Song #13 // R.E.M. “Mine Smell Like Honey” [Collapse Into Now]
R.E.M. was so many things, so many memories, so many places.
This is the power of music.
Growing up it was the first indicator of music cred. In a pre-Internet world, R.E.M. was the pre-indie band. The continuation of a Talking Heads artscape, but with meatier hooks, and popularity that didn’t need to be fought over. If you liked them, you were in. If you didn’t, that was OK too.
My sister gave me her 45s from Green when I began listening to my turntable more often and she no longer needed the cool cache of the cardboard box. They now stand as a kind of prized time capsule, an 80s analog to sepia tone in pops and hisses that kids now in college holding 80s parties will never quite grasp. It wasn’t always fluorescents and leg warmers. We were cool after and before we weren’t.
R.E.M. was passing along Automatic for the People cassettes in the back of the classroom, memorizing the words and feeling completely understood when listening to “Everybody Hurts” at 15, appreciating “Find the River” at 30. It was sitting in the back of my parents’ car as we drove through Indiana and falling in love, secretly, with New Adventures in Hi-Fi closer “Electrolite.” Making excuses for Up. Making excuses for Reveal. Making excuses ad nauseum as we all came to terms with the band and ourselves. The way U2 fans never do.
This is the power of music.
When the band disbanded in late September I immediately thought of my old friend Steve. Since college he was the one true disciple. Honest about the band’s shortcomings, but unwavering in his admiration and acumen. Within seconds of hearing the news I had posted to his Wall. Within seconds of it traveling through the Internet my cell phone was ringing, bounced miles above the earth via satellite. I hadn’t talked to Steve in years. He was married, with a newborn. I was married, just a mile down the road from where we once took the same classes. Everything and nothing had changed.
One could argue that Steve and I have nothing in common anymore. That some subconscious trigger is pulled each time I think of the one or two things we still have in common (mostly love for bands, including being the only two straight relatively young men who still adore Morrissey.) One could argue that our friendship is as thin as the aging bands’ aging catalogs. That’s one way of looking at it.
Another is that without this music, without these things, these memories, these places, these songs we’d have nothing to talk about anymore. Like so many others we’d fade from each other’s memory, eventually getting just curious enough to do a late night Google search, but little else. Instead, when we hear about a band calling it quits we talk on the phone for half an hour, first trading shock and then talking about life. We connect like electrical wires divorced from a power source for years. Then one day a dusty switch is thrown and there you have it: light.
This is the power of music.
“Mine Smell Like Honey” is an R.E.M. song for the ages, a harmony-laden nonsensical romp that fans of all eras can rally behind. We’re so spoiled with nearly three decades of music that a song like this on their last studio album can be just another good song. Were this fresh off the shelf, swapped like aural contraband in the back of pre-calculus, we’d know better. We’d be so much wiser in our younger years, when we knew enough to trust our ears, but didn’t know enough to know much else.
