‘Shiny Happy People’ is the most divisive song in the R.E.M. catalogue, inspiring hate in heavy doses; most obviously due to the bright migraine of a clip and the cotton-candy lyrics, but mainly because it became one of the band’s most recognisable songs – and a fiercely unrepresentative one at that.
I’m sure a few fans also just think it’s sappy, sucky rubbish. Many more people love it though, in that uncomplicated way you do many hit singles that hang around for decades. R.E.M. themselves left it off their 2003 Best Of. They kinda had to.
In truth, it’s a fine pop song, although it’s as much a misnomer as another of the band’s mainstream hits, ‘Everybody Hurts’, which is as mopey as this is shiny and happy. R.E.M. usually fell in between: in the darker spaces, the weirder areas.
They started their career with a series of hooky but impenetrable indie albums, spidery things that edged closer to conventional pop each time, until breaking through with their seventh album, 1991’s Out Of Time – a masterful record that topped the US charts, sold 18 million copies worldwide, and contained ‘Losing My Religion’ (best known for soundtracking Brenda and Dylan’s break-up on 90210) and ‘Shiny Happy People’.
The demo of ‘Shiny Happy People’ shows how depressing a song it could have been without Kate Pierson from The B-52’s summery vocals, and with a gentler, less buffed approach.
Michael Stipe’s distant, ghostly vocal completely changes the tone of the song. He sounds lonesome and weary, certainly not ringleader of the shiny happy people bouncing around in the candy-coloured clip. Unfortunately, he only sings until the 90-second mark, checking off each main section then bailing, but the distant, dragged-out delivery, coupled with the absence of Pierson’s airy contributions, adds a darker tone (Pierson also duetted on ‘Candy’ by Iggy Pop in 1990, and had her own hits with ‘Love Shack’ in 1989 and ‘Roam’ in 1990 – a great run for her).
Listening to the two minutes of instrumental that follows is interesting, despite steering very little from the finished version. After Stipe’s vocal fades, the waltz breakdown no longer sounds syrupy but desolate, an abandoned merry-go-round spinning in the wind.
As it stands, the song leaves a bad taste for many. It’s nice to see what it tastes like with less sugar in the recipe.
Photo: Guido Harari
