Continuing the chronological presentation of my 25 favorite songs…

‘(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville‘ – R.E.M. (1984)

If I weren’t limiting my Favorite Songs playlist to one song per artist, R.E.M. is the band that may well have landed more than one track in the lineup. ‘Driver 8,’ ‘Maps and Legends,’ ‘Half a World Away’ and ‘So. Central Rain’ all were finalists for this list.

But it wasn’t hard to give the slot to ‘(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville,’ the earnest, lovesick country track on the band’s second full-length album, Reckoning. I’ve adored this song since I first heard it in high school and it’s only grown more effective in the years since.

R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills wrote ‘Rockville’ in R.E.M.’s very early stages, after his college girlfriend told him she was leaving Athens, Georgia, to live with her parents in Rockville, Maryland. The song was initially a punk track before the band changed it up, reportedly as a joke on their manager. Inadvertently, they struck gold and ended up with one of their most beloved songs.

Mills imagined Rockville as a depressing factory town, a characterization far from the truth. In 2011, Ingrid Schorr, the woman whose departure inspired the song, wrote a great article about what it’s like to be a footnote in rock history. Over the years she has been written about in dozens of books on R.E.M., with most of the authors not bothering to contact her first. It’s a quick, entertaining read if you’re interested.

The clip below is from a show called The Cutting Edge that aired on MTV in the early 80s, featuring live performances by little-known bands. The casual jokiness with which the band approaches the performance is a joy to watch. Michael Stipe leans into his Georgia twang and playfully nudges Mike Mills, while drummer Bill Berry and guitarist Peter Buck crack goofy smiles. Four college dropouts embarking on one of the great musical careers in rock history.

‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)‘ – Simple Minds (1985)

I chuckled last week when my sister Amy recalled hearing David Bowie’s ‘Changes’ during the opening credits of 1985’s The Breakfast Club. While Bowie’s song is quoted at the end of those credits, it is of course Simple Minds’ ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’ on the soundtrack. I didn’t want to point that out and tip my hand about today’s selection.

Of course, Amy knows full well that this is The Breakfast Club‘s iconic anthem, as does anybody who was a teenager in the 80s. I accompanied her to watch the movie in the theater (I was 13, she was 17 and thus able to buy tickets to the alluringly R-rated film). It was the first of many, many viewings, and through them all this song never lost its glorious impact.

‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ was written for the film by Keith Forsey and Steve Schiff, whose original demo is worth a listen. The offered it to Simple Minds, Bryan Ferry Billy Idol and were initially turned down by all three. Simple Minds were adamant that they should release their own songs, not songs written by others. Ironic that this became their biggest-ever hit.

Billy Idol recorded the song in 2001 for a greatest hits collection, providing a glimpse of what might have been.

Listening to Idol’s version as well as the original demo, it’s clear that the wise hand of fate delivered this song into the hands of the reluctant Simple Minds, who reworked it into a modern-day classic. Their slower, more emotional version, building to a crescendo of “la la la las,” is the perfect realization of the material.