Albums without a bad track are rare, but R.E.M.’s eighth studio album “Automatic for the People” is often considered an exception. Therefore, it’s no surprise the album is the band’s best-selling release, with over 18 million copies sold worldwide. One of the finest tracks on “Automatic for the People” is the captivating “Man on the Moon”. In this article, we will dive into the story and meaning behind the song.
The Meaning of the Song
“Man on the Moon” is a song about the nature of belief, doubt, and skepticism explored through the life of performance artist Andy Kaufman. The lyrics of the song were written by R.E.M.’s lead singer Michael Stipe.
Performance artist Andy Kaufman was known for his unconventional and boundary-pushing comedic style. His comedy often blurred the lines between reality and performance. Kaufman’s bizarre acts and elaborate characters – like his wrestling feud with Herry Lawler and his lounge singer persona Tony Clifton – left some audiences questioning whether what they were witnessing was real or staged.
As a result, Andy Kaufman was the perfect central figure for the song. “Michael came up with this beautiful lyric that encompasses doubt, belief, transition, conspiracy, and truth,” R.E.M.’s bassist Mike Mills told NME. “So he [Kaufman] was the perfect guy to tie all this stuff together as you journey through childhood and touchstones of life.”
Besides honoring the life of Kaufman, the song discusses several events that are famously questioned. The pre-chorus of the song mentions Elvis Presley, which has a double meaning. Imitating Elvis Presley was a famous act of Andy Kaufman, but Presley is also one of the most speculated pop icons who – according to the theory – faked his own death (this speculation existed around Kaufman too).
The chorus of the song – and the title “Man on the Moon” – directly addresses the skepticism some people have around the moon landing. Other famous skepticized figures/events mentioned are Moses (around parting the sea), Isaac Newton (around whether his theory of gravity was inspired by an apple hitting his head), Cleopatra (around her death), and Charles Darwin (around his theory of evolution).
Overall, “Man on the Moon’s” tour of things famously questioned – as well as remembering Andy Kaufman’s iconic acts – exposes how our beliefs give us a different reality of the same events.
The Origin Behind the Song
Like most R.E.M. songs, the music of “Man on the Moon” was written before the lyrics. “The actual genesis of it was Bill Berry playing the guitar, and he played a C, slid it up to a D, and back down to a C, so the name on the demo was ‘C to D Slide’,” Mike Mills reflected. “Bill is a very good songwriter and had a lot of musical ideas, and then he and Peter [Buck] fleshed the rest of it out musically.”
After writing the music, the band handed the song over to Michael Stipe to take care of the lyrics. Stipe, however, believed the song worked perfectly as an instrumental. But after the persistence of the other band members, Stipe started working on lyrics. He reportedly struggled to come up with a lyrical idea and only wrote the lyrics during the last days of recording “Automatic for the People”.
“The band started fussing, and told me that I needed to get some words down on the paper,” Stipe reflected. “From way earlier I had a VHS recording of Andy Kaufman, and we used to sit for hours laughing. So when I eventually had to write the lyrics, I remembered Andy Kaufman and it was as if he was reborn inside of me.”
In an interview with BBC, Michael Stipe revealed the 56 ‘yeahs’ in the song were inspired by Nirvana. “We were hanging out a lot with the band Nirvana and the best way to follow up a song is to pick a word and repeat it as many times as possible, and so I decided to try to put more ‘yeahs’ into that song than Kurt Cobain had ever put into a Nirvana song.”
The Legacy of Man on the Moon
R.E.M. released “Man on the Moon” on Automatic for the People in October 1992. A month later, the song was released as the album’s second single. The song reached the top 10 in several countries, including Canada and The Netherlands. In the US, the song peaked at number 30. In 1999, Andy Kaufman’s biopic – played by Jim Carrey – was named after the song.
Over the years, “Man on the Moon” grew out to be one of R.E.M’s most beloved songs. When the band disbanded in 2011, Michael Stipe told Rolling Stone that “Man on the Moon” was the song he would miss performing the most. “Watching the effect of that opening bass line on a sea of people at the end of a show. And that is an easy song to sing. It’s hard to sing a bad note in it.”
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