“Sidewinder” “holds one of my favorite lines ever, in ‘ their world has flat backgrounds and little need to sleep but to dream’,” he wrote in the liner notes to Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011. He goes on to sing about The Cat in the Hat and cartoons, in a lyric of which the singer is particular fond.
Seuss (because he’s incapable of saying the children’s author’s name as Dr. You can hear Stipe laugh as he sings, following the namecheck of Dr. If cars, boats and spaceships can be “shes,” why can’t a pay phone be a “her”?ĭespite wearing a lighter pallor, “Sidewinder” still ties into one of Automatic’s main themes: youth, or rather, memories of youth. It’s also possible that in the chorus (where Stipe squeezes nine syllables into the space of four, “ callmewhenyoutrytowakeherup”), the “her” that he’s singing about could refer to the phone.
Some old-timey telephones were called sidewinders, because of the coil of cord that wound on the side of the machine. The “Sidewinder” mentioned in the song's title is a snake, perhaps a metaphor for the drifting narrator, or maybe it refers to the public phone that is so central to the lyrics. “I was driving around listening to cassettes and staying in $19-a-night motels.” “I didn’t even have a house,” he revealed in the documentary R.E.M. Although Stipe wrote the lyrics, the details may have mirrored aspects of guitarist Buck’s life, seeing as his first marriage was in trouble during the Automatic era. “Sidewinder” seems to be offering glimpses of a transient lifestyle with the hallmarks of a roadside motel – instant food, strange characters and pay phones.
ALICE COOPER SPARK IN THE DARK LYRICS PATCH
R.E.M’s singer went “really out there” in penning the lyrics to “Sidewinder,” writing lines that list food (“A can of beans or black-eyed peas / Nescafe and ice”) or could be snippets of overheard conversation (“ You can’t lay a patch by computer design / It’s just a lot of stupid, stupid signs”) or obsess over the tiny details (“T here are scratches around the coin slot”).īut that’s not to say that this song isn’t sub-sub-sub-substantial. Watch R.E.M.'s Video for 'The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite' But it sounds like that song ‘The Sound of Philadelphia’ by MFSB.
“The other guys gave me this new song that is so beyond ‘Stand’ that it makes ‘Stand’ sound like a dirge,” Stipe told Melody Maker in 1992, perhaps referring to what would become “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite.” “I mentioned it and they all started laughing.
But the tracks that most intrigued them – and singer Michael Stipe – turned out to be the quieter, acoustic-driven ones, and the melancholy music that would symbolize Automatic for the People started to coalesce.īut amid some of the softer, slower, minor-key stuff was an upbeat boogie, created the same day that the men came up with the music for “Man on the Moon.” Both were melody-forward, but the former seemed to recall R.E.M.’s sunniest moments, such as “Shiny Happy People” and “Stand.” It only became bolder with John Paul Jones’ string arrangement, added after the bulk of the album sessions in Atlanta. Following a couple months of promotion for 1991’s Out of Time, the trio holed up in R.E.M.’s hometown of Athens, Georgia, and began working on what they had planned to be a big rock record. Like the majority of the songs on this album, “Sidewinder” first came to life in rehearsal/demo sessions conducted by the instrumentalists in the band: Buck, bassist/keyboardist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry.
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