It’s Thursday morning! Every Thursday I put on a cassette from my collection and share the memories, stories, moments, and excitement associated with each tape. Let’s rewind!
I remember exactly where I was when I found out R.E.M. had broken up. I was sitting in lunch room of my new high school, at a table by myself, staring at my phone, trying to hide from the embarrassment of not knowing anyone in this small town outside of Omaha, Nebraska. It was September 22, 2011, a day after the official announcement, and my heart was shattered. The moments I spent buying used versions of R.E.M.’s albums at the local Entertainmart, listening while I did homework, and watching enigmatic lead singer Michael Stipe dance in YouTube videos felt distant. I had never experienced a band this close to my heart break up before. As many know, the first one is the hardest.
In the months following up to R.E.M.’s disbanding, I had their latest record, Collapse Into Now, in constant rotation. Even though it is not considered one of the group’s best, it spoke to me. I loved Peter Buck’s more immense, guitar-driven sound, Stipe’s melodic vocals and always cryptic lyrics, and the fun set of cameos from artists like Eddie Vedder and Patti Smith (her voice coming in at the end of ‘Blue’ still gives me chills today). So, for a band I was still falling in love with to say “goodbye” was a shock. I knew something important was over and there was no going back. I needed to grieve.
A few years prior to the disbanding, R.E.M.’s 1988 sixth album Green, was a staple in my music collection. Songs like ‘Pop Song 89,’ ‘You Are the Everything,’ ‘Turn You Inside Out,’ and ‘Orange Crush,’ were songs I’d never get sick of driving around to or blaring on my stereo up in my closed-off teenage bedroom. Green had everything that made R.E.M. great. It had songs with edge, tenderness, aching, and (of course) mandoline (a precursor to the enormous success of their next album and their hit song, ‘Losing My Religion’).
I had listened to Green dozens of times. I knew every word, every background vocal melody from bassist Mike Mills, and every one of Buck’s guitar riffs. But one song that always escaped me was the album’s center track, ‘The Wrong Child.’ The song never really grabbed my attention like the others. The childlike lyrics did not intrigue me as a young person. I preferred the darkness of Vietnam and napalm references in ‘Orange Crush’ or the lustful obsessiveness of ‘Turn You Inside Out.’ That was until the darkness came for me.
As anyone who has moved schools as a teenager will probably tell you, it’s the worst. Adjusting to life as a teenager is already hard enough as it is, so having to readjust to a whole new set of norms and peers in a new place does not make things any easier. I deeply missed my friends back home and had a difficult time connecting with my new classmates. Loneliness did not take long to set it after the initial excitement of the move. And then, one of my favorite bands broke up.
In the aftermath, I turned to Green to cope. I went home and threw the album into the stereo, pretending R.E.M. was still a living band. What’s the first stage of grief? Oh, yeah: denial. As I listened, I became angry. I was angry at my current living situation, and everything that had led up to this point. Then, I already started to think about a reunion tour. “They’ll be back in 10 years right? Look at The Police!” Bargaining. And as the album moved along, as it always did, track six came on: ‘The Wrong Child.’
‘The Wrong Child’ is a song, presumably, from a the point of view of a narrator who is watching childen play outside among “the tall grass” in the air of Spring and wishes that could be their reality, but they are trapped. The outside is on the other side of a window: unreachable. The narrator tries to “sing a happy song” in their state of longing, but this doesn’t help. To cope, the narrator forms a friendship with what seems to be an imaginary friend or a child from the outside who approaches the window. They beg their friend to play and ask them what it’s like to be outside. And then Stipe drops the heartbreaker: a confession. “I'm not supposed to be like this/ I'm not supposed to be like this, but it's okay.” Stage four had set in: depression.
Being on the presipice of adulthood is challenging for anyone going through adolencence. You are thrust forward away from childhood, learning things you can’t unlearn. You end up looking behind you, watching from the other side of the glass. I identified with this “wrong child.” I, too, felt I was on the inside looking out. I was trying to sing a happy song, listening to my favorite album, but I was just reminded about how in life things change, and it sucks.
‘The Wrong Child’ was no longer a song I took for granted. Stipe was writting about the pain of losing inncocence, and feeling like an outcast in a world where we don’t fit in, trying to convince ourselves this was not how it was supposed to be. But this is how it is supposed to be. The pains of life are inevitable. The best parts of our lives arise from how we carry these pains and try to move on. While we must stay on the other side of the glass, we make the best of it, sing a happy song, and play our own game. Stage five: acceptance.
I love reading the different ways that R.E.M. meant so much to people, and the times they continue to help us through, even if they’re done touring and making new music. Great piece!
Also, I agree with you on Collapse Into Now being pretty darn good! That album along with Accelerate were great recoveries from Around the Sun and ended their run on a positive note.