60 Songs That Explain the '90s - R.E.M.—“Nightswimming”

Episode Date: September 29, 2021

Rob explores alternative rock band R.E.M.’s piano ballad “Nightswimming” by discussing the band’s musical journey and their songs’ frequent lack of lyrical coherence. This episode was originally produced as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Jay Caspian Kang Producers: Isaac Lee and Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My own personal Everybody Harts moment was the time I tried to play Everybody Harts by REM at an open mic night at a coffee house on a Midwestern state college campus in the mid-90s, but my guitar was out of tune the entire time. Like for the whole song, five-minute song, Everybody Harts. Seven or eight-minute song, if your personal rendition is extra lugubrious. Legitimately one of the worst moments of my life up to that point, and in all likelihood in the lives. of everyone unfortunate enough to have been present. This is an aspect of my personal life you don't need to know much about, as opposed to all the other crucial aspects. But yeah, I had an open mic night guy phase in college. I lucked into a Takamini acoustic guitar far nicer than I deserved, and I had,

you know, a fucking repertoire. This repertoire included, Tonight Tonight, by Smashing Pumpkins, Willing to Wait by Sebedo. That's Indy, right? Rose Parade by Elliot Smith Yikes, Street Spirit Fade Out by Radiohead and do not recommend

the first time I ever went on the internet it was to print out the street spirit guitar tablature which as with most of the shit

I've done in the internet since turned out to be a mistake that song is quite challenging to play and sing at the same time I did not

immerse myself in love. Heaven by talking heads stop making sense version drive by the cars. Who's going to drive you home tonight?

That one was pretty good. I don't mind telling you. Capo on the fourth fret. Oh, and also, don't follow by Allison Chains from Jaroflis, which was their acoustic open mic night guy phase, I guess. Jarflies is the best Allison Chains record. Don't Follow is the

second best Allison Chains' song, except when I play it. This Lane's daily high note in Don't Follow. Proved to be vexatious. He didn't have the range. Same deal with everybody hurts. From the lugubriously revered R.E.M. Album, Automatic for the People released in 1992. It's their best album. You didn't have to be angsty, and morbidly romantic, and quasi-literary and yearningly cryptic and a wallflowery to vibe hard with everybody hurts back in the mid-90s. But it helped to be those things. And specifically,

in my case it helped me hurt other people by convincing me I could play and sing the song myself. Just imagine how poorly I handled these Michael Stipe high notes. He didn't have the range.

Also, my guitar was out of tune the whole time. The first time I tried, everybody hurts in public at least. I got a couple theories on this. Don't follow by Allison Chains was in drop D, right? So, just tune the low E string down to a D. But of course, you're on stage and you make everyone watch you do this. You go b with a string because it sounds cool and it looks like you're doing something

technical. But then possibly I fucked up the whole guitar tuning somehow for all subsequent songs by doing this. And that's why my everybody hurts sucked. Or, and it pays me to even suggest this, I can't swear to you that I didn't tune the entire guitar down a half step by ear while on stage just for this song because I couldn't hit Michael Stipe's high notes. So all six strings. You're sitting at a table at the front room in Athens, Ohio, unsuspecting, innocent, unaware and open might night is even transpiring, just trying to drink a nice coffee on a Friday night. Some doofus is up there going, be, d'r, bur, dong, bur, bing, just horrible. I still have this guitar. I remain unworthy of it.

Here it is. And so this, briefly, briefly, this is me playing right now. And so to the best of my recollection, this is what my version of everybody hurts sounded like. This is music and talk at its best right here. Here we go. There we go. That's... Everybody was hurting at this point.

I assure you, seven minutes, just a terrible experience. Sometimes everything is wrong. What did I learn from this terrible experience? Very little. I suspect everybody hurts remained in my repertoire for the duration of my open mic night guy phase, but I'm pretty sure I never attempted to detune a whole ass guitar on stage again. I did, though, contemplate switching to piano.

How did that make you feel that music just now? My theory, anyway, is there is a particular sort of angsty, morbidly romantic, quasi-literary, yearningly, cryptic, wallflowery person who still leaps out of his or her chair emotionally upon hearing just that piano riff. I hope I'm right about this. It always works for me. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is 60 songs that explain the 90s, and today we're talking about Night Swimming by REM. Also from 1992's Automatic for the People, which is their eighth album. They'd been together for more than a decade at this point. So here's the thing, a couple of things, a bunch of things. Night Swimming does not qualify as a deep cut. Certainly, it's a proverbial fan

favorite. It's got decent streaming numbers. REM technically released it as a single, back when that still mattered. Also, if you play even 10 seconds of night swimming on a piano in public, like at a house party or something, you are guaranteed to have sex with somebody at that party, if you want. I made that up. I can't play it. I wouldn't know, but it feels true. And I think you'll agree that's what matters. But night swimming is also somewhat of an anomaly. It's a piano ballad with strings and so forth, no bass, drums, or guitar whatsoever. Two out of the four guys in R.E.M. don't even appear on it. And in terms of public standing, this song is not everybody hurts or man on the moon, or more to the point it's not losing my religion.

From their previous album and shock commercial breakthrough, out of time in 91, Losing My Religion is pretty objectively REM's biggest song, and it's how I personally first got super into REM, but I have always suspected that getting into REM through losing my religion is uncool. Sheesh. I submit to you that REM are a completely different band, a different lifestyle. If you discovered them in 1982 or 85 or 87, versus if you discovered them in 1991. The fact is that I know the five studio albums REM released in the 1990s as well, as intimately as I know any five consecutive or non-consecutive albums by anybody ever. I know them by heart. I somehow never get

tired of them. Just this morning, I was sitting around marveling at Peter Buck's guitar tone on new adventures and high-fi, the sequence from undertow to Ebo the letter to leave in particular. I'll keep you out of it. You're welcome. But I do feel the need to clarify that this is a 90s R.E.M. celebration presided over by emphatically a 90s R.E.M. guy. I know the 80s records. I love the 80s records, but I can't help it feel an academic, a critical distance from them. at least compared to the later stuff I truly love emotionally. And my sincere opinions about 80s REM are often indistinguishable from like trolling. I believe what I'm saying, but it sounds like I don't.

For example, this is the single best song R.E.M. released in the 1980s. Yes, I know it's not their song. Yes, I know it's not true. Actually, it's true. Superman is the single best song R.E.M. released in the 80s. You know why? the voices of Mike Mills and Michael Stipe intertwined. The Alpha and Omega, the Cupid and Psyche, the gin and tonic, the tango and cash, the chocolate and peanut butter of college rock, alternative rock, arena rock, rock and roll of any sort.

The pinnacle of the very notion of harmony, in my opinion. So, all right, real quick, R. Em formed in 1980 at the University of Georgia in Athens. Michael Steip on lead vocals, Peter Buck on guitar, Mike Mills on bass, Bill Barry on drums. Those three guys traded instruments a lot, but basically, yeah, first single Radio Free Europe in 1981. First album, Murmur in 1983, their second best album overall. You know the 33 and a third book series and podcast? The 33 and a third book on Murmur by Jay Neamy is excellent. If you'd like to learn about Southern Gothic and Kudzu and jangly guitars, I am professionally

obligated to describe early R.E.M. in particular as jangly. They were super poetic and cryptic and melodic as guitar rock bands go. You hear a lot of the birds in early R.E.m. A psychedelic country folk deal. You hear power pop and southern power pop in particular. Big Star, for example, and the D.B.'s who are basically Southern. You hear the artier and more poetic end of punk, velvet underground, and the feelies and television, and Michael Stipe's beloved Patty Smith. But from the very first with REM, you also hear propulsion and aggression. And yeah, punk rock in the classic sense. The pinnacle of the very notion of harmony filtered through punk rock,

filtered through hard driving rock and roll. Actually, REM doing Radio Free Europe on David Letterman in 1983 is maybe my favorite late night musical performance ever. Just the lankiest dudes imaginable kicking rich amounts of ass. So all right, real quick. Their first five albums are murmur, reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction, Life's Rich Pageant and Document.

REM's sixth album, Green, comes out in 1988, and they've jumped from the relatively modest and homespun IRS records to corporate behemoth Warner Brothers records. They've jumped to a major label. The band would very much like to make the leap from college rock,

from college radio stardom, to just regular mainstream, popular rock radio stardom, perhaps heavier MTV rotation. as well. To the dismay of some percentage of their fan base, REM has sold out in the parlance of their time. I have given up even trying to explain the concept of selling out to young people today. Forget it. As I understand it, 80s REM fell like yours. Fell like your own personal secret, no matter how much college radio play they got. Whereas, as we're creeping up on the 90s, the bands on the brink of belonging to everyone. Chumps like me, are on the brink of crashing the party. You maybe don't even recognize this band anymore. This unease was best personified on the Green album

by a disconcertingly peppy little tune called Stand. Polarizing. And also R.A.M.'s biggest hit, up to that point. Number six on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart, the one I love from Document in 1987, a far less controversial great R.E.M. song peaked at number nine. I once saw Bush, the band Bush, cover The One I Love, as a tribute to Sound Garden frontman Chris Cornell after Chris Cornell died. I may have mentioned this already.

Just a stupendously confusing moments in my adult life, given my teenaged understanding of how those three bands corresponded to each other. Anyway, a sense of unease, but also impending greatness, therefore surrounds REM's seventh album, Out of Time, released in March 1991. This record is called out of time because they couldn't think of a title and ran out of time. The band decides they won't really tour in support of this record because they toured for 10 years straight and they're tired. And Michael Stipe, as quoted in Tony Fletcher's book, Perfect Circle, The Story of REM, is giving the media quotes like, when I say that this record is going to alter the course of pop history, I say it with my tongue pretty firmly in my cheek and a little snicker on my lips. but I think it really is, for 1991, a pretty peculiar record. End quote.

Also on the first single Peter Buck is playing a mandolin, of all things. None of this necessarily suggests impending greatness, or at least the altering of the course of pop history. But yeah, you don't have to be very cool to know what happened next. Losing My Religion had a super lush and impressionistic MTV video directed by Tarcim, the Indian director, whose second best contribution to mass culture was the 2000 feature film The Cell

starring Jennifer Lopez. A cool movie. The Losing My Religion video won six VMAs at the 1991 MTV Video of Music Awards back when that still mattered. And at the podium, Michael Stipe kept removing his t-shirt with a political slogan on it

to reveal another t-shirt with another political slogan on it. He went from wear a condom to alternative. energy now to the right to vote to handgun control. Thankfully, all those political issues have since been resolved. Losing my religion is at one point the fourth biggest song in the country with Michael Bolton's love is a wonderful thing at number five.

Yikes, then REM, then more than words by extreme. At number three, I want to sex you up by Color Me Bad at number two. And Rush Rush by Paula Abdul at number one. Rush Rush is the Keanu Reeves video. Just a delightfully chaotic top five. Out of time eventually sells nearly five million copies in America and makes REM international superstars. But it is also, as advertised, a pretty peculiar record,

starting with Losing My Religion, which I think lyrically was, to most of America, pretty baffling in a soothing and also profound way. Actually, what I remember most about losing my religion is when REM played it on Saturday Night Live in April 1991. Catherine O'Hara was the host. The following week show was Stephen Seagall and Michael Bolton. But what I remember watching R.E.M. perform, losing my religion, was the single mandolin note that Peter Buck plays, pretty much alone as the camera zooms in on him for like the last

15 seconds of the song, for a blissful eternity on live television. And you can hear little whoops of elation in the studio. audience that really struck me at the time and contributed to this sense I had of an entire nation leaning forward and getting into it, getting really into REM, and just collectively thinking, yes, these guys. And that was a rad feeling. And then later on SNL, REM came back out and did shiny, happy people, an extremely well-named song that was also basically an excellent sequel to stand the rare superior sequel. It's like the Terminator 2 of upbeat, jangly rock songs.

Studio version of Shiny Happy People is a little better. The innovation here harmonically was that they started once again with Mike Mills and Michael Stipe, but they inserted in the middle Kate Pearson from fellow Athens Georgia legends, the B-52s. The single best B-52 song released in the 80s is Deadbeat Club. I am 400% serious. Perfect harmony with Cindy Wilson. Kate Pearson's wife says that Kate's voice can cut through steel. Kate Pearson is welcome to sing at my funeral.

She can sing whatever she wants at my funeral. Love Shack, fine, I'm into it. So out of time becomes the first REM album I own as an uncool 13-year-old. Does it count as owning it if someone dubbed it onto a blank cassette for me? I forget who. Shout out whoever did that for me. I listened to Out of Time on a blank memory X cassette. It was pink, yellow, and green.

I lost the case immediately. I loved that cassette. I listened to Out of Time on that cassette constantly, on the family drive from our house in suburban Cleveland, Ohio, to my grandparents' house in coal mining country in southwestern Pennsylvania. Three-hour drive. You can listen to Out of Time four straight times door to door.

Out of Time is my official soundtrack to that. car ride, which thankfully did not involve taking the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The Pennsylvania Turnpike is unmusical and just crazy long. The Pennsylvania Turnpike is the Great Wall of China of Pennsylvania. My theory is that everyone has one specific album, do you associate with one specific recurring road trip? One album, one drive. This is mine. Me in the backseat with a pink yellow and green Memorex cassette and my Walkman playing Tetris on a Game Boy with a sound off and Michael Stipe in my ears talking about God knows what. That's from a song called Belong, a legit deep cut. But I loved every song on Out of Time. And maybe the deep cuts especially. I loved them for their depth, for their bonus inscrutability. Those creatures jumped the barricades and headed for the sea. That is a beautiful, evocative world-building and gently baffling phrase that to this day I would prefer not to spoil by looking up whatever Michael Stipe has said about it by way of explanation.

Michael Stipe is famous at this point as an enigmatic rock star frontman specifically for his ultra-cool abstruseness for saying, for singing, for crooning, for declaiming various phrases and sentiments and fragmented observations that. sound impossibly lovely and wise and get lovelier the less you understand them as regular discernible speech this song is called low don't ask you grass is grassy bad you light white sprite light why maybe that one's not so cryptic in this era i was really rooting for michael stipe and natalie merchant from ten thousand maniacs to end up together romantically. I thought they made a cute couple. This gives you an idea of how perceptive I am generally in this era and all subsequent eras, even when he was super direct, even when he named a song shiny happy people. People just assumed Michael Stipe's true intent was unknowable. And so maybe

shiny happy people is about the TNan Men Square Massacre. Actual Fan Theory. That's me in the backseat to the car, not on the Pennsylvania turnpike, just imagining what Michael Stipe could possibly need. No points for guessing what I thought I needed. A girlfriend, that's from the song Country Feedback. Michael says the F word. So this band is my favorite band now. This band is my lifestyle. Now, a couple of years down the road, that's me. Very much not in the spotlight. Cacooned in my Midwestern State College dorm room, cradling a guitar I don't deserve, fumbling through the out-of-time deep-cut end game on a Friday night as, I imagine, Midwestern State College type hedonism and sexiness is transpiring all around me. And you just can't imagine how lonely, but also how deep

and soulful I felt in this moment. Fumbling through this riff that isn't too hard to play if you don't have to also sing and also nobody else is around and so automatic for the people is the first r em album i own for real on an official cassette i bought for 12 bucks or whatever i don't have the pink yellow and green out of time tape anymore and i can't convey to you how sad this makes me but yeah i've still got automatic for the people the cassette itself has dyed a stately orange or deep yellow a sunset yellow it looks a little like you're in if i'm being totally honest but i'll just assume that's the passage of time there's a are several ultra cool photos of the band in the liner notes by professional ultra cool band photographer

Anton Corbane, and only Michael Stipe is not wearing dark sunglasses all the time. There's a photo actually of Michael Stipe's shirtless and half submerged in the sea with a backwards hat on. His eyes are closed. His mouth is open. It's in black and white, but you can just tell it's the golden hour. And this is as enlightened and sophisticated as anyone will ever look in a backwards hat. And yeah, he and Natalie Merchant would have been perfect for each other. The best REM video of the 90s is actually Drive. This is track one on Automatic for the People, a boldly downbeat opener to the follow-up record to your shock commercial breakthrough.

And the drive video is in black and white, and it's mostly Michael Stipe crowd surfing. Michael Stipe adrift, tossing and turning on a roiling sea of people. strobe lights. Eventually someone starts spraying all the people with a fire hose. It's a remarkably nauseating video. It's claustrophobic. It's uncomfortable. Adam Scott and Scott Ackerman have that podcast where they talked about REM album by album for hours and hours. And Adam Scott says he was an extra on the drive video shoot as a young, unknown acting student. Though the video is so nauseating and

busy, he can't tell if he's ever on screen. If you put any stock into my insights, my interpretations of anything, circa 1992 when I am 14 years old and of course I do not recommend this I watched the dry video and felt actively physically woozy and I took this to be Michael Stipe's commentary on fame

on rock stardom born aloft by the outstretched hands of thousands of fans who will never understand him and who will never let him rest automatic for the people as a whole is aggressively downbeat is death haunted

is elegant and rueful and moody in an outlandishly luxurious and affecting way. Everybody hurts. Yes. The Everybody Harts video. Yes. Where everyone's sitting in a traffic jam and they're thinking extremely sad, captioned thoughts. The old lady thinks I am a carrot and the old man thinks she's gone. Yes. Did I ever cry while watching the extremely sad Everybody Harts video? Possibly. Did I cry laughing, watching the Wayne's World parody of the Everybody Hertz video on Saturday

Night Live? Yes. Yes, I did. If monkeys fly out of her butt, I shall hawk the flex of this record. For REM, is that once again they didn't tour to support it? Once again, they instead traveled around to different studios in different cities to record it. Bearsville, New York,

and Athens, and Atlanta, and Miami, and New Orleans, just tooting around the country, soaking up vibes. They actually scaled back on the travel compared to out of time. Shiny happy people was recorded in Paisley Park in Minneapolis. Kay Pearson says Prince never showed. Too bad.

Prince singing shiny happy people. Chew on that one for a while. There's actually one song That Goofy on Automatic, which of course is The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight, which the band added explicitly to lighten the mood of the album, and then later they seem to regret bothering trying to lighten. the mood. Sidewinder is a bit polarizing as well, I suppose, but I'm always down to listen

to Michael Stipe makes so little sense that he cracks himself up. But yeah, otherwise the biggest flax on automatic for the people is the unblinking consistency of its melancholy. The spell it casts on you. The trance it holds you in. The jump out of your chair

elation, all that accumulated melancholy makes you feel. You know what's the best? You know what's just the best? When you've listened to an album, 50,000 times, but there's a song you forget about every time. It surprises you every time you listen to the album again. And it comes on and you think, I can't believe I forgot about the song. It's my favorite song in the record. And you functionally get to hear one of your favorite songs for the first time, every time. It's like finding a $50 bill in the pocket of your

winter coat the first time you put it on when the weather turns every November for the rest of your life. That's me and sweetness follows. It's these little things they can fall. Goodness gracious, sweetness follows. Live your life full of joy and wonder. Unbelievable. I'm going to make myself cry right now. So this is the album's headspace.

This is my headspace. Maximum Bittersweet Southern Gothic Reverie. And this is all before you get to track 11, which is so committed to joy and wonder and melancholy that it's literally called night swimming. Mike Mills plays the piano on night swimming. He is the song's primary composer. I have a great relationship with my father, actually,

but adopt me, Mike Mills. Take me away from all of this death. Mike Mills is the coolest. He's got the glasses, the tousled hair, the chill, erudite aspect, a real Linus from Peanuts vibe. The Linus to Michael Stipe's, Charlie Brown and his voice, Mike Mills's singing voice, his, dare I say, radiant harmonies

are his security blanket, in our security blanket, or at least mine, just the raddest dude. There's a rapport between Mike and Michael that is tangible, even when Mike isn't singing. He's not singing here. Instead, night swimming is a relatively simple Mike Mills piano joint. He once said, it was a very short piece of music that I was just playing for. for fun with no clear purpose. It tends to go round and round. But Michael Stipe talks a lot about how he loves circular things, loops, drones, figure eights of the soul.

Michael joked once that it's dangerous to be in the car when he's driving, lest there's some loop in a song on the radio that sends him into a trance so severe he runs off the road. Night swimming dates back to writing sessions for out of time, but they held onto it for automatic. There is some confusion about dates and times and places, and re-recordings and whatnot. But Mike says he recorded the final version in Miami on the same piano.

Derek and the Domino's used for Layla, for the galactically rad piano exit Coda to Layla. Good fellas, et cetera. Print the legend. John Paul Jones. Yes, that John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin. Bassist for Led Zeppelin, the Mike Mills of Led Zeppelin. John Paul Jones cooked up the strings for night swimming,

the orchestral lusciousness, as he did elsewhere on Automatic for the People. Late in the game of this song, we got Deborah Workman on Obo, top five all-time obo solo, if you go for that sort of thing. Pretty simple construction here, all the lusciousness aside, a full arrangement but uncuttered, so you can laser focus on Michael Stipe and try to figure out how simple this song is from his perspective and what he is laser focusing on.

on the dashboard taken years ago. Turn around back so the windshield shows. So around 2008, when REM were on, what turned out to be their last tour, to promote their 14th album, Accelerate, which turned out to be their last album, Michael Stipe did this gigantic weeks-long written fan Q&A,

facilitated by Flux Blog, the great MP3 blog, run by the critic and writer Matt Perpetua. So Michael Stipe answering direct question after direct question after direct question from fans about what specific lines in specific REM songs mean, or anyway, what he meant by them. It's incredible this document, this mega interview. I may never get over this. REM lyrically is the band that taught me to separate literal meaning from emotional meaning. To this day, I have no idea.

what Michael Stipe is on about, a solid 98% of the time in any concrete real world sense. But what he sings means the world to me, or means a world to me. It's not even that I project my own meaning onto him. I revelant how he's so precise and eloquent as a lyricist that coherence is very much besides the point. Here are his guidelines for this mammoth Q&A, his little preamble. Remember that I'm not the best at recalling studio memories. etc. And so the more interesting questions for me will be about intention and exact lyrics or my interpretation of what I meant, what I think I meant, whatever. Remember also that some songs have

no real lyrics. Chorus of Orange Crush comes to mind and so I cannot answer those. End quote, the chorus to Orange Crush has no real lyrics. That's one of R.M.'s biggest hits, biggest radio hits. The chorus has no real lyrics. This chorus has no real lyrics. So that's what we're dealing with. This is who we're dealing with. So somebody asks Michael about night swimming. Here is the question. I must admit that I am not very good at interpreting your wonderful lyrics and have a habit of taking them at face value, but my husband has an interesting question about night swimming. In the lyric, the photograph on the dashboard taken years ago, turned around back. backwards so the windshield shows. Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse. Does this mean

something along the lines of coming to the realization that you are no longer the person that everyone thinks you are? Possibly that your persona has now taken over the perception of the real you, end quote. That's the question. Outside questions about Michael Stipe lyrics are more poignant and lyrical than most other people's lyrics. Here is Michael Stipe's answer about the photograph on the dashboard line. Quote, no, it's literal. Frequent REM collaborator,

Jim Cohen and I have talked about this line and how his films are the visual equivalent. It's something reflecting something else that makes you see it or notice it for the first time, possibly in a different context. Simple but powerful. BTW, I cannot drive if something's on the dash.

Makes me crazy, the reflection thing. Same as glass top tables. See, horse to water. Horse to water is a much later R.M. song that mentions glass top tables. That's the answer. That's Michael Stipe's answer. Most of the time when cryptic songwriters are asked in interviews to explain exactly what a song

means or who it's about or whatever, the cryptic songwriter's go-to move is to say, you really don't want to know. You don't want me to spoil it for you. It will disappoint you if I tell you what and who it's about. It's boring compared to the exotic fantasy in your head. Whatever you are imagining, whatever you have projected onto this song is more important than whatever I originally meant. But here we've got REM super fans sharing their elaborate theories about I Remember California

or At My Most Beautiful or Bittersweet Me or Man on the Mood or whatever. And Michael Stipe gives very kind and sincere, no-it-lideral-type responses, but he doesn't ruin the song for them. His allegedly correct interpretation does not replace, does not eliminate the inquiring fans deeply felt but ultimately wrong interpretation. So take night swimming however you want. There are worse things you will be over the course of your life than wrong.

Part of the allure of night's of night swimming, I suppose, is that it's already pretty literal. It's about swimming at night and the fumbling, wistful, youthful eroticism that implies. Peter Buck, the guitarist who doesn't even play guitar on this song,

in perfect circle, the story of R.E.M. in that book, Peter Buck, talking about this song, puts it this way. We used to go swimming naked. It would be summertime. It would be 100 degrees. We were all younger. It was pre-Aid, so no one had this fear of sex.

We'd go to this swimming hole. Two in the morning. 20 to 30 naked teenagers. You'd assume what would happen would happen, and it did. Sure, all these people understand. Years ago. Peter Buck goes on. Is it also about performing? I tend to read it a little bit that way, although Michael would probably tell you no. Definitely not. I don't think Michael had any inhibition about writing about anything. It's just that none of our songs have ever been real manifestos. It tends to be filtered through his vision. You, of course, the enraptured, the overzealous listener, are free to take night swimming as a manifesto, as wistfulness personified.

This is a beautiful moment that I am experiencing right this second, and decades from now, I will feel sad whenever I remember it. Instant nostalgia, that's night swimming to me. The content of that moment is left to you. The memory in question doesn't even have to be beautiful, per se. It might be that time you terrorized. an entire campus coffee house with a poorly tuned guitar. The way Michael Stipe's voice breaks on the word pining right here, this is the whole shit right here.

Automatic for the people is the second out of five records R.M. released in the 90s. The second of five records I know better than anything by anybody. Monster from 1994 is the loud, brash guitar album that single-handedly kept used CD stores afloat for years. New Adventures in High Five from 96 is a melancholy automatic sequel with some truly bitching guitar tone, in my opinion. Up from 1998 is the first record the band made after their drummer, Bill Berry, quit to go drive a tractor, lots of drum machines and so forth. Everyone sounds scared shitless about how they'll go on. REM went on.

Four more albums in the 2000s that I don't know nearly as well. But a slow fade is a critical part of the process for this band. And for the people who love this band, and let's leave all that alone. Let's leave night swimming to itself. I've never been skinny dipping in my life, which maybe you can tell. And definitely you didn't need to know either way. But it's enough to say that this song makes me feel like I have. It makes me wistful for all the times I might have.

Our guest today is Jay Caspian Kang, a writer for the New York Times Magazine and a bunch of other places, host of the podcast, Time to Say Goodbye. His new book, The Loneliest Americans, is out on October 12th. And also, he hates the song Night Swimming by R.E.M., welcome, Jay. That's the fullest biography. How you doing? Good.

That's your whole life right there. My whole life is encapsulated in there. Yeah, I don't even know what I would add, you know. Is a fan of the North Carolina Tar Heels. Maybe that's about it. There we go. You've touched on all of it. it. That's your tombstone right there. Just to etch it all in. I don't want to mischaracterize you,

actually. And so in your own words, Jay, what is your opinion of the song Night Swimming by REM? Oh. You know, it sort of started out as a joke on Twitter, right? That I would just say that Night Swimming by R&M is the worst song that's ever been recorded. And then as these things happen, you sort of do something long enough and then you think about it and you're like, actually I'm correct. I do that all the time. Yeah, it's just like you commit too hard to something and then you realize that you actually believed it all along,

which probably reflects, you know, with this one, I don't know, it's not like an Alex Jones type of thing where you, you know, eventually just become the thing. Like, I actually really did hate this song before I started posting about how I hated the song all the time. Okay. And I don't know. Are you interested in why I think the song is bad?

That's why we're talking, Jay. I want to know. Tell me why this song is bad. Well, oh, yeah, I'm 41 years old, so Automatic for the People came out when I was in high school. And it was like right after, you know, sort of shiny, happy people holding hands era,

REM, losing my religion. Everybody hurts. I guess everybody hurts the same on automatic for the people. On the album, yeah, yeah. So, you know, this is sort of at an era. I grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, during the sort of indie rock explosion there, which is a lot of super chunk pulver.

Merge, yeah, yeah. Arches of loaf type of thing. And I think by the time that album came out, a lot of that was being displaced by, you know, like Ben Folds Five, right? Ben Folds Five, or Squirrel Nut Zippers. Like, those became more emblematic of the Chapel Hill sound. Oh, dear.

Right. And so I was paying attention to a lot of this as, you know, most teenagers in that town who grew up in that town were. And I don't know. for some reason, R.M. like, became this, it became a symbol of like everything that bad that was happening in music. You know, it was like a movement away from a type of detached irony or at least something sort of intellectually interesting

into something that was extremely, in my opinion, like saccharine and awful, but also still tried to carry this sort of like, well, we're from Athens, Georgia, college rock, indie rock town, you know, we're musically interesting. and I didn't find anything musically interesting about REM at all, you know, and I still don't, and I still don't really get it. Okay. This guy just belting on about his feelings. Like, who cares, you know?

Like, anyway, I'm sorry. Well, okay, so this isn't necessarily like a sellout thing. Like, you liked them, and then they got bad. Like, you just, you've thought they were bad across the board, and this song just epitomizes the badness. Right, right. So that was, you know, like, if you can imagine a 1996 or 1994 or something like that, right, where everybody around you is either listening to New York City hip hop, like Nas or Bhutan and

stuff like that, and other people are listening to very local indie rock bands. And then R.M. comes along with this, like, sort of mega hit album, which I think it's a mega hit album, right? Like it's, it was like, yes. Yeah. I think the, the previous one with losing my religion was bigger, but this was a huge, this is peak commercial peak R. For sure. Yes.

Right. And everybody is like printing zines and stuff like that, right? And then this sort of becomes like the, you see it as this like co-option of your culture, right? Right. And then it doesn't really bear any, it doesn't really bear any sort of resemblance to any of that stuff, except that I think that if you asked REM about it, they would say that they were from that. scene, you know? And I don't know. It was night swimming itself. Like, you know, I mean, I don't even know what the song is about, but there's just something about the plaintive way in which he sings, you know, and sort of this, like, yeah, and like very searching. And I just,

you do not like the, you do not like searching. Searching and feeling, searching and feelings. Yeah. These are, these are to be avoided. Right. And it's like, it's like this fundamentally stupid, nostalgic song about, like, you know, like, what are, you know, remember this beautiful night when we were teenagers, you know, and it's, it reminds it kind of like RELCA, you know, like, letters to a young poet or whatever it's called. And I've just never been that excited about hearing that much emotion at once without any sort of ballast of, like, distance or irony. irony or like, you know, or we'll get over it, you know? He doesn't sound like he's over it.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, he's, yeah. Yeah, like, you know, around the same time, I remember that song, like, a ghostface Iron Man album came out and, you know, that song, all of that I got is you. Like, that is a very emotional song, you know. Right. But it is not a nostalgic song, you know? Like, that song, I think it's, like, pure emotion. But it is not like this sort of, like, you know, oh, very.

remember when we were young type of shit, you know, which is the part that I always objected to. And so, I don't know, with REM, you sort of put all this together and you have, you have this composite image of this kind of like white dudes from Athens, Georgia, who are probably pretty cool, who are very popular, making a lot of money touring. And the only thing that they can sort of think to think about is this, like, extremely boring kind of suburban. Remember when we were swimming by the lake? Yeah, yeah. It's like a bridge to terribithia if nobody had died.

Oh, wow. Ghost face and bridge to terribithia and real good. Right, right. Fantastic. It sucks. Okay, so most people who hate a song with this intensity, it's due to overexposure, right? It's like, oh, I've heard this song a billion times.

Like, how often in your daily life were you experienced? exposed to night swimming. Like, I never heard it on the radio and I was listening, you know? Here's a thing. It plays. It's part of like a Starbucks mega loop, I think. It goes on at Starbucks a lot. No, I don't spend too much time, you know, post-pandemic at Starbucks, but there was a period of time before the pandemic where I would just go work in Starbucks because I preferred it to going to work. I don't really work that much in coffee shops, but when I did, I would usually just go to Starbucks because I just found it less, more convenient. And the chances of me, like, running into somebody I knew were almost zero compared to, you know,

going to whatever place in Brooklyn or something. So you're hiding. You're hiding in place. And a Starbucks. And with no headphones. With no headphones. You are submitting yourself to the playlist, which is bold. So the night swimming would come.

And for a while, it's just like every time I would tweet about night swimming, it's just because I had heard it at Starbucks. But when I was younger in high school, I heard that all the time. I mean, it was like, and it was from a group of friends of mine who had sort of gone from, you know, they were no longer listening to the local bands and they were definitely not listening to hip hop, but they were listening to like REM and jump little children, all this sort of like pre-emo stuff that I found to be like very, you know, it's just like stuff where it's like basically the mentality. is like, oh, we're a happy, like, 15-year-old pre-twee type of stuff.

Like, oh, aren't our, like, isn't it crazy that our moms can sometimes be mean to us? But it's okay because... That is a very jarring sensation. Yeah, yeah. Like, I still carry out my security blanket when I was a child and isn't that precious. And you're like, no, it's really not precious. You know, you should probably stop that. But then the music that was generated out of it, I thought it was awful.

And anyway, I just still feel that way. I'm sorry. It feels like you fully talked to yourself into this. I find it hard to believe you ever thought you were joking. No, no, I always hated it. But I just thought it was silly to hate a song so much, you know. Well, right. And I went back and looked and you have wisely, I suppose, like deleted the vast majority of your tweets.

Because I was looking at up and I was like, how many times is you going to have tweeted about it? It's going to be like 50 times. I felt like every time I felt like I ran across you trash. night swimming, like two dozen times in a very compressed span of time. Yeah, that's probably my Starbucks working. Your era. Working at Starbucks. Yeah, it was a, I don't know. I mean, what can you really say? It's terrible.

Have you ever had earnest REM fans, like try and convert you? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, no one has tried to convert me. You know, the most convincing thing that anyone did was that one of the people said that, yes, you were right about automatic for the people and you might be even right about out of time. But what's the frequency, Kenneth is a good song. And I was willing to concede that what's the frequency Kenneth is a good song. And that's the closest I think I've got. Yeah. I mean, like, because that one is actually, it kind of like, it's like kind of hard.

You know, it's cool. It's kind of. Yeah, kind of hard is a good. There's distortion on it. He's not talking about his mom yelling at him. as far as I can tell. Stealing away to like some river and going in and, you know, swimming among the like fecal algae blooms from the hot farm.

Probably they didn't consider that. Okay. Wow. Well, I would be remiss if I didn't bring up the time more recently, I think, when you antagonized rock critic Twitter by announcing that Sonic Youth and Slintz are the two worst bands of all time. I guess I should start by, can you rank Sonic Youth Slint and R-E-M? First of all, just to get a sense of the spectrum I'm working with you.

Those were jokes. Okay, so those are jokes. This is good information. I was trying to think, there was a period of time where I was trying to think about what the most sensitive fan groups would be, you know. You're getting there. Slint was probably the number one where you would get people so mad at you, without it seeming like you're obviously kidding.

For example, if I said, oh, Liz Fares, Exile, Exile, a Guyville is actually, like, a shitty album. She sounds like she should be singing in a subway. And if she was singing the subway, I wouldn't even drop a dollar in because, like, why she's so out of tune? And what's all this complaining shit? That's a high engagement tweet right there. That's a ratio situation, sure.

Yeah. But Flint, I felt like, would, you know, I could probably convince some people. Right. Okay. Right. And Sonic Youth, I don't really like Sonic Youth, but I don't really care about Sonic. You know, it doesn't bother me. That whole generation would have been, like Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., or whatever.

It's not my thing, but it's like, it's fine. Like, I understand why people think they're good. Okay. I was taken by the idea you presented. Like, nobody has ever enjoyed Sonic Youth or Slant without feeling incredibly self-conscious about it. Music is at its best when it clears the mind of the self. That is what That's a very precisely phrase

And I love that very much You mentioned Dave Matthews band And Madonna As clear the mind of the self music But for you personally When you want to clear the mind of the self Is there a 90s artist Or any artist I suppose that you reach to

That does that for you That's a good question You know I was thinking about it And I was like well I mean the easiest answers Would be very boring which is like, you know, like I, what I actually did listen to a ton of when I was growing up in the 90s was I had just listened to a lot of rap, you know? Sure.

So it's nice for me to go back and listen to, for example, Illmatic, right? Or, you know, the first Goody Mob album or the first outcast album, these are all things that when I was growing up in North Carolina, I was exciting because it was the first time that Southern rap had sort of shown up, right? Because before it was just like, gnaws before. Or, Noss, right? Like, you know, it's an Raqam, everything that, you know, just a little canon. That's like what you get. You just get, like, a canon of rap. And so I listen to a lot of that still.

And that's, like, mostly what I listen to. Sometimes I listen to the Pinkerton. That's the most embarrassing one. That's an entirely different set of issues right there, Jake. I know, I thought about it. Yeah. Mom has been yelling at Rivers Cuomo. for a long time.

I was playing this video game. Wow. I was playing this video game recently. And the guy I was playing with was named, his screen name was Rivers Cuomo. Did you, I hope you shot that person. No,

but I was just like, I was like, are you really Rivers Cuomo in this voice, which kind of sounded like Rivers Quombo? I was like, yes. I wouldn't. I believe that.

I was like, you shouldn't be so ashamed of Pinkerton. You know? That's just what he needed to hear. You finally convinced that's beautiful. That's a beautiful story. Listen, you're very problematic. But, you know.

Right. Yeah, there's some. But it was kind of, it was like interesting. Some of the songs are very good, you know, like you should. You should be okay with having a period where what you're saying is kind of fucked up, you know. Sure. You're an artist and you should like embrace it. But he didn't respond.

Oh. He's still processing all. Well, yeah, man, that's why I think maybe it was a Rivers Quora, because I think the Reels Rivers Cuomo would have, like, gotten my phone number and called me. There we go. You'll be hearing from him. His people will reach out.

Is there any music that you loved in the 90s that you now reject or have soured on because you find it now to be overly sentimental? Is there anything now that strikes you as saccharin the way REM strikes you? Oh, yeah. I mean, I don't know, most of grunge, right? Yeah, right. I listened to that from when I was in middle school and just like everybody else. And I don't know.

Like, can you really listen to 10 or like verses, you know? It sounds like the early 90s. Right, right. That's true. The, what was the Smashing Pup Melancholy and the Infinite said? Oh, yes. I can't listen to that. That's pretty sacrum.

Right. Seidney's dream I can kind of listen to. Yes. But melancholy, like, it just seems so dating. And that doesn't seem like an album title that's going to grab you, quite frankly. You know, if you're, if you're, if these are of your objections to night swimming, Billy Corgan is just a walking cover of night swimming. I do still listen to the Liz Frere album.

Okay. So that's, that's also not entirely sincere opinion. Okay. Pixie's album? Sure. Sure. I still listen to that. But I don't know.

Most of it. I generally don't listen to much music anymore. It might be for the best. I just listen to books on tape, written by various economists from around the world. And I hope that it supplements my brain in a way that will make me smarter. How's that going? I feel like Michael Stipe would be an excellent book on tape guy.

He's got like the voice. It's actually, it's going pretty well. I've learned a lot, but it really depends. I mean, some of these things are a real slog, but some of them are better. But he could read like Freakonomics. I'm trying to imagine Michael Stipe reading Freakonomics, and that's really working for me, actually. That's like a tonal, a pleasant tonal. If he ever needs a second career when the Starbucks, when the Starbucks royalties run out for him.

This is the tide is turning on Michael Stipe. right this second. Are they still putting out music? No, they just celebrated on Twitter they celebrated 10 years of saying that they broke up. This is the sort of band REM is. They had a big maudlin goodbye 10 years ago and now they just they just do films and like side projects and whatnot. But they're they're making a point of saying we will never cash in by reuniting, et cetera, etc so it's sort of self-aggrandizing but in like a bashful kind of way i suppose it's like they can't disappoint the three people who are sitting around being like if rm sells out you know if they sell out and do a reunion this is the last straw right if i see them playing the you know

bohagan sun on a wednesday i'm going to be fucking pissed my childhood is over literally nobody has thought that. I hope they get back together to make their fans happy. There we go. Well, that's very generous of you. This is the best idea I've ever had professionally. This conversation, I am very grateful to you, Jay, for talking with us today about

a song you hate. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. Bye. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Jay Caspian Kang. Thanks, as always, to our producers, Isaac Lee and Justin Sales. And thanks very much to you for listening. And now, without further ado,

Here we have REM with night swimming. We'll see you next week.