What’s The Frequency, Kenneth? – REM

1994’s What’s The Frequency, Kenneth was somewhat of an anomaly for REM. It was the first single and opening track from the Monster album and while it has some of the sonic qualities of that album it also stands a little apart from it.

The song was actually inspired by the New York mugging of NBC news anchor Dan Rather. While beating him Rather’s attacker apparently kept repeating “Kenneth, What’s The Frequency?”

It turns out that the attacker later (after the song was written) explained that his repeated statement was prompted by his belief that the news media was beaming signals into his head.

Michael Stipe has been quoted as explaining the song this way “It remains the premier unsolved American surrealist act of the 20th century. It’s a misunderstanding that was scarily random, media hyped and just plain bizarre.”

It’s almost as if the explanation of the attacker came to fit the song as you could easily imagine Stipe at least sympathising with that viewpoint. (It might also explain why I named the news pages of InPress “What’s The Frequency”)

The other element of interest about this song is it apparently grew from another song called Yes, I Am Fucking With You. Late in the song Stipe substitutes the words “the frequency” with “don’t fuck with me”.

This song contains some of Michaels Stipe’s best quoted and most resonant lines. “you say that irony was the shackles of youth”, “to withdraw in disgust is not the same as apathy”.

The theme of media duplicity and the various references to being “fucked with” make this one of REM’s nastiest and most untrusting songs and when Peter Buck delivers his guitar solo backwards it all adds up to an extremely spiky piece of music.