R.E.M. - The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite

Track Name
R.E.M.

Automatic for the People

The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite

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"The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" is a song by the American alternative rock band R.E.M. It was influenced by the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", both in the title of the song and through the song's opening refrain. (SongFacts writes, "Rather than follow industry practice and simply pilfer the song, R.E.M. paid for the rights to use it. As part of the deal, R.E.M. were asked to do a cover of the original "Lion Sleeps Tonight".) The band used "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" as the B-side to this song. The song was released on R.E.M.'s 1992 album Automatic for the People and was later released as a single in 1993, reaching number 17 in the UK Singles Chart.

The song was included on R.E.M.'s Warner Bros. "best of" album In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988–2003 in 2003, one of four songs from Automatic for the People to make the compilation. In the liner notes, Peter Buck remarked: "We included this song on Automatic in order to break the prevailing mood of the album. Given that lyrically the record dealt with mortality, the passage of time, suicide and family, we felt that a light spot was needed. In retrospect, the consensus among the band is that this might be a little too lightweight."

The lyrics are famously easy to mishear. A 2010 survey found that the chorus line "Call me when you try to wake her" was the most misheard lyric in the UK, beating second-place "Purple Haze", with the most common mishearing according to the survey being "Calling Jamaica".

An audible laugh by Michael Stipe can be heard at 2:33, immediately after he sings the closing line in the third verse "or a reading by Dr. Seuss" which refers to Dr. Seuss's rhymes. When trying to name-check Dr. Seuss, Stipe kept saying "Zeus" and laughs at his own inability to pronounce that correctly, which Mike Mills kept trying to get him to do. Stipe says he loved Dr. Seuss as a kid but always pronounced his name the wrong way.

The song's complete title is not featured in the lyrics, but there is the line "the sidewinder sleeps in a coil" as well as the later line "the sidewinder sleeps on its back". A sidewinder is a species of rattlesnake (Crotalus cerastes), and also an antique style of telephone, with a winding handle on the side. The lyrics frequently refer to making and avoiding phone calls.

Mike Mills said: "It's about somebody that doesn't have a place to stay. Part of it is also about what man can do that machines can't. The rest of it – I don't have any idea what it's about."

Mills also allegedly said, "Half of the song is about somebody trying to get in touch with someone who can sleep on his floor. The other half - you're on your own."

In the liner notes for Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982–2011, Stipe said the song has one of his favorite lyrics: "'Their world has flat backgrounds and little need to sleep but to dream.' Cartoon characters never just get sleepy, they always have to have a dream of some floaty kind."

The music video, released in February 1993, was directed by Kevin Kerslake, produced by Tina Silvey and Line Postmyr through production company Silvey & Co. and edited by Robert Duffy. Silvey and Postmyr produced many of Kerslake's music videos in the early 1990s (e.g. Ride's "Vapour Trail" and "Leave Them All Behind", Nirvana's "In Bloom", Red Hot Chili Peppers's "Soul to Squeeze" as well as Soundgarden's Motorvision home video). The video is often erroneously attributed to Peter Care—in the past even on R.E.M.HQ, this has since been rectified—who was never signed to Silvey & Co. and who directed through Propaganda Films' sister shop Satellite Films from 1992 to 2000. The wrong director credit originated on the rec.music.rem newsgroup.