Well, well, well. You didn’t think this was ever going to come back, did you? I was honestly thinking that way for a while too. Hey, remember back when I started on the P’s and said that I could aim to get whole series done by the time I turned 30? Yeah, very unlikely that will happen. I’ll definitely be in my 30s at the least, though. With the breaks I take, it was definitely going to be a effort to try and force that. And I’ve seen the number of songs I have up beginning with ‘S’ and ‘T’. Just those two letters would fill up two separate years themselves, I tell you.

But I’m back. I’m here. It’s time to get started again. And it’s with R.E.M.’s ‘Radio Free Europe’, the opening track on the band’s debut Murmur album from 1983. This isn’t the first time I’ve written about a song from that record. It’s been some time, but I think I’ve written the summary of how I came to know Murmur and the immediate effect it had on me. Probably not worth repeating. We’re here for the track. It’s a fine one. A great way to kick things into gear. It introduces the musical structure that happens a lot through the album, where the song starts with the verse and goes into the pre-chorus, and when usually you think the chorus will come immediately after, the second verse begins. The band holds out on you, so when that chorus eventually does arrive, the weight from all the building tension’s released. The choruses are the best parts on every Murmur track, that’s just a fact.

The song also introduced the lyricism of Michael Stipe, who before he found he could use his voice to speak about things that were important and actually mean something (I’m sure I read that he said this about himself somewhere), wrote words and melodies that were to mainly compliment the musicianship of Mike Mills, Peter Buck and Bill Berry and not meant to say much of anything at all, leaving it to the listener to come up with their own interpretations. What I would guess the song is about is… the importance of the the radio in modern society and its global reach to whoever’s listening out there? I don’t think about the meaning that much, but that’s fine. I don’t think Stipe wants you to either, which is great. There’s no pressure. If you’re not too into the version in the video above, the band previously recorded the track on another label a couple years earlier in 1981 and released it as a single. It’s a bit faster, some people prefer that sort of thing.