R.E.M. - E-BOW THE LETTER

Released: August 19, 1996

Charts: US: #49    UK: #4 

When R.E.M. chose “E-Bow the Letter” as the lead single for “New Adventures in Hi-Fi” in August 1996, it confounded just about everyone. At a time when alternative rock still prized big hooks and louder choruses, the band released a song built from murmurs, drones, and grief — a spoken-word elegy haunted by loss and memory. It was an audacious choice, but a fitting one for a band that had spent over a decade proving they could follow their instincts anywhere, even into silence.

The song’s title refers to the E-Bow, a handheld electronic device that uses a magnetic field to vibrate guitar strings, giving Peter Buck’s playing its eerie, sustained hum. But the real instrument here is Michael Stipe’s voice — subdued, half-whispered, almost afraid to break the fragile stillness. The lyrics unfold like a letter that was written but never sent, widely believed to be addressed to River Phoenix, the late actor and Stipe’s close friend, who died tragically in 1993 at just 23.

“Dreaming of Maria Callas, whoever she is,” Stipe sighs, invoking the legendary opera singer as a symbol of beauty and distance. It’s a line that captures the song’s entire mood: reaching toward something transcendent but out of grasp.

Adding another ghostly dimension is Patti Smith, R.E.M.’s hero and muse, whose backing vocals arrive like a benediction. Smith — the “Godmother of Punk” and one of Stipe’s earliest inspirations — lends the song a sense of holy reverence. Guitarist Peter Buck later described watching her sing as a near-spiritual experience: “Chills ran up and down my spine… it was such an incredible experience watching Patti sing this song — a song we wrote!” Her voice doesn’t compete with Stipe’s but cradles it, as though she’s comforting both the singer and the spirit he’s addressing.

Critics called “E-Bow the Letter” an unlikely single, and they were right. In the United States, it barely cracked the Top 50, peaking at No. 49 on the Billboard Hot 100. But in the United Kingdom, it became R.E.M.’s highest-charting hit to that point, reaching No. 4, proof that sometimes, melancholy travels better overseas.

The music video, directed by Jem Cohen, extends the song’s nocturnal beauty. Filmed partly in Los Angeles and Prague, it features the band performing in a dimly lit room strung with white lights — a kind of modern cathedral. Patti Smith appears separately, filmed in flickering black and white, her image ghosting across the screen like a visitation. 

“E-Bow the Letter” was, in every sense, an act of defiance. It followed not the market but the muse, choosing vulnerability over volume, poetry over power chords. Its quietness was its rebellion. Dedicated to River Phoenix, sung with Patti Smith, and built around an unorthodox drone, it remains one of R.E.M.’s most intimate, unsettling, and enduring songs — a whispered prayer to the past and to the art of holding on. In a decade obsessed with irony and noise, “E-Bow the Letter” dared to be neither. It simply stood still, hummed softly, and let the ghosts sing back.