R.E.M. - LEAVING NEW YORK

Released: September 27, 2004

Charts: UK: #5 

“Leaving New York” was released in September 2004 as the lead single from the album “Around the Sun”. Though it failed to chart in the US, it reached the Top 5 in the UK. 

Written by Michael Stipe aboard a plane flying over the Manhattan skyline, the song captures both the intimacy of personal parting and the weight of collective memory. “On a clear night, the city looks magnificent,” Stipe recalled, describing the moment of inspiration. His lyrics read like fragments of goodbye — half love song, half elegy — to a city he adored and to a world reshaped by the shadow of September 11th. “It’s pulling me apart,” he sings, his voice both resigned and tender, mirroring the disorientation of a nation learning to let go.

“Leaving New York” is one of R.E.M.’s most understated ballads. Peter Buck’s guitar chords twist and turn in unconventional ways — “the chord changes are crazy,” he admitted — but Stipe’s melody smooths their edges into something graceful. The song’s layering of echoing harmonies, particularly the haunting refrain “It’s pulling me apart” woven through the bridge, creates an almost sacred stillness.

In concert, the song evolved: the studio’s looped backing vocals became a live chorus shared among Mike Mills, Scott McCaughey, and Ken Stringfellow. It was a subtle shift, but one that revealed what the song had been all along — a communal expression of loss and renewal.