POLL: "Never Tear Us Apart" (INXS) vs. "Everybody Hurts" (R.E.M.)

he even casually walks like a dancer
ugh i love him
sorry michael stipe u lose buddy

https://i.gifer.com/4Fa4.gif

I had totally forgotten NTUA. It’s a nice tune but the production is awfully cheap (the guitar is barely professional recording, the strings are embarrassing... and the sax !)

fp’d u

“Everybody Hurts” sounds like they’re singing about something, and “Never Tear Us Apart” sounds like ambition.

let it be said that these two songs do not take the listener to the same place at all:
NTUA -- we all have wings, you are special, don't cry, they will never tear us apart
EH -- life is hard and sucks and everyone gets the blues but you have to keep trying

Personally, I would rather pretend that Michael Hutchence is singing a romantic sax-addled ballad to remain close to me than be ineffectively consoled about the legitimately rotten state of humanity by Michael Stipe. The choice is so easy that I have a hard time even putting these songs in the same category.

THANK you

that is otm & exactly why this poll is no contest

God R.E.M. look like pretentious fucks in that video - I quite liked the song until I saw that portentous turd, looks like a throwback to the deadly earnest Out if Time era which I thought Monster / AftP had purged. INXS had the decency to give their song exactly what it needed - romance, sighs, moody overcoats and Paris.

Or perhaps Prague, IIRC.

I distinctly remember hearing 'Everybody Hurts' for the first time on radio and thinking "those arpeggios sound a bit like REM, but this leaden, lifeless mess better not be them... oh, Christ, that is definitely Stipe's voice" etc. I got off the wagon at that point, long before even parsing the lyrics. (Though AftP is frequently good otherwise, of course.) The choice is therefore pretty easy...

I knew as I wrote that, that it wouldn’t be Paris.

Neither song is good, but NTUA is better, because Hutchence at least had a presence, while Stipe was always a sucking void (and was a prime example of a well-poisoner, in that he inspired hundreds of other personality-less human voids to step in front of microphones, too).

― grawlix (unperson), Sunday, December 30, 2018 12:29 PM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You know for a guy that doesn't have a personality, he sure gets under a lot of people's skin

Stipe is beautiful but this is one of my least favorite R.E.M. singles

NTUA is great, very romantic

I think Stipe had lots more charisma than Hutchence (in their respective primes), tbh. (and that’s not a dis on Hutchence — or an indication of how I voted in this poll!)

wtf

lotta challops itt

i can only really *hear* “everybody hurts” in the sequence of automatic for the people, it works so well there as a simple and clarified summary of the album’s themes. on its own it works... less well

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Saturday, December 29, 2018 11:34 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

as usual brad nails it

xp — To me as a teenager (and other teens I knew), Stipe was brooding, mysterious, poetic, endearingly pretentious; ambivalent about the spotlight, while also craving and cultivating attention; earnest yet cryptic, sincere yet guarded, passionate but full of self-doubt. In short, he was born relatable and larger-than-life; a perfect idol for sensitive adolescents with a self-effecting sense of humor.

Hutchence was a good-looking guy with good hair who sang well, from a band that had a big record a few years earlier.

I remember the week he died, one of my favorite Minneapolis bands played, Rank Strangers, and the singer said the next song is dedicated to Michael Hutchense....was a real indie rock crowd, really smirky, so people laughed like they thought he was joking, then they went in to this amazing, really intense version of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" and the crowd was totally silenced when it was done, one of the best things I ever saw

damn

Yeah, that’s cool.

(also: a few autocorrect or IPA-afflicted typos in my post above. born = “both”; effecting = “effacing”)

I could never understand why (the Everybody Hurts video) won so many awards

Because Wings of Desire was a great movie.

then they went in to this amazing, really intense version of "Love Will Tear Us Apart"

(If anyone's still wondering, it's definitely Prague in the video.)

I hadn't thought of INXS since the Kick era until earlier this year, after an ILX poll alerted me to "Don't Change", which is an astonishing song. Listening to their albums after this, I loved all the singles I remembered (including this one) but the albums didn't pay off any further than that.

I heard "Everybody Hurts" on the radio on a local bus this summer in the south of France, on a "greatest hits of the English and French speaking worlds" type station, and realized that it mustn't be its words that people respond to, since in that context even pop platitudes are unheard. I don't understand universal things, but for a moment REM did.

This is my least favorite REM single/one of my least favorite songs in general by them. NTUA by a country mile.

Playing "Never Tear Us Apart" would have been more appropriate, but a lot harder to learn I guess.
(If anyone's still wondering, it's definitely Prague in the video.)

― dorsalstop, Monday, December 31, 2018 2:23 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No, it was perfect

I completely loved REM and I still think that NTUA is a better/more moving song *** in the choice between these particular two songs ****

The INXS catalog does not hold up as well (for me) long term in that it seems one-note, like a drugstore perfume that smelled intoxicating at the age of 12 and kinda gross/treacly even a few years later. The great songs are still great though! And as I mentioned, they remind me of prelapsarian times, young and innocent days.

They don't have many great album tracks, but I stan for this one:

https://pitchfork.com/features/article/the-raincoats-debut-album-is-a-classic-diy-document/

lol oops

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpFQJ8IlXWs

I love R.E.M. but voted for 'Never Tear Us Apart' without hesitation, classic case of a brilliant single from a band I don't really have strong feelings about either way (although I do love 'Don't Change' as well).

The first time I heard "Everybody Hurts" I assumed it was a piss-take, or a b-side, or otherwise a joke (I had the same reaction to the Bangles' "Eternal Flame"). I stopped paying attention to them around Automatic, long after the frantic rush and intriguing indecipherability had vanished forever. I thought, either this song is some kind of a send-up, or they're reduced to explicitly spelling out what they used to wryly imply, and that's no fun.

I don't want to defend "Everybody Hurts" exactly, since I too have mostly skipped it since 1992, but I don't they were "reduced" to doing anything on it. I mean, they called an album Green in an election year; and while marketed as a "Southern"-band named an album after Reconstruction. Which is to say, they had long had a taste for the obvious gesture. This world is big, and REM wanted to give good advices. It was the 90s: at first you thought they were faking it, and then you realized they were beyond fake, they're the real thing.

REM is my favorite band of all time, but this is choosing their worst song against the best of INXS.

It was the 90s: at first you thought they were faking it, and then you realized they were beyond fake, they're the real thing.

I can see this in a sense where they believe what they're saying is too important NOT to spell it out. But for me, they came off as earnest folkies, or a less funky Three Dog Night.

and while marketed as a "Southern"-band named an album after Reconstruction.

In 1985 they weren't marketed as anything other than a band that college kids would like (to the extent they were marketed at all), and they happened to be from Georgia. To say they were marketed as a "Southern" band -- especially compared to Tom Petty's Southern Accents tour and album around that time (Peter Buck publicly called him out on using the confederate flag) -- is a stretch.

I don't really see it as more of an unsubtle piss-take than "Shiny Happy People", which was on the previous album?

I suppose, but that seemed like an ironic wink...or at least, that's how I heard it. But I didn't like Out Of Time much.

R.E.M. is one of my all-time favorite bands, and I will defend nearly their entire catalog with great gusto, but "Never Tear Us Apart" really is the superior song here.

Also REM get thee one (1) saxophone

I was wondering about that y'day, and realized they did get one (1) -- here!

There was a sax quartet in "Can't Get There From Here"!

after an ILX poll alerted me to “Don't Change", which is an astonishing song.

I had never heard “Don’t Change” until it was used in that movie Adventureland — I was like, omigod, this song!

There was a sax quartet in "Can't Get There From Here"!

Are those all saxes?? Cool 😎

I'd take R.E.M.'s discography over INXS's any day of the week but it's clearly 'Never Tear Us Apart'.

I played alto sax and oboe in HS and was super stoked about the oboe on Nightswimming when it came out. I am never stoked about the sax.

INXS

It's more of a performance that I enjoy every time I hear it.

Everybody Hurts might be my least liked song from the singles on Automatic.

Recently heard Nightswimming, and thought it was still awesome.

“Unchained Melody” was big around this time (due to Ghost), and I think of “Everybody Hurts” as a kind of art-school take on it, both embracing and eyerolling it. Also an analogue to “I’m on Fire” starting as a “Folsom Prison Blues” joke/game.

I’m quite impressed by the consensus against EH. I totally understand why one would dislike it but didn’t expect that wave of hatred.
I like it. It reminds me of my teenage years. It’s moving.

Yeah - when I played it again for this poll, I was surprised by the presence and power it still carried.

you may have had better experiences in your teenage years than other people did. that song felt like cold comfort to me at the time. many years later, i am not hateful or bitter, but i don't find it particularly moving or comforting or anything really.

Everybody Hurts is the main reason I don't understand why people love AFTP so much. That song is such the turd on the brazier.

<3 take comfort in your friends <3

xp I don’t know about anyone else, but most of my experiences in my teenage years involved... listening to R.E.M.!

They became my favorite band of all time at age 12! But I liked hs...and the south.

I gotta say the time I enjoyed EH the most was when I had a decent amp and speakers and I cranked it to apocalyptic levels - the drama of the strings and the crescendos of sound really took it to a new dimension.

i hate to keep defending this song lyrically but "take comfort in your friends" may be trite or cliché but that's bc it's a tried and true method of living through depression

i just think there's more going on textually in "everybody hurts" than ppl give it credit for, r.e.m. by the early-'90s being a band that already had a curious and evasive relationship toward sincerity and saying what you mean

I agree w/that, though I also think ppl had a habit of trying to find “irony” where it may not have necessarily been intended (like with “Happy Shiny People,” which some insisted had to be sarcastic, or something).

I also agree about taking comfort in your friends (when they’re available/able to provide comfort!), and maybe it’s a virtue to express that advice so simply & directly in a song that was destined to be a big international hit.

(it’s possible the song was titled “Shiny Happy People,” I’m a grandpa all of a sudden, lol)

i agree that neither song really hits an ironic register, but they both seem pretty self-aware and are playful with that awareness instead of distancing

I had never particularly thought about EH lyrics and yes they are basic but listening to the song with that in mind, I wish I had been able to say such simple words to a dear friend who didn’t hang on, for instance... so maybe they’re not that bad.

xp - yeah, i think i was "turned off" by what I felt was "schmaltzy" - like it was R.E.M. doing "wind beneath my wings" or "bridge over troubled water" after everyone associated "bridge over troubled water" with commercials for casualty insurance or something

Yeah, not saying it does, but I think a couple of the lines are throwaways and he could done something better. Specifically talking about "Don't throw your hand" (?) and "Sometimes everything is wrong/Now it's time to sing along."

― timellison, Sunday, January 6, 2019 1:44 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"don't throw your hand" is actually pretty specific suicide reference, it's a reference to playing cards, when you just throw your hand into the middle and quit to cut your loses instead of trying to bluff while holding bad cards by continuing to bet

Yeah, I think that's the best line in the song.

Definitely the best line!

I never considered the folding a hand of cards, I always just took "throw your hand" as some sort of dramatic gesture of despair, like maybe punching a hole in the wall, or shaking one's fist at God. What makes it so great is its unexpectedness and obtuseness, something you almost never find in the top 40.

I mean they were Southern boys I'm p sure it's cards

that basic guitar arpeggio on everybody hurts just bores me, it doesn't do the lyric any favours

"don't throw your hand" is actually pretty specific suicide reference, it's a reference to playing cards,

I mean, I thought this was obvious(!); and it’s why I was agreeing w/Tim about that line. “Don’t commit suicide” seems like somewhat... clumsy advice to a severely depressed person. But if it helped some people to hear it in this song, ok!

(Incidentally, I recall some mishearing this line as an even more specific suicide reference: “Don’t blow your head off”!)

there might be a UK/US divide wrt to poker?

FWIW, I actually like “Sometimes everything is wrong/Now it's time to sing along” — it feels like a glimmer of the “self-aware inspirational song” thing

this is an interesting genre, the explicitly palliative/consoling song