Posted 11/10/2006 05:27:00 PM by Douglas

Fascinating take between U2 and R.E.M., two of the biggest alpha-numerically named bands of the 80s and 90s, yet one has shrinked into obscurity while the other has become the "spokesband for human dignity." Let's start:

Either you loved U2, or you liked them fine. Either you loved R.E.M., or you hated them.

OK, so that's in the second to last paragraph, but it's still true. R.E.M. were cats, while U2 were dogs. Even if you don't like dogs, you don't hate them. But if you don't like cats, you hate cats. Such as it is with R.E.M. and U2. Even if you don't like U2, they've got that one song that won't disappear from the radio that you catch yourself humming while you're taking a crap. R.E.M. wasn't so. You had no idea what the hell they were talking about:

The lyrics could mean anything, and therefore they meant everything, weighted as they were with mystery, resonance, and passion. "It's not necessarily what we meant," writes Mills, "but whatever you think."

And I think this, above all else, is why I loved R.E.M. So much of their stuff (before they fell apart in 1996 with the horrid, New Adventures in Hi-Fi) was what dorks like me liked to call "open for interpretation." How many hours in dorms across the country were devoted to dissecting the lyrics of "Word Leader Pretend" or "Driver 8" or "Swan Swan H" or countless others? It meant something to you because dammit, you were thinking about it. U2 fans had it all spelled out for them with "Pride in the name of love," "With or without you," or "Mysterious Ways." Absolutely no 'mystery' or self introspection in that title.

The delicacy at the heart of R.E.M.'s 1980s albums fostered introspection and brotherhood among those of us who loved them in those years: introspection, because the songs pushed the listener inward, finding significance in every line; brotherhood, because we had to band together to defend our heroes against the unfeeling jerks who found R.E.M. precious and maddeningly opaque. I assumed, of course, that those jerks were U2 fans.

Not always but more often than not.

In the battle of the three minute pop song, R.E.M. caught my attention as something that made me think about things larger than myself. Sure, Stipe and company had their bad days ("Shiny happy people?" Geesh. Utter drek) but more often than not they wrote interesting if not compelling music and lyrics that got my attention, and to this day, each and every R.E.M. song that's near and dear to me reminds me of a specific place, time, event, person with which I shared that experience.

U2, on the other hand, is terribly over rated and has an incredible song about MLK's assassination. How much more impersonal could you get to a small town kid in the big city in 1993 that doesn't even know why he's wearing flannel?