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It may surprise one or the other reader, but I am not the most confident musician when it comes to my own lyrics. I don’t consider myself a genius there. Michael Stipe from R.E.M. is a genius. A master when it comes to conveying impressions. His lyrics are like a car ride along a street full of traffic signs and billboards. A neon-colored trip, total cinema in your head, and endlessly inspiring. I assume that there is wisdom in all of his lines.

Before I discovered R.E.M. in the mid-eighties, I was listening to bands like Japan. Music to kill time with. Then I discovered R.E.M. and it turned my life upside down. Michael Stipe was singing about his flaws and weaknesses, and that it is okay to be weird. I was weird. And through his songs Stipe spoke to me, “It’s okay, you don’t have to justify yourself to anyone.” Shortly after that, I signed up for art school and started to take making music seriously.

Nonetheless my favorite R.E.M. record- New Adventures In Hi-Fi– was released years later. I remember that a while before its release, we were hanging out with R.E.M. in the Penthouse Suite of U2’s Hotel in Dublin, a bizarre place. Mike Mills sat down to the piano and played the melody of Electrolite to me. I said: “This is very simple, but also very beautiful.” A few months later, I heard what they had done with this melody- the best song of their career. “Your eyes are burning holes through me / I’m gasoline / I’m burnin’ clean”.

When you can write something like this, than you deserve to be heard by millions of people.

by Thom Yorke

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