— Mark Frith
It is a song that everyone allegedly hates. Michael Stipe supposedly can't stand it and neither can his bandmates, to the extent that they chose to leave it off of their In Time greatest hits album. Hardcore R.E.M. enthusiasts deplore it. Many of those who were involved in indie rock at the time didn't care for it. Critics who aren't Mark Frith say it's a blot on an otherwise classic album and, indeed, a rare botch in one of the more sturdy and admirable discographies in all of popular music.
I always feel that R.E.M. ended the eighties in a bit of a slump. After putting out four straight top quality albums, they began to slip, first with 1987's Document and then with Green, released the following year. The two are sometimes lumped together due to both having socially conscious material but their faults are in opposition to one another. Document has three brilliant singles — "The One I Love", "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)" and "Finest Worksong" — but many of its deep cuts let it down; Green, in contrast, has some wonderful album tracks but its singles — "Stand", "Orange Crush", "Pop Song '89" — are uncharacteristically weak. Nevertheless, their trajectory was still looking up as their records were selling better. After a decade on the fringes, word of mouth had finally begun to spread.
1991's Out of Time sees them begin to reclaim their lofty status as one of the finest groups in the world. Melancholy but catchy first single "Losing My Religion" was everywhere for a while; in terms of airplay it certainly seemed like a number one smash. A Top 10 hit in several countries, it got no higher than number nineteen in Britain. This may seem like a modest peak for such a popular song but there's a little more to it. The single remained in the Top 20's penultimate spot for three weeks and then took its sweet old time to tumble out of the charts. Meanwhile, Out of Time proved to be the chief beneficiary: it entered the album charts at number one and remained in the Top 10 for twenty-one straight weeks. Not bad for a group who had previously been bit players in the UK.
Out of Time should have produced hit single after hit single but in effect it resulted in only two hits anyone remembers. ("Near Wild Heaven" and "Radio Song" both made only brief appearances on the charts but, significantly, their third substantial hit of '91 was a reissue of "The One I Love", a single that ranks right up there with "Losing My Religion") Instead, there was just one more record to consolidate their position and it just so happened to be the most commercial tune they would ever craft.
Frith loves "Shiny Happy People" (I'm going to assume that he didn't grow sick of it within a couple weeks of this issue of Smash Hits hitting the shops and that it remains a firm favourite to this day), I quite like it but, as I say above, it has many detractors, including R.E.M.'s own lead singer. Over the years, however, Michael Stipe has softened his stance on it.. He has stated that it's one of R.E.M.'s "fruitloop songs" along with "Stand", "Pop Song '89" and "Get Up". What makes it superior to any of those efforts is that it isn't so damn repetitive and that it makes no bones about it being a piece of pure pop. There's no indie rock bullshit here.
This is where the naysayers miss the point. As an alternative rock group, R.E.M. weren't supposed to have a pop song in them. Those fellow "fruitloop" tracks off of Green benefited from having more musical muscle behind them (at least in the case of "Get Up") and "Pop Song '89" had that naughty video with topless girls but there was no hiding what was behind "Shiny Happy People". I didn't care much about college rock and it didn't irritate me. I even liked it a bit. Not as good as "Losing My Religion" but plenty good enough to have on and not switch off. Pop you don't especially need but pop you're rather glad to have.
But just who are these Shiny Happy People anyway? I remember hearing that it was meant to be a touching tribute to mentally challenged people who we may pity but who often go about their lives seemingly happier to be alive than the rest of us. Stipe has said that it was originally a propaganda slogan used to calm the masses down in post-Tiananmen Square China, a claim that I don't recall being made at the time. To Frith, however, they're simply "those types you'll see wandering around the streets this summer being friendly, giving big hugs left, right and centre and being generally amiable". This is the most probable interpretation. The lyrics are straightforward and minimal. If Stipe is feeling down then it's best he see some smiling faces to cheer him up — though it doesn't always work that way.
Released in May of 1991, it came out a little too early to really qualify as a summer hit. No doubt Britain was experiencing yet another scorching spring that got headmasters to decree the dispensing of blazers and jumpers from school uniforms and those maddening hose-pipe bans but I was back in western Canada which was entering a pattern of cool summers with afternoon showers at ten in the morning. A lot of the those nineties' summers were miserable so we needed shiny happy pop more than ever to help get us through them. Is it any wonder I was dying for some old school jangle pop, especially since I was fourteen and in serious need of curing some of my angst.
In the end even if you don't care for it, "Shiny Happy People" has its place. Hardcore fans of their's from the eighties hated it, likely viewing it as proof that popularity and being signed to a major record label had sucked the life out of them. And the band may well have agreed. Notably, R.E.M. didn't tour their first blockbuster album, promotion of follow-up singles was minimal and they promptly went back to various favourite studios around the US to record 1992's Automatic for the People. Not only had they returned with one of their finest albums but the material was much more serious. (The only two numbers that dealt in lighter matters — singles "Man on the Moon" and "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight" — did so with absurdity rather than cheeriness). Rather than doing a sprightly line dance, their videos were edgy and filmed in black and white. The album was even tipped to be a return to more plugged-in rock in the vein of Document, though this is something they would eventually decide to put off until 1994's Monster. They had indie cred to be worried about, even as they were set to once again become the greatest group in the world.
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Massive Attack: "Safe from Harm"
Like Out of Time, Massive Attack's Blue Lines was a popular and influential album that failed to launch a half dozen or so memorable singles. There's a reason "Unfinished Sympathy" is the only song anyone remembers off of it. As Frith states, there's really no need for "Safe from Harm" to have been released in 45" form (unless it encouraged a few more people to go out and purchase a copy of the album, that is). In fact, it could have enjoyed the reputation as an outstanding deep cut — not unlike "Country Feedback" and "Texarkana" on Out of Time — but I guess being a quite-like-the-last-one-only-not-as-good hasn't really harmed its reputation. Massive Attack have had some glorious moments but they've also been ordinary and even awful at times. I'll go right out and admit it: "Safe from Harm" is no "Shiny Happy People".
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