R.E.M. released their fifteenth and final studio album, Collapse Into Now, in 2011.
This song, co-written by the band (minus Bill Berry, who had left the band at this point) and the legendary Patti Smith, who also provides vocals on the song, ended the album.
The band would make videos for every song on the album. This video, directed by actor James Franco, ends with the words "The End".
I think they were telling us something.
The band broke up in September 2011, six months after this album's release.
They never toured in support of the album, but they left us with a great exclamation point on their career.
No, this isn't a love song. It's a song Michael Stipe called "violent" in 1988 but acknowledged later that it could be open to interpretation. "A simple prop to occupy my time" is not exactly a loving line.
But I'm here to talk about Peter Buck's guitar work. Despite being a rock band, I don't think they got enough credit for the sheer talent of the instrumentalists, and Buck - who also played mandolin and banjo on other tracks, has a HELL of a guitar solo in this song.
The video features friends and family of the band, including Michael Stipe's sister, Lynda (who herself was formerly in a band called Oh-OK and a little later was in another one called Hetch Hetchy).
I just needed an excuse to talk about Lynda Stipe. OK, let's move on.
From their fifth album, 1987's Document, the song would be their first big hit single, hitting the US Top 10 and getting airplay worldwide... but not as much as they would if they were on, say, Warner Brothers....
In 1990, R.E.M. released a movie Documenting the Green tour, called Tourfilm. I figured the footage of this song from that would be better than anything someone with a videocamera in the audience in 1989 could get.
It's a pretty straight-forward version of the song.
In fact, this is a song they always did faithful.... even in 2005.... even in the pouring rain.
In 1988, R.E.M. left their longtime home at IRS Records to join the Warner Brothers roster with their sixth album, Green. They did it because overseas distribution of their records had been poor thus far.
Not a speck of green on this cover.
They kicked off their Warners years with a song about Agent Orange and the Vietnam War in 1988 - this song, which is not about a soft drink but absolutely did kick off an orange soda kick for 16-year-old me. The song was not released as a single in the US, but did well on modern and mainstream rock radio as well as overseas, where it WAS released as a single.
The video was a huge MTV hit and won an MTV Video Music Award for Best Post-Modern Video - in the inaugural year for the category. The band does not appear in the video at all.
This live video, courtesy of Reelin' In The Years Productions, is exactly how I remember the band performing the song in 1989 when I saw them - complete with the "Be All You Can Be" intro and megaphone usage by Michael Stipe.
The megaphone stuck around for later tours, including this 2005 performance that was just as dynamic so many years later.
This song was one of R.E.M.'s earliest, being performed at shows as early as 1980, and a live version was recorded for their 1983 debut album Murmur, but it was left off. So, when it came time to record the follow-up album Reckoning, producer Mitch Easter wanted the band to record it.
Except, at that point, Michael Stipe had grown to hate the song.
Well, compromises were made, and the song was recorded in a multi-track version with Stipe and Mike Mills providing fresh harmonies.
Despite Stipe's feelings at the time, it remains one of my favorite songs of theirs.
This is one of their earlier performances of the song. Yes, the harmonies are there, but you can see it sounds a lot more raw.
This is a song that disappeared from R.E.M.'s live sets for a good spell, but it came back. Here they are in 2007 performing it once again.
The band was still performing the hell out of the song.
R.E.M. broke up in 2011.
HOWEVER, in February 2025 - LAST YEAR - they reunited for ONE SONG ONLY at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, GA.
What was the song?
This one, of course.
Now, a little explanation - Michael Shannon, Jason Narducy & Friends were touring and performing a cover of the entire Fables of the Reconstruction album. This song wasn't on that album, so clearly, they needed help...
They didn't, actually. They perform the song pretty frequently as part of their R.E.M. cover band project.
That's what a lot of people think the name of this song is.
It's not. It's "So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)". The "So." is short for "South". However, it is listed as "Southern Central Rain (I'm Sorry)" on the inner sleeve of the Reckoning album. I usually myself refer to it as "South Central Rain" without the parenthetical title.
What does it mean? I'm not sure, but Michael Stipe seems to be singing a narration happening during a particularly rough rainstorm, so that's probably part of it.
But it's a passionate, great song - one of my favorites by the band even though it ended up being a relatively well-known song.
The video - and this is a band that LOVED exploring the video medium, but more on that throughout the week - was fake playing by the band but real singing by Michael Stipe, who hated lipsyncing.
You might notice the Hall of Fame label on this week. It's R.E.M. week, folks. They're our newest Hall of Fame entry.
Throughout their career, R.E.M. consistently played this song. Here is one of the last times they played it, on Austin City Limits.
My sister saw R.E.M. in 1995 in Buffalo, on the Monster tour - R.E.M. is her favorite band - and this song was one of typical encore songs. It was a little more torch-songy, but also passionate. This is a recording from the Milan, Italy show on that tour.
I personally saw R.E.M. live on September 13, 1989 in Hartford, CT - and it was my first concert ever. I saw them with my very good friend Mark Whittier, who passed away in 1995. Great show. Again, it was somewhat torch-songy, but less so than 1995.
Anyway, this is the performance from September 12, 1989, in Buffalo, NY. This is exactly how I remember it.
For the last live performance, I go back to 1983, and the band's first national television appearance on Late Night With David Letterman. Yes, this is a year before the song was released, and yet they performed it anyway.... even before the song had a title. By the way, if you go back up to the ACL video earlier in this post - that's my source for that little fact.
Michael Stipe had a reputation for being a little mumbly early in his career. This performance is a lot of the reason why.
One of those musical acts that I am supposed to like as an aging hipster is Waxahatchee.
And I have TRIED really hard to like the Katie Crutchfield project. And, well..... I just don't like Waxahatchee all that much. But, I still felt like I had to listen to her projects... in a desperate attempt to like her music.
But when Katie got together with her twin sister Allison (and MJ Lenderman and Brad Cook) and formed Snocaps - a great indie power-pop band - THAT I could get on board with. It's earnest, lo-fi fun!
The whole Snocaps album was one of my favorites of 2025, and although it missed the Wicked25, I feel like you still need to go listen to it.
I hope there are more Snocaps albums, because, as this Tonight Show performance illustrates, these sisters can HARMONIZE!
I know I didn't make a 2024 list - but if I had, Evergreen by Soccer Mommy would have been one of the top 2 albums on it (Romance by Fontaines D.C. would have been the other) and probably #1.
However, Soccer Mommy released an EP in 2025 - Evergreen (stripped) that had stripped down versions of a lot of those songs. THAT was good enough to earn an honorable mention on my Wicked25 last year. I did an online listening party with Soccer Mommy the day before its release, where we listened to Evergreen and Evergreen (stripped) and I gotta say, that was a musical highlight of the year.
For contrast, this is the original Evergreen version of "Abigail".....
.... and this is the Evergreen (stripped) version.
There are a LOT of available live versions of this song, so I chose the easiest to hear - the one she did for Triple J.
No word on whether or not she's doing any stripped shows.
I had the entry for If You Asked For A Picture by Blondshell WRITTEN for my Wicked25.
WRITTEN!
That's how close it was to making the list. It was ON the list.
Ultimately, it got pushed out because there was 25 albums that, on that day, I found more worthy.
I have felt really guilty about this since that day. The album deserved to be there - to the point where I have almost edited it back in. I still might do that.
Anyway, here's a single for you. This is pretty indicative of the songwriting that Sabrina Teitelbaum (who goes by Blondshell because it's a lot less wordy, I guess) brings to the table.
Yes, the song is about tits and ass.
While I love her KEXP performance......
.... the bluntness of this introduction during a live performance in the wild is a little more endearing.
There used to be a great button on Youtube that allowed me to just make a post directly from there to this blog.
They took it away in March. So doing this has gotten harder.
Housewife is not an artist that has released a full album yet - but she did release a great EP in 2025 called Girl Of The Hour that was filled with so much 2000s goodness that it was absolutely worthy of its honourable mention. I say artist - it was a band, but Brighid Fry is the only member left. They've been doing this for a decade but only the last few years solo.
Anyway, it's a great EP and you should go listen to it now.
You might remember my #Wicked25. For the very first time last year, I listed my 25 favorite albums of a year. I have been known to do one or two favorites, but never 25.
I also had a list of 25 runners up - honourable mentions, as you will. Some of those, I felt very guilty about excluding. I'm going to highlight those this week - because if I made the list today, these albums would be ON the list, not just honourably mentioned.
I'm not going to highlight the albums that would have been bumped in most cases - because they were on the list because they were deserving, excellent albums. And no, you can't just guess it's 21-25, because that's not the case. At all.
This is the more egregious omission. Because, if you look back at the list, you'll now see 26 honourable mentions. I didn't listen to Dogue by Ariane Roy until January. It was a terrible oversight on my part, because it not only would have made the list, it would have been a top 10 album. This is EASILY the second best francophone album of 2025.
Ariane release Dogue de Luxe in February of this year - probably because Dogue was so well-received - and used the extra space to make new versions of some of her songs with her friends.
Because yeah, this song by Korean girl group LE SSERAFIM, who have an inexplicable second S in their name, certainly DOES sample the wedding staple "Macarena". And their latest single, from the album 'PUREFLOW', Pt.1, which is incredible, is very much fast Latin house - and very much in your face from the get go.
The single was literally released last Friday, but is already on the Japanese charts. Let's see where this goes. I personally think they're poised for greatness.
It's a K-Pop girl group.
OF COURSE they have a performance video.
And by "a performance video", we mean TWO performance videos. This one's in a quarry.
Now, you know I usually have to throw a disclaimer on "live" performances by K-Pop groups, but this performance - from earlier this week on Korean television - seems to be a little different - it's not the album version at all. They seem to be at least PARTLY singing this.
You may notice there's only four of them. Kim Chaewon had to sit this one out and will be resting for a bit with neck pain.
"Hey, you know what would make this greatest hits album great? A song about literally killing people with music."
And, indeed, that's exactly what happened in 1986, when Kate Bush released The Whole Story, and had a moderate hit song and arguably her biggest hit to date, finally getting significant overseas airplay and MTV rotation. And yes, it was about the military creating a sound that could kill someone from a distance, written and produced by Kate Bush.
The video was directed by Bush herself and tells that exact story.
"Amy Grant writing a song about the January 6th incident in Washington, DC" was not on my 2026 bingo card.
Here we are.
Released as a single on January 6th of this year - and the lead track on her album The Me That Remains, released May 8th - it's about more than that specific event, but the unrest that happens around us, and being present in the moment despite these moments of turmoil. She's definitely not taking a side.
The song is sweet and hopeful, and on this Memorial Day, I think we need that.
By the way, for those who don't get the reference, Matt Yasgur owned a daily farm in Bethel, NY and leased one of his field for a music festival in 1969 that neighboring towns declined to host. Oh, that music festival was Woodstock. Did I forget to mention that?
By the way, Amy suffered a pretty traumatic brain injury four years ago, so it's pretty incredible that she's recording at all......
Let alone performing the song live, and doing so beautifully.
Harlee Case and Josh Smith were high school friends who recorded music together. Then they graduated and went their separate ways....
Until 2015, when, after several years of pursuing solo careers, they both returned to Oregon - Portland - and started a creative partnership that is New Constellations.
They just released a breakthrough album last week - It Comes In Waves - that is excellent and you should check out. They're rightly getting Phantogram comparisons with this album, which has a vague Eyelid Movies feel.
But they aren't Phantogram. They're making good, unique music that you should hear.
After hearing this early live version of the song from last year, I think this would mash up really well with "When I'm Small" and I wish I was good enough to do mashups.
I have been talking about the album and another band so much.... but this is my favorite song on the new album because it's just loaded with emotion. It uncorks and beats you like a drum.
I really miss old time classic pop/country crossover hits. They don't make songs like that anymore.
Take "Seven Year Ache". Written by Rosanne Cash and produced by her then-husband Rodney Crowell, this song by Johnny Cash's daughter was a HUGE country hit and a moderate pop hit in 1981.
It wasn't her last country hit - it's considered to be her breakthrough - but it's her most recognizable today.
She's never stopped recording the song, either. Here she is performing the song last year, in a quiet acoustic version at the Country Music Hall of Fame.
This performance from 1987, however, is more electric and matches the feeling of the original.
Do you remember the time when the "Sledgehammer" video came out and everyone thought it was SOOOOOOOOOO groundbreaking because, well, claymation and stop-motion?
And it was. It won NINE MTV Video Music Awards, the most any video has ever won. It won the Brit Award for Best Video of the Year. It was NOMINATED for a Soul Train Music award in 1987..... the only non-R&B artist nominated in the category and the only non-jazz white artist nominated in ANY category that year. He lost that one to Janet Jackson....
The video is great and Gabriel suffered for it - by having clouds repeatedly painted on his face and having to stay very still a LOT.
But this isn't a blog about videos. It's about music. And this was a pop-rock song in the British soul style, written by Gabriel, that would become his biggest hit in North America (and tie for his biggest hit in the UK). Gabriel leans into the soul influence on this song and on the whole So album, merging an 80's synth sound with 70's-style horns.
OK, but the video is undeniably great.
Gabriel embarked on a long tour in support of So, and it ended in October 1987 in Athens, Greece.
His performance is absolutely a whole-body performance.
Today is the 40th anniversary of the release of So.
So, why not celebrate with a lively performance from.... 2023.
Gabriel still gives a whole-body performance but with less hair.
On Friday, you could say "Bulgaria has never won the Eurovision Song Contest".
On Saturday, you could no longer make that claim.
DARA gave a hell of an exciting performance in the finale of the infamous competition. But despite North American audiences not knowing her, she's been around awhile - going far in the Bulgarian version of The Voice in 2015. She's had a string of hits in Bulgaria since.
This song, co-written by the artist, is inspired by the act of kukeri, which is a Bulgarian ritual, performed by men, intended to ward off evil spirits.
But really, it's just a fun song. Give it a go.
By the way, in order to win, you have to perform the song several times.
You have to compete in-country first - and emerge victorious.
In this day and age, you need a music video, too. And Dara has that.
So, it's tough for me to justify posting much Canadian content outside of March.
And you don't get much more Canadian than Hamilton, Ontario's own Arkells. They have a lot of hometown pride - and they released a new album, Between Us, last month.
But for one of their singles, Arkells teamed up with John Gourley, better known as Portugal. The Man. He's from Alaska, AMERICA! So, checkmate. SUCK IT!
But seriously, it's a cool collaboration.
The night after their album was released, Arkells travelled to the States to perform the song.
OK, they drove like an hour to Buffalo. Seriously, Hamilton is closer to Buffalo than Rochester is. AND they have IKEA!
The crowd in Buffalo knew the Canadian national anthem by heart loved the new music, and with good reason - the band sang the hell out of it.
I have had this song sitting in my drafts for almost a decade.
In 1991, this was America's introduction to the Chicago rock gods. This was their very first single, and it blew me away from first listen. This song defined their fuzzy sound and marked their first use of the signature Big Muff pedal sound that dominated their Gish and Siamese Dream albums.
I still love this song. Billy Corgan bringing it quiet and mellow for 30 seconds at about the 1:50 mark and coming back to the bombast even stronger.... only to return to the quiet style for the last verse.... and get even more bombastic for the finish!
This song is a journey.
Back when Smashing Pumpkins had their original lineup and Billy Corgan had his original hair, this song was a staple of their shows - like this one in 1993 at a Siamese Dream release party. The band was tight!
Most of the band is back together here in 2019 (D'Arcy ain't coming back, ever), and they still sound tight, if not a little older and less bombastic.
But really, my favorite ever performance of this song is this one from a Tower Records in 1993. The band was performing acoustic for a group of fans camping out to buy Siamese Dream at midnight, and despite his reputation, Billy was absolutely charming with that little girl.
This new single, co-written by Finn Keene, A.G. Cook (the producers) and Charlotte Aitchson (because yes, I am using her gubmint name and not some kiss Charli kiss thing she came up with when she was 14), is probably not technically rock music, but it is the most guitar driven thing she's ever done.
And it is a polarizing departure for Charli. But also, like I said when "Vroom Vroom" came out in one of my least favorite posts on this blog, because I really still don't like "Vroom Vroom", it's still Charli. And, this time, I really like this. It's kind of an electronic/rock fusion, and I am here for it.
