We Love Great Bridges: "Life and How to Live It" by REM

Panel from Hi-School Romance comic book issue #44, 1955

It's no secret that my listening habits and musical preferences were largely shaped by having been a huge REM fan as a teen. And I think that REM is largely responsible (along with the Beatles, who I'll get to later in this series, I think) for my love of the pop-music devices like the bridge. REM eschewed guitar solos (for the simple reason that, for years, Peter Buck didn't have the confidence to record one), preferring instead to use more creative ways to bring the verse-chorus sections of their songs together.

There are so many memorable REM bridges that you can separate them into categories: they do harmony-heavy breakdowns ("Near Wild Heaven", "At My Most Beautiful"), monologues or sampled dialogue ("Exhuming McCarthy", "Orange Crush"), or additions of folk elements to the arrangement (the accordian solo on "I Believe" or the banjo break on "Wendell Gee"). Two of the best REM bridges involve a switch to the backing vocalist taking the lead on the bridge, as on the Stipe-sung bridge in Mike Mills' "Texarkana" or (most famously), the Mike Mills bridge on "Fall on Me". That latter example may be the definitive REM bridge, and I was tempted to post it here, but I decided to go with something a little less obvious that I like just as well.

1985's Fables of the Reconstruction is a fascinating and divisive album in the REM catalog, and it's got some of the band's best moments, starting with the elegant, rising-from-the ashes bridge in the otherwise-dour opening track "Feeling Gravity's Pull". "Maps and Legends" has one of Stipe's famous yodel-y breaks in the middle, and "Driver 8" has one of the band's best-known middle-eights, with Stipe singing, "A way to seal the hated heat!" over a nice key change and a howling harmonica. That's just the first three tracks of Fables, but my favorite bridge is in the fourth song, "Life and How to Live It" (a song that I feel is generally underrated in the REM oeuvre). The thing that's great about this song's bridge (which starts at 2:01, after the second chorus) is that it starts with some unintelligible Stipe moaning that gradually becomes more coherent and urgent until Stipe is packing the syllables in ITEOTWAWKI-style. And and then he blurts out, "Life and how to live it!" It's a great moment.

"Life and How to Live It" by REM