Funny / R.E.M.

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• "Voice of Harold", which features Michael Stipe singing the liner notes to a Gospel album over the backing track of "7 Chinese Bros." Supposedly, Michael was singing too quietly on early takes of "7 Chinese Bros." itself, and the Record Producer happened to find the gospel record just lying around somewhere in the recording studio, so he asked Michael to sing the liner notes in an attempt to get him to loosen up.
• "Underneath the Bunker" from Lifes Rich Pageant is the band doing their own take on Greek-restaurant music, with a melodramatic vocal by Stipe that finishes with him actually yodelling, and one of Peter Buck's most imperiously cheesy guitar solos.
• Chances are you experienced the joy of hearing "It's The End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" play on the radio (or in Rock Band due to a recent DLC pack) while your friends struggle to sing along with the lyrics that aren't the song title.
  • Even more hilarious, not even the band members can remember the song's lyrics. Michael admitted during the band's MTV Unplugged performance that they had to outright print out a transcription from a fan board, without even knowing how accurate it was.
• As said in the Beam Me Up, Scotty! entry on the main page, "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" got its title from an incident involving Dan Rather being attacked by someone, who kept shouting (some form of) the phrase as he was beating the veteran newsman. Now watch Dan Rather performing the song with them in 1995. You can't say the man has no sense of humor.
• Late in "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" Michael Stipe can be heard audibly trying to hold back his laughter during the chorus, due to his perceived mispronunciation of the word "Seuss" (he thought he was saying "Dr. Zeus"). Made even funnier by the fact that it makes the already incomprehensible chorus even harder to understand.
• In the CD booklet for Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982–2011 as Stipe is discussing the music video for "Imitation of Life" he points out that holding a monkey or an orangutan in a music video was one of Peter Buck's life wishes.
• Michael Stipe's dancing in the music video for "Imitation of Life". Possibly in general, as well.
• Peter Buck's liner notes to Dead Letter Office are very funny (as is just about anything Peter Buck says), but the high point is his horrified and apologetic description of the circumstances behind the band's drunken, shambolic recording of "King of the Road".
  Peter Buck: If there was any justice in the world, Roger Miller should be able to sue for what we did to this song.
  • Also qualifying is the previous song, "Walter's Theme", recorded in the same take. The song was written as a faux-Kitschy Local Radio Commercial for the now long-defunct Walter's BBQ in the band's hometown of Athens.
• The gleefully awful rhyme that opens "It Happened Today": "This is not a parable. This is a terrible. This is a terrible... thing. Yes, I will rhyme that."
  • Similarly, when Stipe flat-out admits he "can't even rhyme here with 'begin'" in the middle of "Begin the Begin".
• During their earlier days, the band loved abusing the Word of God trope, giving intentionally misleading and untrue answers to interview questions just to see if they'd get printed. Peter Buck is the cause of one such story, in which he "explained" that his father had been a Shakespearean actor, but had made his living playing the Ty-D-Bol Man, and ended up committing suicide. To his delight, the story got printed.
• Their appearance in The Simpsons episode "Homer the Moe". Homer gets them to play at his homemade bar by making them think they're playing to save the rainforest, until they found out the bar's a "hunting club".
  Michael: Hunting club?! You lied to us!
  (Michael smashes a beer bottle and waves it menacingly before being held down by Mike and Peter)
  Mike: Michael, no!
  Peter: That's not the R.E.M. way.
  Michael: (sighs) You're right. Let's just recycle these shards and get out of here.
• Although "Man on the Moon" is a tearjerker, Stipe's Elvis impression is pretty funny.
• This exchange in an unboxing video with Mike Mills and Michael Stipe made to promote the 25th anniversary edition of Monster:
  Michael: This one is 180-gram vinyl. I have no idea what that means.
  Mike: Means you can play Frisbee with it.
• It's probably an unintentional example, but the cover art to the single "Pop Song 89" features the song name arranged in a way that makes it look like "Poop Song◊".
• In the documentary Athens, GA: Inside/Out, Michael Stipe randomly starts telling a story about how Mike Mills can smell ants (i.e. the formic acid that they use to mark trails). Stipe has a hard time keeping a straight face as he describes, to his continued bewilderment, how Mills will occasionally point out that "there's ants here" mid-drive, and sure enough, when everyone gets out of the car to check, they'll spot an anthill.
• One of the demos recorded during the Lifes Rich Pageant sessions was a song called "Wait", one of the band's earliest dating back to 1980. Stipe's vocal contributions are mostly just scatting and gibberish meant to be used as placeholders for the eventual actual lyrics, but near the song's end comes a Truck Driver's Gear Change that takes Stipe for a ride as he struggles to sing to keep up with the new key. He then proceeds to sing the confession/complaint "Wine is not our friend" immediately afterwards. The whole recording can be found on the Pageant 25th anniversary edition bonus disc.

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