Song for the End of the Election Cycle: R.E.M.'s "World Leader Pretend"

In the mostly powerless days between Hurricane Sandy and Election Day, I found myself spending a lot of time listening to R.E.M.'s sixth LP Green, a record which was released on Election Day in 1988. Green is a real mixed bag of a record, but it contains three or four of their best-ever tunes.

One is "World Leader Pretend," a mid-tempo, metaphor-laden, inward-looking slice of folk-rock that's one of the group's best deep cuts and perhaps the centerpiece of the LP.



Singer Michael Stipe and his cohorts Bill Berry, Peter Buck and Mike Mills wrote the song as a tribute to the lyrical stylings of Leonard Cohen, "using military terms to describe a battle within. I was so proud of my lyrics and my vocal take that I refused to sing it a second time. I did it once. That was it," said Stipe in an interview.

Indeed, the singer who made a name for himself by being indecipherable, printed "World Leader Pretend"'s lyrics on the inner sleeve, a first for the group. While the lyrics are very nicely written and fraught with meaning, I personally wouldn't rank them among his best - to me they seem a little too high-school-creative-writing class-y: 

I've a rich understanding of my finest defenses
I proclaim that claims are left unstated
I demand a rematch

I decree a stalemate
I divine my deeper motives
I recognise the weapons
I've practised them well
I fitted them myself

It's amazing what devices you can sympathize/empathize
This is my mistake, let me make it good
I raised the wall
And I will be the one to knock it down

Back in '88, the left-leaning, whale-saving, peace-waging, composting, politically active band's presidential candidate of choice was Michael Dukakis, a Greek democrat from Massachusetts whose campaign was pretty much finished the moment he did this photo op in an army tank which highlighted how un-presidential he seemed — a world leader pretend one might say.

Anyway, here are the boys doing a lovely acoustic version of "WPL" on a Dutch TV special in 1991, at the time of their breakout album Out of Time. 

Congrats to all the world leaders, pretend and otherwise, on a hard-fought campaign. I'm glad the election cycle is over.

Buy R.E.M.'s Green on iTunes here.









BONUS CONTENT: Interesting TV profile on the band from the Green era.