“That’s great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane,
and Lenny Bruce is not afraid…”
On September 1, 1987, 25 years ago and spare change, Atlanta-based rock band R.E.M released its fifth studio album Document. It was the first in a series of collaborations with producer Scott Litt, which helped the band form its unique sound and gain great success.
The first single from Document, released on November 16, was “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”. It wasn’t a big hit, reaching only number 69 in the Billboard Hot 100.
The song was re-released as a b-side of R.E.M’s “Radio Song”, and reached number 39 in the UK Singles chart. Following the terrorist attaches on September 11, the song was placed on the list of post-9/11 inappropriate titles distributed by Clear Channel.
While ITEOTWAWKI (AIFF) is one of my favorite songs, R.E.M has had bigger and surely more famous hits. Therefore the song didn’t gain too much air time in recent years, even though it appeared in the 1988 singles compilation Eponymous and the 2006 Best Of compilation.
But this, of course, all changed when the world discovered the “Mayan Appocalypse“, aka “The End of the World”. Dated 12/21/12, it started stirring the imagination of millions worldwide during December, and exploded in the final few days before the MA-date.
On the week before the 21st it was almost impossible to avoid posts, tweets and blog posts about the nearing end of the world, and suddenly everyone (re)discovered that long lost R.E.M song celebrating its 25th birthday. Yes, everyone was tweeting “It’s the end of the world”, and everyone were feeling fine. And oh boy, were they sharing THE song:
- During the first 18 days of December the song was shared on social networks less than 900 times, meaning 50 times a day on average.
- On December 20th, a day before the Appocalypse, the songs was shared on social networks more than 3600 times. Yes, even more than Gangnam Style, and second only to One Direction’s Kiss You (?!).
- On December 21th, when everyone woke up and realized it’s not the end of the world, the song was shared on social networks more than 5500 times. Again, it came second best after that Psy Song. Who said no apocalypse?
The network effect was pretty amazing, and even the band (now retired) did not remain silent. In a blog post they celebrated the 25th anniversary and shared a few of their favorite versions of the song through the years.
So the Mayans were apparently wrong, but a great song got a little bit of respect after almost being forgotten, and if this is not an amazing case of “the sound of NOW” I don’t know what is.
Here’s my favorite version, taken from one of the most amazing MTV Unplugged shows ever, back in 1991 – vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty psyched:
