Let me back up and get a running start on this one. I began this project of chronicling every REM song from a conflicted place. The most salient band of my teens and twenties had become an irrelevant voice in my thirties and forties. No hard feelings - we all just grew up. But wading once again through these old songs, I’m reminded how singular and unique this band was.
King of Birds is a beautiful showcase for Michael Stipe’s vocals. Not to take anything away from the rest of the band’s efforts, in fact it is truly a collaborative effort. But this is a singer’s song, and the space Stipe occupies here is unmatched in pop vocals.
So much of the tune drives and drones, like some of the chant-like songs on “Fables”. But it’s texture and restraint that Michael conveys, his strains urgent and full of youth, but never spilling over into the quirky. Vocals echo and call back to one another while vowels are held to the breaking point.
The pre-Warner Bros. REM often and rightly got praise for being the essential college radio band with the odd-ball front man, but recognizing the true rareness of Stipe as a singer, as so clearly seen in this tune, is a blind spot in most appraisals.
