Everyone has been through something, so everyone understands the song. No, REM don't know you or your individual pains, but this song says that somebody cares. This song does both of those, and it speaks to you as an individual. The most comforting things to be told when you're in a terrible state are that you're not alone and that things will get better you will be alright. I think that perhaps millions of people have at one time not given up on something because of listening to this song. This is an incredibly uplifting song that is both inspirational and powerful. It's a neat song if you're in a reflective mood yes, but depression. M Dickson, Bury, UKĪs an expert on depression I can assure you that if you are depressed then you want to avoid this song completely. A beautiful, simple piece of music and wonderful lyrics from Messers Stipe and Berry. It's a reminder that when you think you have it bad, other people have it worse and things will get better. To tell them that everybody hurts, as if we can in some way empathise, feels patronising. But I can in no way imagine what it is like to be in Haiti now. I CAN imagine being desperate enough to want to commit suicide - so yes, everybody does hurt. I am a big REM fan and in its original context the song really works. I am not surprised Simon Cowell thought a song about suicide was appropriate for Haiti - he thought a song about sexual anguish was suitable for the Xmas number one in 2008. I saw REM live later that year, and hearing them play Everybody Hurts, with 100,000 other voices in the crowd remains a very special memory to me. It made me realise that it was OK to be missing home, but that it was going to work out if I just hung in there and stayed the course. I heard this song on the radio late one night, and it was like a light-bulb. In my first term at university, I was wracked with absolute gut-wrenching homesickness. On one occasion as I took the funeral of a suicide, we played this as part of some reflective prayer and the whole congregation, including me and the funeral director, were in tears. At funerals I would normally expect to be able to rein in my emotions, but this song will always cause a tear to flow. This echoes what Buck told the BBC in 2005: "The song belongs more to the people that it's aimed at than it does to the band any more."Īdd your comments on this story, using the form below. However, the point of next week's release is not faithfulness to the REM original, it's something more commonly associated with Mr Cowell - that is money, in this case for Haiti.Īs for REM, Stipe says: "How could we not say yes to this appeal? We're honoured to play even a small role in trying to help." The charity-single template is, of course, very different to this, and Simon Cowell, the organiser of the new version, is not usually associated with musical restraint. An earlier version included the line: "Everybody hurts, even the singer of the song." Based on a beat from a drum machine that cost $20, the track revolves around a few familiar arpeggiated chords.Įven after the arrival of the strings, arranged by former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, there's an intimacy that fits the lyric, and a vocal from Stipe that, in the words of rock critic Garry Mulholland, expresses "all the personal tragedies and troughs that he has travelled through". In 2001, the Nevada Assembly passed a resolution praising REM for "encouraging the prevention of teen suicides", specifically mentioning Everybody Hurts.Īnd in 1995, the Samaritans marked the first anniversary of the suicide of Kurt Cobain with adverts in music magazines which consisted of two verses of the song. Among them is a teenager staring out of a window, thinking: "They're going to miss me."Īnd suicide - especially among the young - is the personal problem with which Everybody Hurts is most often associated.
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In the 1993 video, Stipe is portrayed among drivers stuck in an almighty Texas traffic jam, each with troubles on his or her mind, all of these conveyed in subtitles. And the track rubbed shoulders with Candle In The Wind and I'll Be Missing You on the official Diana Memorial album.īut the troubles that the song originally speaks to are more personal. A version edited to include the sounds of the attacks on the Twin Towers was widely circulated online in late 2001. It was, for example, the first song played by Radio 1 after the two minutes' silence to mark 1996's Dunblane shootings. More importantly, it's immediately obvious what they mean: don't give up.Īnd so the song has had a much more varied and exposed life than most of REM's output, even before the imminent celeb-carousel rendition. For one thing, you can make out all of singer-songwriter Michael Stipe's words. Everybody Hurts is not a typical REM song.
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