“E-Bow The Letter” might just be ballsiest single by a major label band in the history of pop music. Of course, R.E.M. is one of those bands that divides people. Some people completely love them other people completely loathe them. I am in love camp and have been since I was 10...when I discovered my older sisters “Dream A Little Dream” original soundtrack album. That album featured “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” which melted my little 10 year old brain. I liked words and that song had lots of them. Needless to say, R.E.M. became the first “proper” band I got into.
The obsession with Stipe and company continued into my middle school years. I got “Green”, “Out of Time”, and “Automatic For the People”. I loved them. I then set out to buy every R.E.M. record from 80’s as I discovered that there was whole era of their music I had missed. I was obsessed. I read every interview or article I could find on the group. I thought Michael Stipe was the smartest person in the world and started seeking out books, records, and artists they talked about. For a brief period I even tried to be vegetarian, because Michael Stipe was.
One of the artists Michael Stipe spoke of in his own little obsessive way was Patti Smith, who quite frankly, scared my little 13 year old being. I bought her record “Horses”, because he said it was the best thing ever, but I was probably a few years too young for it. I didn't get it. I can appreciate now, but I could really appreciate her after what happened next.
In 1996 my R.E.M. obsession is still there, but by this time I had dozens & dozens of bands to follow and R.E.M. had gotten borderline trendy with "Monster". I didn't blame them...it was just a little annoying as someone who had loved them forever. I can't imagine how their fans from the early 80's felt. R.E.M. had invented alternative music in someways, but themselves were now a Grammy-winning household name. It is during this time that R.E.M. does two of the most interesting things that a band has done in my time of being a music fan.
One: they sign a multi-million dollar 5 album deal with Warner Brothers. This is interesting because R.E.M. is well past it’s prime as a "singles" band and I think they know it. It just shows how fucked up the record industry had gotten in the 90’s offering “established” bands tons of money and then not understanding why they didn’t sell 5 million copies of every album. This is the beginning of how out of touch music labels were about to become... the fallout which is happening now. R.E.M. took the money and ran. God bless them.
This dovetails with the second interesting thing the band did. They released “E-Bow the Letter” as a single. The first time I heard it I was mesmerized. I thought it was haunting, brilliant, and a complete out-of-left-field choice for major label single. My beloved R.E.M. had infiltrated the majors (from the indies) and released this gem of a song.
I also loved it because it was career suicide. There was no way in hell that song was getting played on the radio. And I was right... it bombed. It was their biggest hit ever in England, which seems about right, but it the States it received a shrug and in turn in started the slow decline of sales for the “godfathers of American Alternative” music. And in someways I couldn’t have been happier; I had my R.E.M. back. Plus, I like words and this song has lots of them.
See the reality is that all bands that sign to major labels have to sell out a little... its called business. You make a record, take it to label, and then they deicide what the single should be that “sells” the record. R.E.M. had had a string hits, but in 1996 the alternative boom was declining and R.E.M. was in the unique position of releasing whatever they wanted to because they were a hot commodity. They chose this odd song in which Michael Stipe sings with his hero Patti Smith about the spiraling culture of stardom. Brilliant.
She never had to deal with the same crap R.E.M. did, because Patti Smith was always in the margins a little, but the fact that R.E.M. was able to help introduce her to generation of music lovers who might not have heard her; and to do it on this song...well, I really admired it. In some ways "E-Bow the Letter" is the song that killed the major label. It was the first chink in the armor if nothing else.
They need not give me any more reasons to write about them, but they still do and I hope they keep at. Damn, I love R.E.M...just love them.
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