You know, I’ve been intently listening to R.E.M.’s ‘Sweetness Follows’ for a good seven years now. I thought I at least knew everything that was going on in the song. But when revisiting Michael Stipe and Mike Mills’ track-by-track analysis of Automatic for the People to help me write the post, I was surprised to hear that the fuzzy melody that plays in the centre channel – which I assumed was just a bass guitar of some kind – is actually produced by a cello. And I’ve watched that video before. I guess I just forgot. I’ve also heard cellos before. They’re usually known for their deep, resonant tones. Not the growling rumble that goes on through ‘Sweetness Follows’. But I’m not complaining. During that linked track-by-track recollection, Stipe recalls having a “eureka” moment when cellist Knox Chandler spontaneously played the opening notes you hear on the track. Those notes are looped for the majority of it. They definitely add a unique layer to the production.

‘Sweetness Follows’ is right in the middle of Automatic for the People, the first half closer if you have it on vinyl. And on an album that touches upon mortality and getting older, it’s only right that ‘Sweetness…’ arrives as the album’s centerpiece – seeing as it’s all about the sweet embrace of death and everything. Stipe, whose vocal take I really like on this one, by the way – sings about appreciating those fleeting moments we have in the relatively short amount of time we respectively have here on the planet. To not get wound up in all the drama that can happen because it all gets forgotten about eventually, and when we die, that’s when we get our peace. And we shouldn’t be sad about death because there’s the possibility that there’s something better that comes on the otherside. Sweetness follows. Unless you’re a staunch “When we die, that’s it” kind of person, then this song might not be the one for you. It might just also be about a family argument, according to this interpretation, so you could always lean on that too.

Like the other songs from Automatic… I’ve written about on here, I didn’t fully appreciate this one until I heard it played out loud on some good speakers at work in my first job out of uni. It’s all about the wide open spaces available in ‘Sweetness Follows’. There aren’t any drums in the song. No bass guitar either as we’ve already established. And the lack of a rhythm section greatly allows the textural elements within to flow and make their presence known. That organ in the left? Great. You can hear Peter Buck strumming away on his acoustic guitar in the back. It was his chord sequencing that got the whole track going in the first place. With this funereal mood going on, you wonder how things could change direction, and they do when those cathartic, wailing guitar feedback sections come in, enveloping the soundscape while Stipe and Mills vocalise in the midst of it all. A great number on a great album.