Michael Stipe finally put to rest a nearly four-decade-long struggle to understand just what he’s singing in R.E.M.‘s 1987 song “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine).”
As fans of the song — the second single from R.E.M.’s first Top 10 and gold-selling album, Document — know, the famously incomprehensible singer fires off a string of verses that for years could only be discerned in small portions: “World serves its own needs,” “Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn,” “Leonard Bernstein!” R.E.M. rarely reprinted their lyrics in any form.
Over the past few days, Stipe clarified on Bluesky some of the song’s most misunderstood lyrics, and it began with a Simpsons meme.
In the meme, Homer Simpson claims he can sing all the lyrics to “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” only to be told, “No you can’t, Mr. Simpson. No one can.”
Two days later, he proceeded to follow up his boast with proof, laying out two of the formerly unintelligible lyrics, noting “It’s ‘Left of west and coming in a hurry with the Furies breathing down your neck'” and “It’s ‘Team by team reporters, baffled, trumped, tethered, cropped, Look at that low playing, fine, then’.”
As with the rest of the song’s quickly delivered verses, the words appear to be randomly tossed together, with no set destination in mind.
What’s the Story Behind R.E.M.’s ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)’?
In a 1992 interview with Q, Stipe said of “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” “The words come from everywhere. I’m extremely aware of everything around me, whether I am in a sleeping state, awake, dream-state or just in day-to-day life, so that ended up in the song along with a lot of stuff I’d seen when I was flipping TV channels.
Watch R.E.M.’s Video for ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)’
