Trivia / Automatic for the People

• Corpsing: In "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" after the line "...and a reading from Dr. Seuss", as it's pronounced "Zeus" instead of "Seuss". Ironically, the true correct pronunciation (which nobody ever uses) is Dr. "Soyce" (rhymes with "voice").
• Cut Song: "Photograph" was written in the Automatic sessions but not finished till it was reworked into a duet with 10,000 Maniacs frontwoman Natalie Merchant for the 1993 charity compilation Born to Choose. It would also be included on Merchant's Greatest Hits Album Retrospective and on the 25th anniversary edition of Automatic for the People.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition:
  • Keeping in line with the approach of every album since Green having a special edition release, Automatic featured one that packaged the CD in a wooden box with 16 photo cards printed on vellum. The configuration of this release would later inspire that of The Automatic Box, a Europe-exclusive Boxed Set consisting of four CDs of bonus material taken from the album sessions.
  • The album was given a two-disc reissue in 2005 along with every other album in the band's Warner Bros. catalogue up to that point. Like those reissues, this one came with an expanded booklet and a DVD-A that featured the entire album done in a 5.1-channel surround sound mix (courtesy of acclaimed audio engineer Elliot Scheiner) and a complete set of lyrics.
  • Similar to Out of Time and Monster, this album received this treatment for its 25th anniversary in 2017. The 2-CD configuration includes the album and a live show, while the expanded four-disc set adds in a CD full of demos and a Blu-ray containing associated music videos and a 5.1 Dolby Atmos remix, with the Natalie Merchant duet "Photograph" as a bonus track on the latter.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Around the time of the album's promotion, a large number of people began speculating that Michael Stipe had AIDS or was otherwise seriously ill, fueled by a combination of his gaunt appearance & at-the-time ambiguous sexuality (he would later self-identify as queer) as well as the bisexual Freddie Mercury's death from AIDS the previous year and its informing of Queen's similarly foreboding and introspective Innuendo. When questioned about the rumors in an interview, Stipe had this to say:
  "Not that I can tell. I wore a hat that said 'White House Stop AIDS.' I'm skinny. I've always been skinny, except in 1985 when I looked like Marlon Brando, the last time I shaved my head. I was really sick then. Eating potatoes. I think AIDS hysteria would obviously and naturally extend to people who are media figures and anybody of indecipherable or unpronounced sexuality. Anybody who looks gaunt, for whatever reason. Anybody who is associated, for whatever reason— whether it's a hat, or the way I carry myself— as being queer-friendly."
• Rarely Performed Song: "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" was a fairly well-received single, and the band members themselves seemed to like the song, since they always included it on compilations and generally described it as a good track that managed to lighten the rather somber mood of the album. Despite this, they never played the song live.
• Refitted for Sequel: "Nightswimming" was written by Mike Mills during the Out of Time sessions, but was not seriously considered for the album at the time.
• Throw It In!: "Try Not to Breathe" got its title and lyric from a moment during early recording sessions, when engineer John Keane told Peter Buck his breathing was audible on the playback. Buck responded with "Okay, I'll try not to breathe."
• What Could Have Been:
  • As mentioned on the main page, the album was originally conceived as a harder, more aggressive-sounding one to offset the Lighter and Softer tone of Out of Time; the shift to foreboding orchestral-acoustic music only came about after the band realized they were short on ideas. The band ultimately wouldn't shift to the intended harder sound until Monster two years later.
  • "Nightswimming" was one of the extremely rare cases in the R.E.M. catalogue where it had its lyrics before it had its backing track. Being — in Peter Buck's words — the "competitive bastards" that they were, he and Mike Mills each submitted several different compositions to Stipe for his approval. Two of the rejected Peter Buck compositions ended up becoming the tracks to "Drive" and "Try Not to Breathe", respectively.
• Working Title:
  • According to producer Scott Litt, Michael Stipe initially intended to title the album Star, hence the photograph of a metal star sculpture on the front cover.
  • "Star Me Kitten" was supposed to be called "Fuck Me Kitten" until the band's friend Meg Ryan stopped by the studio one day while they were mixing the album. She loved "Kitten" when it was played for her, but told the band that when she was a kid, if the word "Fuck" was printed on a record's sleeve, the stores in her hometown would not sell it. The band decided to change the title as a result, noting they didn't have any problem with profanity, but wanted to avoid getting a Parental Advisory sticker, and to make sure their younger fans could buy the album.

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