R.E.M. "Superman"

Last weekend, I was out for drinks with Craig Sherman, who likes to ask questions.

"If you could be anyone famous, who would you be?"

Strangely, the answer came to me quickly.

"Mike Mills of R.E.M."

Waay back in college, I had a next door neighbor from Georgia and a bunch of friends who were musicians.  So naturally, we learned a few R.E.M. songs.

Even though it was a cover, we thought "Superman" (a hidden track on the cassette!) would be a great addition to our repertoire.

Kristine had the best voice, so of course she would sing the Michael Stipe part.  And since I could barely do anything else to contribute (my bass playing skills were severely limited), I got to sing the Mike Mills part.

And here's what I discovered.

Despite the fact that Stipe get referred to as the "lead singer" and Mills as the "back-up singer," on "Superman" Mills sings just as much as Stipe does.

In fact, this is true on a ton of R.E.M. songs.  He never comes off as the "lead singer" (except for the couple of songs he gets to sing lead on, from "Out Of Time"), but he's not a background guy by any stretch.

I became more attuned his contributions to the band.

A casual R.E.M. fan might suspect that R.E.M.'s melodic sensibility came from either the lead singer with amazing pipes, or the guitar player (Peter Buck) who seemed to produce endless combinations to guitar (and later, mandolin) figures to build songs around.

But multi-instrumentalist Mills, was the main contributor of songs you know and love, like "Don't Go Back To Rockville," "Nightswimming" and "At My Most Beautiful."

So Craig Sherman asked the question, and as I flipped through names in my head, I stopped on Mike Mills.

As I told Craig, and the rest of of gang at the table:

"He's this awesome musician, in one of the biggest bands in the world, but he never had to live out front.  He's been super-successful, and never has to work again if he doesn't want to, so he's free to pursue whatever creative outlets he wants to.  He'll probably eventually make a solo record, but he'll be able to do so without the crushing expectations that will be heaped upon a Michael Stipe solo record."

I'm sure my therapist would have a few interesting thoughts about my reasons for picking him.



Hear the song on Youtube.