Al Green's R.E.M. cover doesn't hurt

Sometimes everything is wrong, but right now, it’s time to sing along to Al Green’s lovely new R.E.M. cover. The “Let’s Stay Together” singer and soul music legend just released his version of the band’s classic Automatic For The People track, “Everybody Hurts.” While the tone of the original version goes hard on the “everybody cries” aspect of the lyrics, Green’s much cheerier rendition instead focuses on the song’s resolution: “If you feel like you’re alone/No, no, no, you are not alone.”

“Recording ‘Everybody Hurts,’ I could really feel the heaviness of the song and I wanted to inject a little touch of hope and light into it,” Green wrote about his cover on Twitter (X). “There’s always a presence of light that can break through those times of darkness.” In his own statement, via Vulture, R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe added that “this is an epic moment for us.”

While Green isn’t saying this part out loud, it’s pretty clear what specific “time of darkness” the singer is talking about. The urge to bring the people together in times of crisis isn’t exactly new. Other scary political moments have given us “We Shall Overcome,” “A Change Is Gonna Come,” “Get Up, Stand Up,” American Idiot, and many, many more. And then, of course, there’s the flip side like the “Imagine” video from the early days of COVID. Trump 2.0 may still be a bit of a coin toss musically, but if covers like this are what we have to look forward to, there may be a silver lining after all.

You can listen to Green’s cover below: