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.
