R.E.M. Songs - Finest Worksong Lyrics

R.E.M. - Finest Worksong

R.E.M. - Finest Worksong Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Document
Released: 1988

Finest Worksong Lyrics

Finest Worksong Song Chart

This was the third single from R.E.M.'s fifth album. Though it wasn't a hit on the US Pop charts, it did peak at #28 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks.

Peter Buck wrote in Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: "It's a great intro although it's just me hitting a b-string, and Mike has that great bass line. When I brought it in, I felt like I knew what I wanted to and kind of vaguely knew what the guys should do, but we played it once and it just kind of came out of nowhere. Mike and Bill have always been particularly good at coming up with stuff off the tops of their heads that's kind of amazing. It sounded great, but I was afraid that Michael might have trouble writing to it just because it's a B note. That whole song is in B except for the chorus. It reminded me of touring with the Gang of Four. It kind of had that vibe to it."

Frontman Michael Stipe references nineteenth-century poet Henry David Thoreau in the lyrics ("To throw Thoreau and rearrange"), completely by accident. He wrote: "My friend Chris told me that I was our generation's Whitman, I think because I was an ecstatic, and I liked men and women, and I was a poet in his eyes, even though I hated the word poet. Anyway I meant to write Whitman into the song, but I got mixed up and wrote Thoreau in instead."

The music video, directed by Stipe, shows workers throwing, smashing and burning a globe, among other things.