Day After Day #346: It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) (1987)

All good things must come to an end. I'm certainly not talking about 2024, which will go down as one of the more effed up years in history, but this little daily exercise is wrapping up. I started a few days late and I missed a few along the way, but I'm pretty impressed that I was able to stick with it for the entire year. I want to do something similar for 2025, but not daily, because that is difficult at times. Maybe weekly, and obviously something a little different.

As for a final song, R.E.M. upbeat apocalyptic whirlwind of a rocker "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" seems fitting. The last several years, every year has seemed like the end of the world and yet we keep going.

The song is on Document, the band's last album on I.R.S. before signing to Warner Brothers and a demarcation point for some hardcore fans of R.E.M.'s earlier, quieter sound who jumped off the bandwagon when "The One I Love" became a top 10 hit. The band was expanding into a more mainstream act, which turned off some of those earlier. As for me, I stuck with them because they're a great goddamn band.

"It's the End of the World" was the second single off Document after "The One I Love" and was released in November 1987 after the staggering success of the lead single. Frontman Michael Stipe came up with some of the rapid-fire lyrics from a dream he had where he was at legendary rock critic Lester Bangs' birthday party and he was the only one in attendance who didn't have the initials LB. He balanced with the doom-and-gloom news he saw on TV.

"That's great, it starts with an earthquake/Birds and snakes and aeroplanes/And Lenny Bruce is not afraid/Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn/World serves its own needs/Don't mis-serve your own needs/Speed it up a notch, speed, grunt, no strength/The ladder starts to clatter/With a fear of height, down, height/Wire in a fire, represent the seven games/And a government for hire and a combat site/Left her, wasn't coming in a hurry/With the Furies breathing down your neck."

The song is influenced by Bob Dylan's classic "Subterranean Homesick Blues," another song featuring quickly sung stream-of-consciousness lyrics.

"Team by team, reporters baffled, trumped, tethered, cropped/Look at that low plane, fine, then/Uh oh, overflow, population, common group/But it'll do, save yourself, serve yourself/World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed/Tell me with the Rapture and the reverent in the right, right/You vitriolic, patriotic, slam fight, bright light/Feeling pretty psyched/It's the end of the world as we know it/It's the end of the world as we know it/It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine."

Musically, the song has its origins in an unreleased track called "PSA," which was later reworked and released in 2003 as "Bad Day."

"Six o'clock, TV hour, don't get caught in foreign tower/Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself burn/Lock him in uniform, book burning, bloodletting/Every motive escalate, automotive incinerate/Light a candle, light a motive, step down, step down/Watch your heel crush, crush, uh oh/This means no fear, cavalier, renegade and steering clear/A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies/Offer me alternatives, offer me solutions and I decline."

The song only got to #69 on the Billboard Hot 100 but it got a lot of play on rock radio and MTV. During my junior year at UNH, my roommates and I took a road trip to Montreal for spring break in March 1988. We were in an establishment called the Peel Pub and they had a cover band that played "It's the End of the World," which of course we all loved. We didn't know all the lyrics but we definitely knew this part:

"The other night I drifted continental drift divide/Mountains sit in a line...Leonard Bernstein/Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs/Birthday party, cheesecake, jellybean, boom/You symbiotic, patriotic, slam but neck, right, right/It's the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone)/It's the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone)/It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)."

The brilliant minds at Clear Channel included the song on a memo of songs considered "lyrically questionable" after the September 11, 2001 attacks. In more recent years, it has become popular around potentially calamitous events like the supposed Mayan apocalypse in December 2012, the COVID-19 pandemic and different religious doomsday predictions. 

Document became R.E.M.'s most popular album to date, hitting #10 on the Billboard 200. By the early '90s, R.E.M. was one of the biggest bands in the world, which didn't end as a result. Drummer Bill Berry left the band in 1997, leaving Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck and bassist Mike Mills to continue on as a trio; they released five more albums before calling it quits in 2011.