"Stupid, stupid signs": Incomprehensibility, Memory, and the Meaning (Maybe) of R.E.M.'s "Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite"
2006; Oxford University Press; Volume: 88; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/musqtl/gdi016
ISSN1741-8399
Autores Tópico(s)Caribbean history, culture, and politics
ResumoEven by R.E.M.’s standards, “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite”—the third song on their 1992 album Automatic for the People—seems willfully enigmatic. The song’s choruses consist, for the most part, of repetitions of a single tumbling, four-pitch tagline catchy enough to inspire even the most complacent listener to sing along. But singing along proves very nearly impossible: the words of the line are among the most indecipherable ever recorded by singer/lyricist Michael Stipe, who had by then raised obscurity to an art form. The trouble is that the first six words of the tagline—“Call me when you try to wake her up”—are delivered each time in the space of around half a second, and Stipe hardly takes heroic measures to enunciate his way out of this compositional infelicity (the first chorus appears at the end of Ex. 1). Warner Bros.’ own publicity material for the album cheerfully referred to the “cryptic ebullience”1 of the song, press ads for the single going so far as to suggest possible interpretations of its incomprehensible chorus: “Colin went to try Jamaica rub,” perhaps, or “Comedy will try to break her heart.”2 One online clearinghouse of misheard lyrics, www.amiright.com, offers no fewer than eleven purported mishearings of the line (some more plausible than others), ranging from “Microtrabeculae” to “Only Che Guevara.”3 Mark Coleman’s glowing Rolling Stone review of the album—a “melancholy gem [that] displays the group at their shimmering peak”—saves “Sidewinder” for last in his song-by-song coverage, then offers it an appreciative, permissive shrug: “And, of course, Stipe still has a peculiar way with elusive hooks. ‘The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight’ [sic] exults in the old jangle and stomp—whatever it means.”4
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