This nostalgic song revisits an idyllic childhood memory of the band when they would go skinny dipping in Athens, Georgia. R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck explained: "We used to sneak on this guy's property in Athens and go swimming in this water hole. It'd be great: 30 of us all running around naked. It was before AIDS, and whatever happened happened."
R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills wrote this song and played piano on the track. They recorded the song at Criteria Studios in Miami, which is where Derek And The Dominos recorded. The piano Mills played was the same one Bobby Whitlock and Jim Gordon used to play the famous ending on "Layla."
The lyrics were written before R.E.M. recorded their 1991 album, Out of Time. They couldn't find any good music for it until after the album was released.
In the video, directed by Jem A. Cohen, the song fades out for about a minute-and-a-half. All that can be heard are grasshoppers and other night noises. Then the music resumes.
The album title comes from a soul food diner in Athens, Georgia, where the waiters answer "automatic" after you order. Michael Stipe loves diners and once opened a vegetarian diner of his own.
This was the only R.E.M. song where the lyrics were written before the music, inspiring some healthy competition between Mike Mills and Peter Buck. Buck recalls in the liner notes for In Time: "Being competitive bastards that we are, Mike and I started auditioning chord changes and tunes for Michael. The two tunes of mine that Michael rejected eventually became 'Drive' and 'Try Not To Breathe.' Mike had a piano instrumental that he played to Michael. He listened once, nodded his head to hear it again, and on the second pass he sang the lyrics. It was 'Nightswimming,' exactly like the record we would record a year later. I was standing in the corner dumbfounded."
"There's a fairly autobiographical narrative to this one, and the part about the windshield really happened," Michael Stipe wrote in the liner notes for Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage, referring to the lyrics "The photograph on the dashboard taken years ago, turned around backwards so the windshield shows." He said: "That's exactly how I saw it, I'm pretty sure it was a pickup truck. I know Jem Cohen loves that line, and he made the most incredible film as a video for this song."
Mike Mills played this in concert with Robert McDuffle and the students at Mercer University's McDuffle Center for Strings. "I think one of my favorite parts is the orchestra tuning up in the beginning," he noted in Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage, 1982-2011.
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