What's the Frequency, Holly?

Tuned to all REM all the time, baby.

Okay, I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that, should I ever need a new husband — like, if something happens to my current husband, to whom I am very happily married, but you never know — I have found the guy I would remarry. Here he is, please admire:

Hubba hubba, right? Okay, now for the bad news: this is 1984 Michael Stipe. As in, Michael Stipe, leader of the world-famous band REM, in the year 1984. When I was four years old. So that ship has sailed, obviously, for reasons including, oh I don’t know, the fact that I cannot time travel, and also that Michael Stipe has been living with his long-term boyfriend for twenty years, you know, just the usual red tape. Still, though: fun to plan! Also, I am not particularly surprised that I find 1984 Michael Stipe attractive because people have told my husband for years that he kind of looks like Michael Stipe, so I guess I have a type!

[I just spent 20 minutes trying to find a picture of my husband looking like Michael Stipe, but then I kept second-guessing myself as to the Stipe-ness, and also I am not fully sure where the boundaries lie in posting random pictures of my husband on the internet to prove a point, so instead I got distracted sending a bunch of really old pictures of him to my sister, like !!! and ??? and ??!?!, until she was like, can you stop, it’s the middle of the workday, or she didn’t actually say that, but I imagine she certainly thought it.]

It’s true, my toxic trait is thinking I see celebrities — or, in this case, D-list cast members of The Real Housewives of Orange County — in public, when really they are only ordinary guys named Dirk just trying to enjoy a slice.

Anyway, I don’t know how we got off track here, but I opened with the picture of 1984 Michael Stipe because I have been listening to a lot of REM lately, and when I say lately, I mean since, like, January 2023, just basically a year of non-stop REM. Every time I try to listen to something else, my brain is like, but is it REM though? and it is not, so it isn’t as good, and so I change it and put REM back on, and that is how this keeps happening.

And the weird thing is, I mean, I liked REM fine back in the day — I wasn’t a superfan or anything, but I had a sort of casual, appropriate level of fandom, starting in about 1993, when my dad bought me a CD of Automatic for the People, after Nightswimming was released and we both loved the song, despite it being about skinny dipping, which is sort of an awkward father/daughter bonding moment, now that I think about it. The point is, I would say I listened to a normal amount of REM between 1993 and 2023. So then why, suddenly, in 2023 did I start listening to an abnormal amount? I don’t know! I guess, nostalgia maybe? Because they’re just a good band? Maybe nostalgia and because they’re just a good band? Two things can be true! If I have learned anything from all the psychologists I have interviewed over the last four years as a wellness journalist, it’s that.

Anyway, the nice thing about being a late-in-life REM superfan is that there is so much for you to catch up on. Over the last year, Spotify has been serving me — in one giant, three-decade mishmash — a non-stop parade of songs from REM’s 15 studio albums, 5 live albums, 14 compilation albums, one remix album, and one soundtrack album, many of which were released when I was a literal child. (Very weird to look up your new favorite song and discover that it came out when you were eight.) To supplement this, I have also listened to several podcasts featuring Michael Stipe (who has become surprisingly loquacious as of late, way more than he used to be!), and sometimes, depending on how much tolerance I have for Adam Scott that day, an entire podcast about REM. There is basically no end to the wormhole of discovery here, is what I am saying! I am still finding songs I’ve never heard before, even today (like literally, actually today: here is So Fast, So Numb, which came out when I was 16, and which I had never heard until this morning. Absolute banger, no notes.)

However, the bad thing about being a late-in-life REM superfan is that I will never get to see them play live. The band has famously said that they will never reunite, and so that ship has also sailed for me, unfortunately, which honestly is a much harder loss than not being able to marry 1984 Michael Stipe. I mean, I have been going to concerts since 1996 and REM broke up in 2011: that means there were fifteen years I could have seen them and didn’t, fifteen years when I instead chose to see random one-hit-wonder bands like Eve 6 and Lit, what was I thinking. I try not to have too many regrets in life, but this sure is one of them!

Anyway, if you have seen REM live, don’t tell me (actually, tell me everything, it’ll be the good kind of pain, like using a foam roller after you slept weird). In fact, this may be my new icebreaker for when I meet people for the first time. I don’t want to know your star sign, I want to know what you thought the lyrics to “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” were before you were able to look them up on the internet and discover you’d been singing them wrong for twenty years.

**UPDATED TO ADD!**
After commenter Christine mentioned below that the title, “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” was taken from an incident in which Dan Rather was mugged and the assailant kept repeating “Kenneth, what is the frequency?” (a fever dream if ever I’ve heard one), I went down the rabbit hole (see, I’m telling you, endless opportunity for REM rabbit holes!) and found this video of Dan Rather singing the song alongside Michael Stipe, and it is the single most cringey piece of footage I have ever seen in my life. When I tell you I squirmed, like physically recoiled from my computer while watching this, omg. I mean, it’s giving “geography teacher very drunk at the staff holiday party” levels of comedy. I promise you, no matter how bad you think you sound singing along to “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” at top volume in your car, you will never sound like Dan Rather here, and that is a relief for us all, I think.

But also, this is super brave! I would never do it, even with Michael Stipe nodding along encouragingly next to me like that. Good job, Dan Rather. That was really hard!