All The Right Friends by R.E.M.

Album: Vanilla Sky Soundtrack (2001)

License This Song

lyrics

artistfacts

Songfacts®:

This was featured in the 2001 movie Vanilla Sky, starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. It was directed by Cameron Crowe.
R.E.M. wrote this in the early '80s and considered it for their album Murmur. They occasionally played it live, but never released it on an album until the Vanilla Sky soundtrack.
Peter Buck recalled in the liner notes for the compilation In Time: "This is by far the oldest song on this set. It was written in 1979 by Michael and me before we had even met Bill and Mike. We played it at every show until about 1982. I don't know why we never recorded it; maybe we thought it was kind of juvenile.

"Twenty years later, when asked to contribute a song to the Vanilla Sky soundtrack with about eight days notice, it no longer seemed quite so naive. We recorded it in three hours prior to a show in Seattle, and quite consciously tried to record it as we would have in 1982."

Comments: 8

Chris from Marblehead, MaThis song WAS written in 1979. Michael Stipe wrote it himself. The bend then added to it in '82. Then they completely re-did the song for their In-Time compilation.
Matthew from Milford, MaIt's kind of interesting to see a song from the point of view of the dumper instead of the dumpee.
Shane from Detroit, MiJust a note- how could this have been written in 79 if R.E.M. was formed in 1980?
Justin from Grand Island, NeIt is almost identicle....coincidence?
Charles from Oregon, WiIt is unknown if this was intentional... but listen to the music for Elec Man's level from Mega Man, for the NES. It's vety similer, isn't it?
Wil from Kc, KsIt would be a little hard for them to write the song in 1979 when the band hadn't formed yet. Does anyone even bother to do fact checking??
Epp from Pittsburgh, PaThis is from Vanilla sky, but was writen in 79 and sounds like retro REM.
Matthias from Erlangen, GermanyR.E.M. did release "All the right friends" as Track 22 on the album "Dead letter office"!

see more comments

More Songfacts:

VoodooGodsmack

The line, "I feel the snakebite enter my veins," led many to believe the Godsmack song "Voodoo" is about drugs, but it's really about Wiccan ritual, inspired in part by the Wes Craven movie The Serpent and the Rainbow.

Raspberry BeretPrince

The UK band The Lightning Seeds of "Pure" fame got their name from a misheard line in Prince's "Raspberry Beret," mistaking "thunder drowns out what the lightning sees" for "thunder drowns out the lightning seeds."

Invisible TouchGenesis

The Genesis song "Invisible Touch" was inspired by the Prince-written Sheila E. track "The Glamorous Life."

More Than a FeelingBoston

Boston leader Tom Scholz went back to his job at Polaroid after releasing the group's debut album. When his co-workers kept coming by to tell him "More Than A Feeling" was playing on the radio, he knew it was time to quit his day job.

Someone Like YouAdele

Adele's "Someone Like You" is the first song with just piano and voice to hit #1 in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, which started in 1958.

The Battle Hymn of the RepublicTraditional

John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath got its title from a line in "The Battle Hymn of the Republic": "He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored."