R.E.M. - Green
Written by: Moti Kupfer
Release date - 07.11.1988
Day after day, hour after hour, they wrote, played, recorded and performed all over the world. But at the end of 1987, "R.E.M." felt they had reached a dead end, a road with no way out. The feeling was that no matter what they did, no matter how many more brilliant songs they wrote, those songs would reach mostly American ears. They believed they had somewhat higher potential, or at least Michael Stipe did.
Their contract with I.R.S. Records had just ended, and Stipe had no intention of staying there a minute longer. The talented foursome were certainly grateful to the label, but they understood that I.R.S.'s ability to market them around the world was limited.
After weighing several offers, they signed with Warner Bros. for a deal worth about $10 million for five albums, with complete creative freedom.
The band's devoted fans, who had followed them since the very beginning, were stunned. They could not understand how the band regarded as the unofficial leader of indie rock was commercializing itself for the sake of money.
In hindsight, "Green", the band's sixth album, released on November 7, 1988, was the moment "R.E.M." shifted gears. They grew up, yet they still wrote combative songs, with plenty of concern for the environment.
In fact, if any of the band's fans feared a total loss of direction, the album's title, "Green", was a statement of intent from the gifted group from Athens, Georgia: they had no intention of forgetting the causes dear to their hearts, even at the price of signing with a major label. The album is marked by a fresh sound and by political and ecological messages.
During that period, Bill Berry, Peter Buck and Mike Mills reconvened for informal sessions at Robbie Collins' Underground Sound studio in the band's hometown of Athens, Georgia, where they recorded a first batch of demos.
The band was determined to change the way they built their songs, and its members also swapped instruments and added new ones to their arsenal, such as the mandolin, accordion, cello and Hawaiian steel guitar.
Another guiding principle was to move away from "R.E.M.-style" songs, which guitarist Peter Buck defined as "minor, mid-tempo, enigmatic things". The band liked the idea of putting the rock songs on one side of the album and the acoustic songs on the other. In the end, this premise proved impractical, since they wrote more rock songs than acoustic ones.
The variety of the track list was a key ingredient, but what made the album so appealing was the clarity of Michael Stipe's voice, which suddenly made it possible to understand what he was singing about, along with Peter Buck's distinctive rock guitar style.
There was a brief moment, at the end of the 1980s, when many people around the world felt that peace was on its way, perhaps thanks to the end of the Cold War and the era of glasnost and perestroika. Presidents around the world signed agreements, and thousands of nuclear weapons were about to be destroyed.
Stipe picked up on this sense of optimism and created an album that, on the one hand, touches on political and ecological issues, and on the other is very optimistic, relatively speaking, compared with the gloomy atmosphere of the songs on his previous albums.
The band asked to release "Green" on November 7, 1988, so that it would land right alongside the U.S. presidential election, a race in which they backed the Democratic candidate, Michael Dukakis, who would ultimately lose to George H. W. Bush.
The album opens with a song that easily became an anthem, "Pop Song 89", written as a kind of play on the song "Hello, I Love You" by "The Doors". Instead of talking to a girl about sex, Stipe suggests that they talk about the weather or the government.
The video was directed by frontman Michael Stipe himself. In it he dances topless alongside three women, also topless, in a kind of satire on the objectification of women. When MTV asked for a censored version, Stipe placed black bars over the chests of all four dancers, himself included, and said, "A nipple is a nipple."
Stipe, who was eager to make the album, sometimes scolded his bandmates, especially bassist Mike Mills, who sometimes preferred to keep sleeping. To get him out of bed, Stipe shouted at him: "Get Up".
Stipe always let his fears out, channeling his emotions, and with every album that channeling became more effective. In "You Are the Everything", Stipe expresses his deepest fears about the future.
As a passionate activist, Michael Stipe always lived by the belief that "it is our job and our duty to influence the environment we live in", and for that he wrote "Stand".
In "World Leader Pretend", Stipe wrote and sang about a leader who chooses to disconnect from his surroundings and from the world but, ironically, interprets his inner monologue in terms of political policy. Singer Michael Stipe recalled: "The song was a tribute to Leonard Cohen, using military terms to describe the battle that was raging inside me." Note the similarity between the sounds at the beginning of the song and "Texarkana", written for the next album, "Out of Time".
In "The Wrong Child", Michael sings from the point of view of a rejected child who doesn't fit in with society. It is unclear whether this is a limitation of his own or simply social anxiety.
The father of Michael Stipe served in Vietnam, and Stipe, who held anti-war views and was known as a sharp critic of the political and military leadership, wrote "Orange Crush" as a reference to a carcinogenic substance called Agent Orange, a chemical used by American soldiers in the jungles of Vietnam. Servicemen who were exposed to it developed cancer years later, and some of their children were born with birth defects.
Toward the end of the album, the band moves to quieter, acoustic songs. Stipe sings about the limits of power in "Turn You Inside-Out", and about how power corrupts, from the point of view of a musician with enormous influence over his audience.
In "I Remember California", Stipe confronts the fears he had as a small child, and the song serves as a reminder of the child he once was. As a direct continuation, the album closes with a joyful song without a name, "Untitled", in which Stipe expresses his love and appreciation for his parents.
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