Songoftheday 2/2/19 - Sometimes everything is wrong now it's time to sing along, when your day is night alone...
from the album Automatic For The People (1992)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #29 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 7
Today's song of the day comes from the alternative rock band from Athens, Georgia, R.E.M., whose Automatic For The People album had not only garnered critical praise but also already scored two top-40 pop hits with "Drive" and "Man On The Moon", the latter in the spring of 1993. That summer another album cut, "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite", was promoted to rock radio, and reached both the Mainstream (#28) and Modern (#24) Rock format charts in Billboard magazine, while also becoming a top-40 hit in the UK (#17) and New Zealand (#29) where it was released as a single. The third physical single in the U.S. would be the emotional centerpiece of the album as well as its most beloved song. "Everybody Hurts", written by the band led from a start from drummer Bill Berry, and produced by Scott Litt, the songs starts with a waltz from a mournful place that's clear that Michael Stipe is singing to someone contemplating ended their existence, empathizing, then nudging, then encouraging that person in a swell of strings (from Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones) that builds to a cathartic climax of "hold on, hold on". 25 years later and its still simply stunning.
"Everybody Hurts" became the third top-40 pop hit from Automatic For The People in November of 1993. The song surprisingly only spent a couple of weeks on Billboard's Modern Rock radio chart, peaking at #21. Internationally, the single did even better than in America, reaching the top ten in France (#3), the Netherlands (#4), Iceland (#4), Ireland (#6), Australia (#6), the UK (#7), and Canada (#8). A fifth single released internationally, "Nightswimming", was a top-40 hit in Britain at #27, while final release "Find The River" was a minor UK hit at #54.
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Here's R.E.M. performing the song at the MTV Music Video Awards in 1993...
Next up is the band in concert in 1995...
This version from their 1998 tour was much more delicate and sparse...
Move up five years to their headlining stint at the Glastonbury Music Festival in England in 2003...
In 2010, after the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti, a "Band-Aid"-style charity effort named "Helping Haiti" for the victims of the tragedy released a cover of "Everybody Hurts". The result, including Rod Stewart, Mariah Carey, Miley Cyrus, Kylie Minogue, Jon Bon Jovi, and more ended up spending two weeks at #1 in the UK, a week on top in Ireland, #5 in the Netherlands, and top-20 in Italy (#14), Switzerland (#16), Germany (#16), and New Zealand (#17) - meanwhile in the U.S. it didn't even make the chart, "bubbling under" the pop Hot 100 at #121 (pathetic)...
Helping Haiti "Everybody Hurts" Director's Cut from Joseph Kahn on Vimeo.
At the American Music Awards in 2017, Kelly Clarkson and Pink sang "Everybody Hurts" together, in a spot commemorating the shit-fest of tragedies that happened that year between hurricanes and mass shootings.
And finally I turn back to R.E.M. performing at the Live 8 concert in 2005...
Up tomorrow: Freestyle star goes solo and has a command.
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