Word: stipe
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...hardest things to write is a song that has no specific meaning but nonetheless conjures up powerful feelings or ideas. Bluntly themed, big-haired, Bon Jovi-like rock anthems are commonplace. But it takes someone of exceptional talent--R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan, Prince--to create a song that makes little rational sense but still rings true emotionally. We expect this from poets; we rarely get it from rockers...
R.E.M.'s new CD, Monster, out next week, does indeed blast with the boldest, brawniest music the band has ever recorded. In an interview with Time, Stipe described the new sound succinctly: "We wanted noise." Added R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills: "When you're in a band long enough, you want to try different things. On past albums we had been exploring acoustic instruments, trying to use the piano and mandolin, and we did it about all we wanted to do it. And you come back to the fact that playing loud electric-guitar music is about as fun as music...
...quartet -- Stipe, Mills, guitarist Peter Buck and drummer Bill Berry -- met in Athens in the late '70s. It was not altogether friendship at first sight. "We were definitely in different camps in school," says Berry. "((Mills)) was kind of the nerdy, preppie, straight-A student who hung out with the other straight-A students, and I was more the pot-smoking cool dude who hung around with the seedy element." As a teenager, Stipe wore unstylish corduroy pants with ribs as thick as ropes and drenched his hair with mustard. Despite that -- or perhaps because of it -- Buck found Stipe...
...time. Still, the songs sacrifice nothing in intelligence or depth. On King of Comedy, a robotic voice attacks pop culture for turning artistry into commerce: "I'm not your television ... I'm not commodity." Bang and Blame, an up-tempo song with meaty guitar hooks, is described by Stipe as a song "about domestic violence," but it may also be about the O.J. Simpson case: "You kiss on me/ tug on me ... jump on me/ bang on me ... you let go on me." Strange Currencies is about as close to an R. and B. love song as R.E.M. gets...
...most haunting track is Let Me In, which harks back to Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of the grunge trio Nirvana who committed suicide in April. Over a bare, raging, echoing guitar Stipe sings, "I had a mind to try and stop you/ Let me in/ Let me in." The members of R.E.M., who are all in their 30s, were friends and mentors to the 27-year-old Cobain. "I spoke to ((Cobain)) on the telephone a lot the week and a half before he disappeared," says Stipe. "We wanted to collaborate. I thought it was something that could have...