The Songwriting Process

Singer Michael Stipe and bassist Mike Mills comment on R.E.M.’s songwriting process:

Do you always write songs with the four of you together?

MILLS: We put them together that way. Everybody sits at home and diddles around. Sometimes you’ll come up with little ideas and sometimes you’ll come up with a huge part of a song. And then you’ll take that into everyone else and piece it together until you get a song. Other times, things just come out of, literally, just the four of us sitting around and making noise. All of a sudden it will reemerge into a song. It’s really strange.

And do the lyrics come during this time of it?

STIPE: Yeah. There’s no real set way that it happens. Sometimes I have an idea for a melody or I’ve got this stuff written and I’m trying to find out what to do with it.

You write lyrics on your own and bring them to the band?

STIPE: Yeah, or I’m inspired by a song to write something. There’s no real method.

Do you listen to the music to suggest the words?

STIPE: Yeah, a lot. A lot of times the words can really change the music. We would have a song like “Shiny Happy People” that was originally like a stomp rock kind of song.

MILLS: When I first wrote it, it was a quiet little acoustic ditty. That’s the weirdest thing about it.

You wrote it on guitar?

MILLS: On acoustic guitar. It was finger-picked, quiet, four little chords. The chords that comprise the chorus now. It sounds nothing like the song. And that’s the way things go. When you start to get input from everyone, you start to use more instruments that you have at your disposal, and the songs evolve. They turn into final songs. Sometimes they still remain little acoustic numbers, but sometimes they become “Shiny Happy People.” There’s no way to tell.

Source: Songwriters on Songwriting, Paul Zollo