So why is R.E.M.’s Green on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
While Document (#344 of the best 1,000 albums ever) was the album that introduced me to R.E.M., by the time Green came out in 1988 they were fully on my radar.
Green is an album that was really important in helping me to understand – in the pre-internet suburbs of Long Island, New York – that there was more to music (and to life) than the hair metal and power ballads I mostly rejected at that time and the classic rock of Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and The Doors that I had taken refuge in.
R.E.M. and U2 became my college rock spirit guides that helped me to eventually branch out and then fully broaden my appetite for all different kinds of music – which I hope, if nothing else, this journey through the best 1,000 albums ever helps expose to others.
All of that being said, when I look back on Green, one song, “World Leader Pretend,” stands out most significantly because of its role during an intense period during college at Binghamton University.
In my piece on Steppenwolf’s The Second (which ironically was the second of 1,000 pieces I wrote for this crazy project, in the #999 slot!), I relay how “Magic Carpet Ride” connected with the feeling of falling in love for the first time.
“World Leader Pretend” holds similarly intense feelings for me except in a different respect: it became my personal Breakup Song.
If you’re familiar with “World Leader Pretend,” I get why you might think that this is odd, because the lyrics are kind of political in nature – at least on the surface. This site believes it to be “essentially about a troubled, delusional loner who has cut himself off from the world.”
For me, I simply latched onto the mournful, wonderful chorus, in which Stipe sings:
This is my mistake
Let me make it good
On some level within myself, I knew that the breakup was both the right thing for me (I was simply too young to be in that serious of a relationship) and one of the most painful things that I had experienced in my life up until that point.
I listened to “World Leader Pretend” over and over again while I spent most of the fall semester both adjusting to being a Resident Advisor – not easy, as I was equated with being The Man (in the bad way!) for a bunch of pot smoking theater kids – and depressed over the breakup.
On the cusp of turning 21, it wasn’t until I started hitting the New York City music and dive bar scene with my man Adam that winter that my life entered a very new chapter.
The other song on Green that holds a close personal memory is “Orange Crush.” My high school band – of which I would eventually get kicked out, another major bummer! – played it to pieces, mostly in my friend Jake’s bedroom (the same room in which I would stare at his poster of U2’s The Joshua Tree and wonder about that album and what life might be like out west in the California desert).
Anyway, it’s a great song but one that I still don’t listen to very often these days as I hit my personal limit with it at some point.
Two songs that I do actively listen to off of Green are the cheerful, catchy as all get out tracks that open up the album: “Pop Song 89” and “Get Up.” Both rate for me as two of the best rock songs to come out of the late 1980s, incredibly blending jangle pop and college rock sounds.
“Turn You Inside-Out” is a pretty tremendous rocker that feels a little more of a piece with Document than the sound that R.E.M. would explore heading into Out of Time (#296) and Automatic for the People(#546).
Pop culture stuff that has something to do with R.E.M.’s Green
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention “Stand,” both because it’s a pretty great song (that I’ve admittedly had some stretches where I didn’t quite know what to think of it) and because it serves as the opening credits song for the super oddball sitcom from the era, Get a Life, starring (the super oddball) Chris Elliott.
Some stats & info about R.E.M. – Green
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock Music, College Rock, Jangle Pop, Pop Music, Indie Rock
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 3.5 out of 5 stars
- When was Green released? 1988
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #180 out of 1,000
R.E.M.’s Green on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from R.E.M.’s Green that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
Hello, my friend, are you visible today? You know I never knew that it could be so strange.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.