The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite

Had this song stuck in my head on Tues­day morn­ing. Odd, because I learned that the man respon­si­ble for writ­ing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” George David Weiss, had died the night before.

As I thought about it, I looked up Matt Per­pet­u­a’s exhaus­tive Pop Songs ’07-’08 and found this entry for the song. So maybe that’s not the most illu­mi­nat­ing piece ever writ­ten about an R.E.M. song, but it remind­ed me that Auto­mat­ic for the Peo­ple was such a down­er of a record.

I know I’ve said it before else­where, but I can’t even try to lis­ten to this absolute pill of a record any­more. Maybe it puts me back in a weird spot, remem­ber­ing all the awk­ward moments it sound­tracked while I was a gawky teen, but it’s so one note that even tracks like “Sidewinder” and “Ignore­land” can’t shake me from my sleep. Going back to that place is one weird trip, let me tell you.

This album is to me what I think an album like Lucin­da Williams’ Car Wheels on a Grav­el Road would be just six years lat­er: a sol­id adult con­tem­po­rary record that lulled peo­ple into a false sense of sophis­ti­ca­tion. (How I avoid­ed buy­ing that Williams record I may nev­er know.) As much as I used to think Auto­mat­ic was a pro­found med­i­ta­tion on death, I real­ize today that that had every­thing to do with me know­ing noth­ing about the sub­ject mat­ter. It’s the muzak disc Stipe cursed the Bea­t­les for mak­ing. How he can even sing “Every­body Hurts” with a straight face at this point in his career is beyond me.

13 Comments

  1. Oh come on, Auto­mat­ic for the People?!–I won’t go and say some­thing is flaw­less again, but that is a flat out great record with song after song of gut-kick­ing sim­plic­i­ty. Every­body Hurts is among their best guilty plea­sures. What’s with this revi­sion­ist his­to­ry streak run­ning through your music posts? 

    How­ev­er, I will nev­er quite under­stand the wide appeal of Lucin­da Williams. I bought Car Wheels when I was nine­teen (at the same time as Yo La Ten­go’s Painful weird­ly enough) back when I used to buy the 10 best Rolling Stone crit­ics picks for the year. Although I liked some of the songs (i.e., drunk­en angel) I could­n’t have had less of an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion to it. Not a record for the young. But it’s got­ten to the point where I just cringe when I hear them now.

  2. I’m all for revi­sion­ist his­to­ry when it comes to music crit­i­cism. It’s hard
    not to cringe at some of the stuff that out­lets like the Voice can­on­ized in
    Pazz ‘n’ Jop some­times. Remem­ber Quad City DJs?

    Here’s the thing about Auto­mat­ic: “Every­body Hurts” isn’t a guilty plea­sure
    for any­one. That song is so earnest and maudlin it pains me to hear it. I
    will admit a fond­ness for Side 2, but I just don’t hear “Nightswim­ming” in
    the way I once did. My favorites now are “Star Me Kit­ten,” “Ignore­land” and
    “Mon­ty Got a Raw Deal.”

  5. Do you not under­stand how com­ment mod­er­a­tion soft­ware works? All the same,
    thanks for com­ment­ing. Seri­ous­ly, this is good stuff.

  6. I just think neg­a­tive revi­sion­ism often either attacks gen­uine­ly great records or hauls out shit peo­ple already real­ized was­n’t so good. Like is it real­ly pro­duc­tive to keep try­ing to find ways to assail the Bea­t­les or to remind peo­ple those last cou­ple U2 albums were actu­al­ly ter­ri­ble. Time is the per­fect edi­tor. Con­verse­ly, I real­ly like it when forgotten/never known albums are re-exam­ined and that sort of thing.

  7. I think that “for­got­ten” albums can be some­what mis­lead­ing, which I’m
    start­ing to see now with the waves of ’90s nos­tal­gia crash­ing on these
    shores. I feel like I’m star­ing into the used bin at Repo Records some­times.
    It’s easy to lion­ize things peo­ple gen­er­al­ly ignored. It’s a good proxy for
    sophis­ti­ca­tion.

    As far as this bit about R.E.M. goes, I’d say that it has less to do with
    tear­ing them down entire­ly as it does with me rumi­nat­ing on the music I
    gen­uine­ly loved as an ado­les­cent. This is an album that got me through the
    bet­ter part of high school, yet I can’t bear to lis­ten to it now. One of
    those can’t go home again kind of things.

    Last­ly, I’d con­tend that those U2 albums that I thought I hat­ed ca. 2000 now
    sound pret­ty good when com­pared to the pre­ten­tious new mate­r­i­al. Rhyme “pie“
    with “sky” all you want, Bono! End this Kings of Leon non­sense once and for
    all!

  8. Jeez…I’m not even that big an R.E.M fan. Look at what you have me doing! Yeah, I’ve been won­der­ing when the 90s were gonna come back. I’ve been wear­ing a trib­al print t‑shirt in expec­ta­tion (seri­ous­ly). They’re back now? 

    I can total­ly get into rumi­nat­ing on albums from adols­cence that are now unlistenable–maybe I was mis­read­ing your inten­tions. There’s def­i­nite­ly no rea­son for me to ever lis­ten to Siamese Dream again for instance, no mat­ter how much it made 8th grade bear­able. At the same time, there are a cou­ple albums that I loved in middle/high school that have only become more res­o­nant. In par­tic­u­lar, when I lis­ten to Auto­mat­ic these days I’m struck by this phe­nom­e­non. In Utero is anoth­er. What are some for you?

  9. Also, isn’t that the def­i­n­i­tion of music blog­ging sophistication–exposing a lot of peo­ple to things they don’t already know? The new­er the bet­ter, the old­er the bet­ter. It is true tho that peo­ple will com­plete­ly lap up redis­cov­ered old albums out of hand.

  11. Late nineties came back first, with the reunions of No Doubt and Creed, but now we’re see­ing every­body reunite. I just read that the Spinanes will be get­ting back togeth­er for a tour. It’s like look­ing into the used bin at your favorite record store ca. ’95, when there was just an explo­sion of bands with names bad enough for you to ignore. Fun­ny how hav­ing to pay for music shaped my tastes to the extent that I sim­ply did­n’t hear stuff that did­n’t scream out for me to buy it. Guess I should lis­ten to the Spinanes now, huh?

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