Begin the begin
Driving rocker, with the clarity of Michael's voice coming as quite a shock after the earlier work. Peter Buck, 1986: "Written with all of us on acousic guitars in Michael's living room. We had twenty degrees weather, and we were all huddled up in our jackets, trying to write songs for the album. I had that one little riff and that was it. We just kind of sat and made it up, and we went, 'Let's change this, let's make it so it never repeats'. The original version was about a minute longer and nothing was the same all the way through except the riff. Therewerefivedifferent choruses, no bridge, no melody." The title is a pun on Cole Porter's 'Begin the beguine', andit indicates a call for action. Rich in American mythology (Miles Standish was one of the leaders of the pilgrim fathers); "the insurgency began and we missed it" seems to refer to the Sixties and/or the American revolution. You kind of feel they're calling for anotherone (of each?).

These days
This keeps up the manic pace, and seems to be a general purpose protest song. "We are hope despite the times," Stipe sings, talkin' 'bout his generation. Live, he's introduced it as a "moralistic tale", also comparing it to Aesop's 'Fables'. Fishy imagery, but why is anybody's guess.

Fall on me
"This may well be my favorite song in the R.E.M. catalog,"Michael Stipe announces during the band's 1991 Unplugged show. The ancient Gauls seemed to fear the sky would fall on their heads (read some Asterix); Chicken Licken feared that it already had. There seems to be referances to Galileo's expirements with gravity, but both Stipe and Berry have said this one's about acid rain. It could also be taken as being about a simple awe of nature, the kindwe city folk forget (and look where that's got us). Defusing all the profundity, the wonderfully backing vocals ask, "What is it up in the air for?" Amazingly, this epic rocker failed to make much impact as a single.

Cuyahoga
Gentle ballad that calls for the repair of America, both politically and ecologically. The title is the native American name for a river in Ohio so polluted that it sometimes catches fire. Michael: "We destroyed a culture to build ours."

Hyena
A canine fable that (appropriately) dates back to 'Fables of the recostruction'. An anti-nuke song ("The only thing we fear is fearlessness," is a paraphrase of Franklin D. Roosevelt). Fairly average rocker.

Underneath the bunker
Instrumental (mainly) written during the 'Fables' sessions. According to Peter Buck, things were going bad in the studio, so the band took a break: "We went to a Greek restaurentand got drunk, and this is the type of stuff they were playing. We justcame back and did our own version of that kind ofmusic." Actually, it sounds Turkish.

The flowers of Guetamala
Despite the floral imagery, this world seem to be about the US intervention in central America. In concert Michael declared that both 'Green grow the rushes' and 'Hyena' were also about this subject: "There's a big fish and medium fish and little fish. Big fish is the United states; Medium fish is Mexico; Little fish is Guetamala. One eats the other one up. One gets bigger..." Sounds like one of the gentler Velvet Underground songs.

I believe
Banjo interlude introduces a bouncy poppy catalog of affirmation. This is a rewritten version of an earlier song, 'When I was young', which was dropped out of 'Fables' at the lastminute (but too late to remove the titlefrom early printings of thealbum sleeve). The lyrics seem to be teasing glimpses of autobiography ("I will not tell!"), andencouragement / advice to those who follow after. The title came from a Mahalia Jackson gospel song of the same name, a snippet of which Michael would sing a cappella as an introduction when performing this live.

What if we give it away
Bluesy swinger. This one dates back to 1981, and was previously titled 'Get on their way'. "Here's the trailer's home" refers to the fact that Michael Stipe lived in a trailer park prior to joining R.E.M.

Just a touch
A really old song - it dates back to 1980. Supposedly based on a true incident witnessed by Stipe when he was 17 and working as a bus-boy in a disco restaurant called Sonny and Cher's. On the day Elvis Presley died, an Elvis impersonator named Orion was playing in the restaurant and was showered with flowers at the end of his set by grieving female Presley fans. "I'm so goddamn young" is a quote from Patti Smith's 'Privilages', which fits well with the general punk vibe (three chords and an attitude), as does the cheesy organ break.

Swan swan H
Written on the tour bus in November 1985 at three in the morning, and described by Peter Buck as "fake Irish music. We had this stuff, and I just started playing it and Michael said, 'Yeah, I've got words that will fit that!' Weworked it out in twenty minutes." The words were taken from a 1920s book that Michael had found, about post civil war hymns of the emancipated slaves. The result is a sweeping folk ballad thatseems part gibberish, part civil war imagery. The title was, according to Stipe, supposed to be pronounced 'Swan swan Huh'. Mike Mills (correctly) thought this "too far towards pretension".

Superman
Uncredited on the album sleeve, this cover version of a B-Side by Sixties Texas garage band, the Clique (written by G. Zekley and M. Bottler) features Mike Mills' debut as lead vocalist. Buck had unearthed the original single while working in a record store years before ("I gave Mike copy, and we've both loved that song for six years, ever since 1980. This song has two chords, and it took us that long to work it out"). It's a wonderful slice of pop at its dumbest and most compulsive, a mock - macho obsession song (sounds like things are not going well between Lois and Clark) that's easily the best thing on the album, and which understandingly made quitean impact when i was released as a single.