Bad Day (R.E.M. Song)
"Bad Day" is one of two previously unreleased songs on and the lead single from R.E.M.'s 2003 compilation In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988–2003.
The song first appeared in 1985, when Michael Stipe sang a few words of it during a concert in Albany, New York, as part of the Reconstruction tour. Then, around the time of Lifes Rich Pageant, the song emerged in a more polished version with the title "PSA"—an abbreviation for "public service announcement". An anti-media rant inspired by a day Stipe found a camcorder lens in his face when he answered the front door, the song was never released but did serve as a sort of forerunner to "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)", a song with a similar cadence and delivery. In 2003, Stipe saw that the song still had contemporary resonance, and the band finally recorded it for In Time, with only slightly updated lyrics and under the new title "Bad Day".
An outtake version of the song originally recorded for Lifes Rich Pageant finally appeared on EMI's 2006 compilation, And I Feel Fine... The Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982-1987.
The song's music video, directed by Tim Hope and shot in Vancouver, is a spoof of media news and was produced by Passion Pictures. It appears on In View, the DVD companion of In Time, and is also found on the main CD of In Time. In the video, Stipe appears as the Morning Team's news anchor Cliff Harris; Mills doubles as roving reporter Ed Colbert and meteorologist Rick Jennings; and Buck as climate expert Geoff Sayers and the reporter Eric Nelson. News stories shown include a monsoon contained within an apartment, a senator's office flooding, and a tornado inside a boy's bedroom.
The song can be heard in a third-season episode of Alias and in the Scrubs episode "My Advice To You".
The song is included on R.E.M. Live.
Read more about Bad Day (R.E.M. Song): Track Listing, Sales Chart Performance
Famous quotes containing the words bad and/or day:
“It’s too bad she won’t live, but then again, who does?”
—David Webb Peoples, U.S. screenwriter, and Ridley Scott. Gaff (Edward James Olmos)
“Any one who knows what the worth of family affection is among the lower classes, and who has seen the array of little portraits stuck over a labourer’s fireplace ... will perhaps feel with me that in counteracting the tendencies, social and industrial, which every day are sapping the healthier family affections, the sixpenny photograph is doing more for the poor than all the philanthropists in the world.”
—Macmillan’s Magazine (London, September 1871)