLE ?(12)

Today’s offering contains some words of wisdom from the R.E.M. singles series which ran on the blog back in 2020/21.  Here’s The Robster writing back in July 2020:-

“After a few questionable choices of singles, 1986 saw the release of what was arguably one of R.E.M.’s best-ever singles. Fall On Me was a prelude to the band’s fourth album ‘Lifes Rich Pageant’ (no apostrophe again), though in many ways it didn’t tell the whole story of what that record would sound like.

‘Lifes Rich Pageant’ was the second R.E.M. album I ever heard, shortly after ‘Document’. I was struck by the quality of the songs which I found to be more accessible and melodic than much of what I’d heard previously. It was an album I listened to for months and months on end, even though it was getting on for two years old at the time. I had copied my friend’s cassette of it, and had it on one side of a C90.

After the loud rush of the opening two numbers, Fall On Me came into play. I was yet to discover the wonders of the first three R.E.M. albums so I wasn’t to know that this song was probably the most similar to those earlier recordings. The one thing that struck me immediately though was the vocal, or rather the vocals, plural. Fall On Me has what could be the best interaction between Stipe and Mills of all. The harmonies and counter melodies were divine and I’d argue probably never bettered by the band over their next 25 years. It remains one of my favourite R.E.M. songs. Whenever I attempt to sing along, I find myself alternating between the lead and backing vocals, especially during the closing refrain. I even sing Bill Berry’s parts. Hopefully you never have to hear that.”

And now me, in August 2020:-

Fall On Me was everything you would expect from a band who were being increasingly put forward, in the USA at least, as the saviours of guitar-pop with an independent bent. The subsequent album hit the stores two weeks later, and ‘Lifes Rich Pageant’ continued the happy trend of each new album initially selling more copies than its predecessor.

September – November 1986 saw the band out on the road in North America playing 64 shows in 82 days, in ever-increasing sized venues, leaving no real opportunity for any promotional activities around any follow-up single, of which there were three or four candidates, especially from the first side of the latest album which was as strong and consistent as anything they had ever released to this point.

The second side of LRP, however, was a pointer to the fact that the band had almost exhausted itself of material with two tracks from 1980 being resurrected in the studio along with the decision to add an obscure cover to take the number of songs on the album up to twelve with a running time short of 40 minutes. IRS was, nevertheless, determined to make sure there was some new product to coincide with the tour and on 4 November, in the same week as the band was set to play two sell-out shows in New York, they released a second single from LRP in the shape of Superman.

On the face of it, releasing a second single from an album isn’t really a crime. IRS (the band’s label), however, was quite perverse in going with Superman as it was the cover version that had been tagged onto the end of the album to prevent any fans feeling they were being short-changed.”

There’s no other way to say it, but IRS fucked it up big style.  This should have been a single:-

mp3: R.E.M. – Begin The Begin

The opening song on the album which, with the benefit of hindsight, can be seen as R.E.M. taking their first serious steps away from being a cult indie/college band towards world domination within five years. The album tackled a range of political and ecological issues and its release seemed to coincide with Michael Stipe finally getting comfortable with the idea of the frontman being seen by so many, fans and media alike, as the spokesperson – albeit he was often singing lyrics penned by one of the other members, such was the joy of having all compositions attributed to Berry-Buck-Mills-Stipe.

Begin The Begin has always been a band favourite, being played extensively at gigs and long after most of the other songs from the IRS years had been dropped to accommodate the ones the arena and stadium audiences had paid good money to hear – y’know, the 19 singles lifted from the first four albums from the 90s which have come to define the band in the eyes and to the ears of so many.  It really should be as well-known and well-loved as ‘the classics’.

 

 

JC