Top Songs Listened to in 2019

REM's 'Country Feedback' was part of a set of songs that helped me turn depression into an artform in my late teens and 20s. I don't know if this helped or only deepened the depression but once you have truly tapped a rich vein of melancholy your artistic worldview changes. Stipe has said 'Country Feedback' is his favorite REM song and it is a safe choice because melancholy is perennially best-selling in the arts. So, Mike Stipe's in a bad relationship, the prerequisite state for many great songs, and he penned ode to self-hatred and depression ranks up there with early NIN and Faith No More's 'RV'; he begins, "This flower is scorched, This film is on - on a maddening loop," [until the internet I misheard the second line was "on a man-made Earth"] and it just gets darker.

In this live version Neil Young joins REM, so When Stipe first comes on stage he just sits down like a child in front of Young.

http://neilyoungnews.thrasherswheat.org/2015/12/the-story-behind-neil-young-joining-rem.html wrote:one of our all time favorite Bridge moments occurs at about ~1:10. Watch it and feel the sheer awe of Michael Stipe as he takes in the moment. Magic. Breathless. Be sure to check the camera transition @ ~1:30. Sheer brilliance and beauty.

What no review mentions is that Stipe's voice cracks during the climax (about 6 minutes) of his favorite song, he is now playing with his idol. It is awkward, utterly human and offers a moment of vulnerability. That moment is needed for Young's guitar playing to comfort Stipe. Young seems to be rocking out, almost self-contained, but his guitar-work has taken the essence of the song and transformed and deepened it; some sort of artistic alchemy was occurred. In Young Stripe's melancholy bitterness has become something more redemptive without losing any of the hurt; and it is being played to the man who wrote it.

http://neilyoungnews.thrasherswheat.org/2015/12/the-story-behind-neil-young-joining-rem.html wrote:During this performance of "Country Feedback," Young gave the best advice possible. He didn't say a word or sing a note, but he played guitar with such authority that it seemed to provide moral clarity. By the end, lost in the music, Stipe could only shake his head.

It sounds weird, but I have to agree, there is a moral power to Young's version of Country Feedback and Stipe moment (and posture) of humility allows it to shine through.

This behind-the-scenes video on REM's "losing my religion" reminds me just how much vulnerability is in art. Stipe's stripping naked out of frustration, the video director is puking from fear, the video is full of lush homo-eroticism and awkward dancing. So much intimate emotion in a mass-produced and mass-consumed product.



And all of this is why I have never watched a single 'teen singing gameshow', because you cannot get to this performance starting with those judgemental gameshows. I want voices that break, singers that are not pitch-perfect; I want Neil Young "lurching around the stage in sneakers and a fedora, with a thick mountain-man beard". I'm not a purist demanding no commercial interest in music but a realist who understands that purely commercial music (almost literally as Teen Idol had the most commercials and product placements of any show!) cannot produce this sort of emotion; nor, more importantly, can it produces these type of musicians. 'Teen Idol' trains court minstrels, 'Country Feedback' requires living breathing musicians.


https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Bridge_School_Benefit



Just to be clear: I don't blame the kids on stage, nor am I comparing them to 'grunge elders', but I strongly believe that relentless commercial and judgemental platform created by adults for those kids will damage most of them enough to prevent the vulnerability needed to create meaningful art. A culture obsessed with pitch-perfect teens, hardman men, and skinny women is a sterile culture, it can produce but it cannot create.

Gorgeous. Raw. It is startling how such a relatively simple song can be so moving. I have never known Country Feedback well, nor heard it many times, but I will say that Stipe's powerful vocal on his lyric "I need this" is something easily related to.

Since leaving Ottawa this song was on my "taboo" list, meaning I would not put this song in not a random mix because of my emotional response to it. There is a ocean of melancholy in this song and I would drown in it. Neil Young's version is me discovering that a grizzled sea-captain could taking you across that ocean.