All Their Songs Are Sad

Album: R.E.M., Automatic for the People, 1992

Best Track: "Nightswimming"

Lasting Memory: The first time I watched the video for "Everybody Hurts," the second or third single off of Automatic for the People, I was convinced that it was the saddest thing I had ever seen. That first impression, as so often happens, was mistaken. I now know this to be the saddest thing I've seen. Followed closely by this.

The "Everybody Hurts" video is right up there on the list of sad artworks, though. That first viewing, in a hotel room about 20 miles west of Knoxville, Tenn., on the night of the first and longest day's drive of a 28-day sojourn through the south and central parts of America with my sister Clair, was like taking a punch to the solar plexus. Every song on Automatic is pretty emotionally raw, which goes a long toward placing the album in the ranks of great art. To quote the immortal G.K. Chesterton out of context but in support of the axiom that sad equals good,

His harp was carved and cunning,
His sword prompt and sharp,
And he was gay when he held the sword,
Sad when he held the harp.

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.
(The Ballad of the White Horse, 1911)

I mean, who doesn't love themselves some "Greensleeves" or "Danny Boy" or "Come on Eileen"? Irish eyes aren't smiling, dammit. They're misting.

So were R.E.M.'s, obviously, when they threw together an album that included two heartfelt tributes to Andy Kaufman, a retrospective piece on Montgomery Clift, several cry-it-out-and-move-on message songs, and the most wistful song about lost youth committed to tape by any rock band since Traffic gifted the world with "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" in 1971.

Automatic opens with the morose "Drive," which, as all rock songs should, employs the road as a metaphor for life. The album closes with "Find the River," which substitute a waterway for a highway and gently implies that listeners can get clean by returning to where they once went swimming at night.

While driving, you're bound to hurt when your personal hero -- be he a sidewinder or a man on the moon -- pulls off on the great exit to the sky far to soon. And when someone you admire gets a raw deal, that can make you catch your breath. But don't dwell. Sweetness follows.

Up Next: Lou Reed, Mistrial, 1986