REM--Shiny Happy People

I'm not mad about REM, but Kate Pierson has such a fantastic voice she could liven up a Public Service Announcement.

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=MISS70306190824&sql=Aih90s36ba3mg

The song brought them into the mainstream, but to my mind their best days were already far behind them; "Fables of the Reconstruction" and "Life's Rich Pageant" will always be their best work, IMHO.

"Stand"?

(Also, 3-against-2 relationship isn't necessarily a completely different tempo depending on which subdivision of the beat you're looking at but that's music-geeky and irrelevant.)

What does "IMHO" mean?

Not sure the B52s were that hip in 1990. They did get some heavy rotation on MTV with 'Cosmic Thing', but I don't think they (or Kate) added any hipness to REM or Iggy. Maybe some mainstream acceptance

What does "IMHO" mean?

" y u tawk 2 me like dis? ok, kewl me go to rofl. lmao, haha! wtf! i no dat b52 chik she be hot as mf. what up wit dis y2k ish, rtfm! "

What do these mean/what do these stand 4: kewl;rofl.;lmao;wtf;ish;rtfm

I've always kind of liked it, mostly because it does indeed sound kind of "contrived" and not quite successful as a fun get-up-and-dance song. Listening to it, I can sort of picture them in the studio, building this kind of rickety, "crafted" pop song out of a tossed-off riff. (Mitch Easter's version on the "Surprise Your Pig" tribute album adds a few notes to the riff, trying to make it more of a complete "phrase.")

Why did they make it a single and a video then?

http://www.mcm2tv.net/gifs_playlist/rem_shiny.jpg

What do these mean/what do these stand 4:kewl;rofl.;lmao;wtf;ish;rtfm

Funny "young" world: I won a ("listeners' contest") copy of it, from BBC World Service, when I was 31. Hm.

What do these mean/what do these stand 4:kewl;rofl.;lmao;wtf;ish;rtfm

BTW, Kate's all over the recent Beatles-songs-sung-by-other-artists tribute, "From a Window"

http://www.gallerysix.com/from_a_window.php

Actually, it was most likely because both the B-52s and R.E.M. hail from Athens, GA. She sings pretty good, too. Besides, I seriously doubt either Stipe and Co. (or Iggy) needed any help in the hip dept., even in 1991.

it’s just the phrase “shiny happy people” that makes it so hated and i’m not sure why.

It sounds like something from:
This title format that drives me bonkers - Big Little Lies etc.

i think "shiny happy people" has become one of those de facto equivalents to comic sans

i'd love to hear an argument that it's on the better half of songs on that album.

brutal "texarkana" and "near wild heaven" snubs

Mike Mills sold my cousin a lemon and skipped town

The original demo (before it was given to Stipe for lyrics) sounds great.

(Also it becomes more obvious that "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" is essentially a rewrite of the same song.)

This is timely as I've been listening back to the rather excellent File Under Water podcast that goes through the entire REM back catalogue album by album and is well worth a listen. Prior to recently, my core REM knowledge was Out Of Time through Up, but it's really helped me with accessing the IRS years, and hopefully give me an insight into the post Berry stuff too

Is Buck using a capo on this. Maybe second fret

I was excited to check out that podcast until I read the episode descriptions for Document and AFTP in which they deem the former “no great shakes” and claim the latter now “lands with a thud.” Idk if I can spend hours listening to people talking about REM who hold those opinions

Me neither.

I've got to say, I don't agree with everything they're saying. It's all rather subjective really. Tend to listen to these two for their video game podcasts, and while the REM thing is entertaining (because clearly they're fans), you can tell music critique isn't a part of their day jobs

Okay, so I've listened to a fair bit of the podcast. I'd say if you're a dyed-in-the-wool fan, you'll probably hate it. If, like me, you're a casual fan interested in finding out a bit more about the band and hearing a bit more about bits of their catalogue you might have missed, then it's pretty good.

As I say, I love these guys when they're talking about video games, and clearly they're very big REM fans, so I can see why they decided to do this. But after a few episodes it's clear they don't have quite the musical vocabulary to really tackle it.

There's defintiely some interesting insight into the group, and it works well as a rough aural history. But when it comes to the song-by-song stuff, especially when they're giving their opinions, there's not much substance beyond "This song is too slow" or "I'm not really that big a fan of hard rock music, so I'm not into this one" etc. They often seem to get very hung up on the lyrics too, which isn't really an important aspect of the work for me. It's interesting to hear their opinions, but maybe REM aren't the best band to do these kinds of track-by-track analyses about, especially if the people talking about it are just "Fans of the band" who aren't really able to get too technical about the music. Let's face it, REM are a great band but they also have a lot of just REM-y songs that don't present a great deal to talk about

Gave the Chronic Town episode a try. Was plenty technical enough for me: the one who plays guitar just pointed out that 1,000,000 is the one song to feature Peter Buck playing muted chords, only going into the arpeggio-playing typical of the rest of the album on the bridge and chorus, which already pushes at the limits of my musical understanding. They're likeable enough.

I see there's another podcast that went through REM album by album, as a season among ones about other bands. It's called What Is Music? and on first listen the hosts are a bit more annoying but maybe that's because I'm English and familiarity breeds contempt.

I found it vaguely intriguing (from something else not the podcasts being discussed) that the songs were created by the non-Michael Stipe members of the group and were, for the most part, fully formed ... while Stipe sat in the next room. I don't know why this surprised me so much.

Yeah I didn't realise how much of a collective they were and that a lot of my faves by them weren't written by Stipe at all

He wrote almost all the lyrics with the notable exception of Rockville, didn't he?

I mean, Stipe plays no instruments, so I assumed he wasn't involved until the end.

Principal lyricist I should say - Mills and Berry made contributions to various songs

just as an aside, this thread prompted me to put their catalog on shuffle ... just the greatest band.

There's always the Adam Scott/Scott Aukerman podcast "R U Talkin’ R.E.M. RE: ME?" if you don't mind the many ridiculous digressions.

Maybe skip right to the Monster episode with actual Stipe/Mills presence.

x-post. Yeah, I know that's rational, Alfred. I'd somehow always imagined them in the same room, perhaps with Stipe being ... opinionated.

Yeah I remember reading about their songwriting process in some interview ages ago, I found it interesting that Stipe was coming up with melodies and words over mostly written tracks. Other bands do that to some degree too, yes?

Other bands do that to some degree too, yes?

that's the process behind a great deal of current pop music, isn't it?

There's always the Adam Scott/Scott Aukerman podcast "R U Talkin’ R.E.M. RE: ME?" if you don't mind the many ridiculous digressions.

For anyone looking for this – you likely need to search for U Talkin' U2 To Me? (the "umbrella" podcast name), and scroll down thru Springsteen, Talking Heads, and other stuff to get down to the R.E.M. tranche (2018-19).

(I only mention this bc I flirted with checking it out myself, after the last time I revisited Analyze Phish; and it took me a long-ass time to figure out exactly how to find the R.E.M. episodes. U may be sharper then Me, tho)

Yeah I remember reading about their songwriting process in some interview ages ago, I found it interesting that Stipe was coming up with melodies and words over mostly written tracks. Other bands do that to some degree too, yes?

― paper plans (tipsy mothra),

This is usually the deal with bands whose lead singers don't play instruments.

Yeah I was trying to think of other examples besides U2. I know Joe Strummer wrote "Rock the Casbah" over Topper's track. I think it's how the Petty-Campbell co-writes worked. Talking Heads on Remain in Light tho maybe not otherwise? Oh, 10,000 Maniacs.

And Zeppelin, that was pretty clear from the documentary.

Yup. Madonna too.

Morrissey and Marr too, apart from a few early tracks like Suffer Little Children where Marr wrote music for the completed lyric

Pretty sure Mike Mills wrote at least a few of the lyrics, like 'Be Mine' from New Adventures. I might be wrong

Wrote the music but Stipe certainly at least involved in lyrics:

I have written some songs that are I think bordering on creepy or questionable, Be Mine topping the list

fair dos, my sources are incorrect

I think this happened a lot in Motown back in its Detroit heyday, though creatively it was always very collaborative.

ex. Eddie Holland being the main lyricist for HDH, but you also have cases where someone like a young Stevie Wonder comes up with an instrumental track and then one of the label's best lyricists will put words to it and it becomes a hit single for someone else.

It actually reminds me of the great pre-rock songwriters and how a lot of the press thought people like, say, McCartney and Lennon operated in the same way given how their songs were credited.

or Jagger and Richards

Great song, lovely string arrangement, fun video, love Kate Pierson. Never been sure what the problem is. 

On the 60 songs that Explain the 90s Podcast, there was a story about how Dennis Leary made fun of "Shiny Happy People" on TV. Then Leary ended up in the same bar as Michael Stipe. Stipe walked up to Leary and handed him a note that said, "I also do not like the song 'Shiny Happy People.'"

What did Leary say about it(?) I don't really get what it is about the song that sets ppl off (or, as discussed above, why Stipe recorded it, did a video, etc. if he doesn't like it)

mocked Stipe's singing in a whiny voice, followed by intimations that being happy is for insufferable losers and we should kill all the shiny happy people. "I want the shiny people over here, and the happy people over here! i represent the angry, gun-toting, meat-eating people" iirc

we spent a lot of time listening to that comedy record on the school bus in 1992 or whatever :/

If Stipe just changed his mind or became sick of the song, that's cool, but it almost feels like he let himself be "bullied" by stuff like that...

Leary, Hicks, Stanhope and the rest can all fuck off.

That demo is actually quite revelatory in how very very very R.E.M. it sounds. If that makes any sense. Remove the lyric and we're really not far away from earlier days I don't think.

I definitely hear Sidewinder in there too, which ofc is the source of a persistent ambivalence, rather than hatred, within the R.E.M. camp - less serious than the outright rejections that they (Stipe especially) have given SHP but even so.

I enjoy this song a lot. In the past, I'd have told Leary he's simply not getting the point of the song - that it's a piece with Losing My Religion: the protagonist standing in the corner feeling like he's I the spotlight because he's conspicuously NOT part of the shiny happy crowd.
Makes me think of other songs that got slagged-off for being overtly happy, like 'Wake Up Boo', which many rush to defend as it's actually about living with a depressed spouse.
But Stipe himself says there's no cynical interpretation of the song - that he genuinely wanted to write a song about happiness.
And that makes me like it even more somehow. Why does everything have to have a dark subtext? What's wrong with happy songs? Anyone can write a cynical song. Writing an explicitly joyous song is much harder

writing a good joyous song is much harder, otm

You know who was great at it? Their friend Natalie Merchant. "These Are Days"...

I mean, seriously, if Dennis Leary LIKES your song you should probably reconsider it.