R.E.M. Songs - Don't Go Back To Rockville Lyrics

R.E.M. - Don't Go Back To Rockville

R.E.M. - Don't Go Back To Rockville Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Reckoning
Released: 1984

Don't Go Back To Rockville Lyrics

Looking at your watch a third time waiting in the station for a bus
Going to a place that's far, so far away and if that's not enough
Going where nobody says hello, they don't talk to anybody they don't know
You'll wind up in some factory that's full time filth and nowhere left to go
Walk home to an empty house, sit around all by yourself
I know it might sound strange, but I believe
You'll be coming back before too long

[Chorus]
Don't Go Back To Rockville,
Don't go back to Rockville,
Don't go back to Rockville
And waste another year

At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend
I don't care if you're not here with me
'Cause it's so much easier to handle
All my problems if I'm too far out to sea
But something better happen soon
Or it's gonna be too late to bring you back

[Chorus]

It's not as though I really need you
If you were here I'd only bleed you
But everybody else in town only wants to bring you down and
That's not how it ought to be
I know it might sound strange, but I believe
You'll be coming back before too long

[Chorus: x2]

Writer/s: BILL BERRY, PETER BUCK, MICHAEL MILLS, MICHAEL STIPE
Publisher: Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Don't Go Back To Rockville

This is about Ingrid Schorr, a girl the band knew at the University of Georgia whose hometown was Rockville, Maryland. She got a lot of attention on campus as classmates lamented her departure.

This is one of the few R.E.M. songs where bass player Mike Mills wrote most of the lyrics and sings the lead vocal.

The band had already been playing this song in a much faster, punk-like style for a long time and didn't even consider it for the Reckoning album until their legal advisor, Bertis Downs, begged them to "at least do one take of it for me ... please!?!?"

Drummer Bill Berry remembers tweaking the song to mess with Downs: "To playfully suggest to him that the song wasn't in contention, we recorded a much slower version than he was accustomed to hearing and we sprinkled it with a Nashville twang to drive the point home. It started out silly, but when Mike added piano, the tune took on new light. Thanks, Bert!" (Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011)