R.E.M.'s drummer wrote Everybody Hurts, then barely played on it
Everybody Hurts began as Bill Berry's one-minute country tune with no chorus. After R.E.M. reshaped it into a slow, Otis Redding-flavoured ballad, the drummer ended up absent from the original recording, replaced by a drum machine. Its lyrics were deliberately simple, because the band wanted to reach teenagers.
The song appeared on R.E.M.'s eighth album, Automatic for the People, in 1992 and came out as a single through Warner Bros. in April 1993. The band produced it with Scott Litt. In America it peaked at 29 on the Billboard Hot 100, but it went top ten in several countries, including the UK, Canada, Australia and Ireland. Jake Scott's video, shot in San Antonio, Texas, won a prize at the 1994 Billboard Music Video Awards.
Because R.E.M. split writing credits evenly, nobody knows exactly how much of it Berry composed, though much of it is credited to him. A Univox drum machine carries the beat, with Berry sampling the pattern, and John Paul Jones, formerly the bassist of Led Zeppelin, arranged the strings. Peter Buck recalled trying about four approaches before landing on a Stax soul feel, with him, bandmate Mike and the machine laying down the track before everyone overdubbed. Michael Stipe hoped Patti Smith would add a second vocal, which did not work out; she later covered it herself on her 2007 album Twelve.
Buck explained that the unusually direct words were aimed at young listeners, joking that the idea of high school as a gateway to hell struck him as realistic. Writing plainly for people who were young or had not been to college, he told the BBC in 2005, turned out to speak to all ages. In 2022 Stipe told Rick Rubin the song was sparked by Nazareth's version of Love Hurts.
Critics largely approved. Billboard's Larry Flick praised its honesty and the lift when the strings arrive, while a Cash Box writer worried its sombre, suicide-related theme might be a hard sell on radio. Q magazine placed it at 31 in a 2003 list of the best songs ever, and it was one of four tracks from its album on the 2003 compilation In Time.
Source: Everybody Hurts
