Songfacts®:

• This is the first US single from Collapse Into Now, the fifteenth studio album by the American Alternative Rock band R.E.M. Patti Smith, who contributed vocals to the album closer "Blue," came up with the album title. Guitarist Peter Buck told Q magazine: "Naming the thing is always the hardest. Patti was looking at the lyric sheet and she said, 'How about Collapse Into Now?' So Patti named it and you've gotta go with what Patti says."
• The song's music video was directed by Dominic DeJoseph, who also handled clips for R.E.M.'s "Bittersweet Me" and "New Test Leper." The clip is a homage to one of the film industry's all-time greats. "With this one, it's a reference to the old Buster Keaton silent film kind of days of pratfalls and just watching people look like they're getting hurt when they're really not," explained bassist Mike Mills to Spinner.
  
  Mills went on to explain the reasoning behind the video's concept: "There's a lot going on in that song," he said. "It's got a lot of propulsion and moving forward and so I think the idea of movement is what contributed to that video being like it is."
• The song should not be confused with R.E.M's similarly titled "Me In Honey," from the band's 1991 album, Out of Time.