Sometimes, the most difficult thing is just making it to the audition in time. That is the theme of the video for R.E.M.’s At My Most Beautiful, which follows a cellist as she tries to make it to her audition for R.E.M.
The cellist is played by Rain Phoenix. Rain was the younger sister of River Phoenix, who was a friend of R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe. Rain had previously been a member of River’s band, Aleka’s Attic, and she also served as a back-up singer with the Red Hot Chili Peppers shortly before she appeared in this video.
Director Nigel Dick is another one of those music video directors who worked with almost everyone. If you were a successful musician, Nigel Dick probably did at least one video for you.
Are you prepared to stand in the place where you live?
Michael Stipe and Peter Buck have both called this the dumbest song that R.E.M. ever recorded, with Stipe going on to explain that he wrote it as almost a parody of the type of “bubble gum pop” that their record label was pushing them to produce. Stipe also said that he actually likes the song.
It is certainly catchy and it won’t leave feeling quite as homicidal as Shiny Happy People.
The director of this video has also worked with Aimee Mann, Sharon Van Etten, and Indigo Girls.
Sometimes, I feel like R.E.M. is the forgotten great band of the 80s and 90s. They produced hit after hit and their songs were both catchy and intelligent but, after the band called it quits in 2011, it’s almost as if people have forgotten about just how great they were. Maybe it’s because they were so catchy and radio-friendly that people seem to overlook the fact that their music epitomized two decades.
Turn You Inside-Out is one of my favorite R.E.M. songs. The video is simple but effective. Michael Stipe gets to show off his moves. This video was directed by painter and filmmaker James Herbert. This was the ninth video that he directed for R.E.M. Sometimes a video director and a band just click and that appears to be the case with R.E.M. and Herbert.
This song is from one of R.E.M.’s more underrated efforts, New Adventures in Hi-Fi. As to what the song is actually about, there are many differing interpretations. That’s kind of the par for the course when it comes to R.E.M. The most frequent interpretation that I’ve seen is that Michael Stipe is singing about himself and all of the things that he wants that are unattainable. Or it could be that Michael is actually singing about all of us and saying that no one will ever get what they want. I’ve read at least one message board post that claimed that this was yet another song about the death of Kurt Cobain.
The music video was directed by Lance Bangs, who is still directing music videos to this day and who is married to Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney. Bangs was also heavily involved with MTV’s Jackass, a show that changed the culture for better or worse. Incidentally, Lance Bangs does not appear to be related to Lester Bangs.
71 years ago today, Andy Kaufman was born in New York City.
The self-described “song and dance man” often expressed his displeasure at being called a “comic,” but it can not be denied that he changed the face of American comedy. As Kaufman once put it, “I am not a comic, I have never told a joke. … The comedian’s promise is that he will go out there and make you laugh with him… My only promise is that I will try to entertain you as best I can.” Kaufman’s brand of performance art was featured on both Saturday Night Live and Taxi. When Kaufman died of lung cancer at the young age of 35, many refused to believe that he had died and instead said that, like Kaufman’s wrestling career and his Tony Clifford persona, it was just another elaborate hoax. To this day, there are Kaufman truthers out there who are waiting for Andy to come out of hiding.
R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe was one of those who spent his teenage years watching Andy Kaufman on Saturday Night Live. Man on the Moon was Stipe’s tribute to Andy Kaufman and the song is full of references to Kaufman’s life. Kaufman was famed for Elvis impersonations and Stipe even attempts to imitate the King himself when sings, “Hey, baby, are we losing touch?” Stipe has also said that the song was meant to be a tribute to Kurt Cobain and that the refrain of “yeah yeah yeah” was Stipe’s way of paying homage to Cobain’s frequent use of the word in his lyrics.
The video was directed over three days in Antelope Valley in California. The video opens with Stipe in the desert, catching a ride from Bill Berry and eventually reaching a truck stop where he and the other customers watch Andy Kaufman perform on TV.
“The song is a composite and fictional narrative in the first person, drawn from different stories I heard growing up around Army bases. This song is about the Vietnam War and the impact on soldiers returning to a country that wrongly blamed them for the war.”
— Michael Stipe, on the meaning of Orange Crush
“I must have played this song onstage over three hundred times, and I still don’t know what the fuck it’s about. The funny thing is, every time I play it, it means something different to me, and I find myself moved emotionally. Noel Coward made some remark about the potency of cheap music, and while I wouldn’t describe the song as cheap in any way, sometimes great songwriting isn’t the point. A couple of chords, a good melody and some words can mean more than a seven-hundred-page novel, mind you. Not a good seven-hundred-page novel mind you, but more say, a long Jacqueline Susann novel. Well alright, I really liked Valley of the Dolls.”
— Peter Buck, on the meaning of Orange Crush
“Mmm, great on a summer’s day. That’s Orange Crush.”
— Simon Parkin, after R.E.M. performed Orange Crush on Top of the Pops
Despite (or perhaps because of) all of the differing opinions as to what the song is actually about, Orange Crush is one of R.E.M.’s signature songs. It was not only a hit in the U.S. but it was also their highest charting single in the UK. It was the popularity of this song that led to R.E.M. being invited to make their first appearance on Top of the Pops, where host Simon Parkin assumed that the song was about the soft drink instead of the cancer-causing defoliant used in Vietnam.
This video, which won the inaugural Best Post-Modern Video award at the VMAs, was directed by photographer Matt Mahurin. Mahurin has directed several music videos, including the video for Metallica’s Enter Sandman. His most notorious work, though, might be a 1994 Time Magazine cover that featured a heavily darkened version of O.J. Simpson’s mugshot.
As with so many of R.E.M.’s songs, the meaning of Crush With Eyeliner is open to interpretation.
Courtney Love, for instance, has sworn that this song was about her. Michael Stipe was friends with Kurt Cobain and took Courtney Love to the MTV Music Video Awards in 1994, after Cobain’s suicide. Love has said that both Crush With Eyeliner and County Feedback are about her.
For his part, Michael Stipe has said that the song was meant to be a tribute of sorts to the New York Dolls, with the song’s mentioning of Frankenstein meant to serve as a direct reference to the Dolls’s song of the same name. Stipe has also said that the song is also about people who take on different personalities depending on whatever situation they find themselves in at the moment. That could very well describe Dolls. Of course, it could also describe Courtney Love as well.
Crush With Eyeliner was also one of the first songs that Stipe wrote after suffering through five months of writer’s block. Stipe had sunk into a deep depression following the death of his friend, the actor River Phoenix. When it came time to record Crush With Eyeliner, Stipe brought in another friend, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, to provide backing vocals on the song.
The video was directed by Spike Jonze and features a Japanese band lip-synching to the song. Jonze is a director who needs no introduction. Jonze got his start doing pop culture-themed music videos before eventually going on to become one of the most interesting feature filmmakers around. Four years after the shooting of this video, he would marry (and later divorce) Sofia Coppola. Coppola’s Lost In Translation, which was also set in Japan, features Giovanni Ribisi playing a character who is widely thought to have been based on Jonze. Coppola, for her part, said that the character was not directly based on Jonze, though “there are elements of him there, elements of experiences.”
On October 4th, 1986, CBS News anchor Dan Rather was attacked on the streets of New York by a man who, as he pummeled Rather, repeatedly shouted, “Kenneth, what is the frequency?!” When a doorman intervened to protect Rather, the man took off running. (Some accounts say that there were actually two men attacking Rather.)
Though he wouldn’t be identified for another 11 years, the attacker’s name was William Tager. Tager believed that the television networks were beaming signals into his brain. In 1994, he killed a stagehand while trying to force his way into NBC studios. In 1997, while Tager was serving a 25-year prison sentence, he was identified as the man who had attacked Rather. Tager was subsequently paroled in 2010.
The same year that Tager was arrested, R.E.M. released a song called What’s The Frequency, Kenneth? Though the song was clearly inspired by the attack on Rather, lead singer Michael Stipe has also said that the song was about an older man trying to understand the younger generation.
The video for What’s The Frequency, Kenneth? was directed by frequent R.E.M. collaborator Peter Care and features the band performing the song. The jacket worn by bassist Mike Mills once belonged to the legendary Gram Parsons.
Rumors that R.E.M. stands for “Rather’s Ear Muffs” were once popular but have been denied by the band. Instead, Michael Stipe selected the name after randomly coming across “Rapid Eye Movement” in the dictionary.
“It’s a subtle, political thing. Michael specifically mentions the term ‘bush-whacked’. But if you want to take it like ‘Stand’, that’s cool, too. You like to think that you can appreciate these songs on any level you want to. I have a lot of records I listen to when I’m just doing the dishes. Like Ride records. I really like Ride a lot. And I have no idea what the songs are about. And I really don’t care. I don’t even worry about it. Lyrics are the last thing I listen to, unless someone is hitting me over the head with it.”
— R.E.M.’s Peter Buck on Drive
Drive may have written to encourage young people to get involved in politics and to vote but I have always thought that the video was about the dangers of crowd surfing. The video was filmed over two nights at Los Angeles’s Sepulveda Dam. According to Michael Stipe, both Oliver Stone and actor River Phoenix showed up for the filming: “Oliver had been drinking and they got into a fight in my trailer. It was fun to watch. And it kind of fueled the energy that this video, from beginning to end, kind of carries through it.”
This video was one of several videos that Peter Care directed for R.E.M. Care also directed videos for Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, Depeche Mode, and Fine Young Cannibals. Care has also directed one feature film, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys.
Supposedly, Adam Scott is an extra in the video. I have yet to spot him.
This is what I get for doing my recommendation worm nonsense to pick out some music videos to feature. That means I was on Zombie by The Cranberries and this was the first music video that YouTube recommended as a result, so I picked it out next. I can guarantee you that this is the first time I have actually sat through this entire thing. I’ve had the video playing many times though because it is an excellent song. The music video itself is a different matter.
My memory is screaming at me that “losing my religion” is Southern slang for losing your temper, and Wikipedia agrees with me. Makes sense since R.E.M. is from Athens, Georgia. Yet, director Tarsem Singh decided to film it like Zombie and Heart-Shaped Box. I like the parts with Michael Stipe. He actually seems to know what to do, and how to convey the meaning of the song. But then it has a bunch of cutaways to religious imagery that I’m not sure had anything to do with it.
There are definitely things to love about this music video, but then we get the religious imagery that feels out of place except for the tie-in with the perceived meaning of the title. According to Wikipedia, Singh was going for a Caravaggio/Tarkovsky thing, but I’m quite sure it has nothing to do with the meaning of the song. If you haven’t seen it, then it is required viewing for 90’s music videos. Just don’t expect something particularly good visually beyond the Stipe parts.
This time around we have more than just director Tarsem Singh. However, it is noteworthy that Tarsem Singh would go on to direct The Cell (2000), Mirror Mirror (2012), and Self/less (2015).
David Ramser was the producer on this music video, but I can’t find anything else that he did.
Larry Fong is credited for “photography”, and went on to do a few music videos after this. He was also the cinematographer for some movies like 300 (2006), Watchmen (2009), Sucker Punch (2011), Super 8 (2011), and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). Not bad.
On editing, we have the return of Nine Inch Nails’ Closer editor Robert Duffy. We’ll see him again soon since he also did the editing on the Nine Inch Nails’ song The Perfect Drug. He appears to have followed director Tarsem Singh since he too worked as an editor on the same films I mentioned above.
Through the Shattered Lens 