2020GQ mix: R.E.M.- Sweetness Follows

This one is one of my all-time favorite REM songs. It’s mournful and deals with loss and distance (and I love the opening string riff- bass, I’m pretty sure?), which feels appropriate. Lead singer Michael Stipe’s voice is one of the most idiosyncratic ones I know of- definitely on the list of “what made this guy think, singing in the shower, that he could get paid for it,” but I’m glad he did. Nobody sounds like him. It manifests the word “keening.”