So, What Is the Frequency, Kenneth?

The R.E.M song What's the Frequency, Kenneth? (read the lyrics for the song) played a powerful part in pop culture in 1995. Since it was a new release by a major rock group, and the first release from their new album on top of that, its success was almost guaranteed, and the R.E.M. members knew it. They had a perfect opportunity to write a message they knew a lot of people would hear, and so they did. The question is, what exactly is that message?

The title gives us the first clue. Since the original incident where CBS news anchor Dan Rather was assaulted by two men who kept asking him what the frequency was and calling him Kenneth (much to Rather's bewilderment), young people all over America have taken to the phrase as a sort of salutation. Kenneth has also become the standard tag for a confused or ignorant person. It sets the tone right from the start when used as a header: it is aimed directly at youth, and they are or seem generally clueless.

According to Michael Stipe (and he should know), the singer is a middle-aged man, analysing and trying to grasp the youth culture of today. The first verse tells us that he is observing the phenomenon from the outside, and he is unable to understand it. This man is "locked out, numb, not up to speed," and it was "an idiot's dream" to think he had any idea of what his kids really believe in. He has just got "tunnel vision from the outsider's screen," which obviously does not give him a very good overview.

A reasonable deduction here is that since the singer clearly means himself and his generation when saying "I," he means the next generation, the so called Generation X, when saying "you." Of course, he could mean a specific youngster, but it seems more likely that he wants to cover them all because of validity reasons; researching one specific case gives no real picture of the phenomenon as a whole.

Again admitting that he does not know what is going on, the singer says: "You wore our expectations like an armored suit;" he has seen young people burdened with expectations from parents, teachers and other elders, and they responded not by living up to the ideals and not by renouncing the burden either, but by ignoring it. By just pretending there never was any pressure on them, these youth do whatever they like without feeling sorry for letting anyone down.

The singer proceeds to state that he has studied a lot of media for his research. They are mostly broad, non-generation-bound in nature, but the cartoons getting wedged in clearly tells us that this man has done some real research, as his kind normally do not read them. He has tried hard to get under the skin of his subject and is doing his best to understand it.

Richard Linklater, the director of the Generation X dissection Slackers, is quoted next: "Withdrawal in disgust's not the same as apathy," in my opinion meaning that the Ironic Generation chooses to ignore the conservative mainstream culture in protest against its outdated, empty values. This is obviously along the same lines as the "armored suit" part.

The we follow the singer into a study in superficiality. The overdone, glossy smile is soon followed by a violently green shirt, a butterfly decal and a rearview mirror (presumably for checking your smile in). All are good examples of kitsch, a notable characteristic of present-day youth and another solid prop to hide behind and disguise yourself with when people get too close, too inquisitive.

"Irony was the shackles of youth" is something the youngsters themselves have told the singer, telling him that they have seen former generations lacking irony, and now they have embraced it instead so its devotees can use irony to their advantage. Again, this harmonises with the "armored suit" as well as with the kitsch.

Here comes the guitar solo, which sounds "mentally ill," as my brother Kent put it. It is slightly out of tune and too slow compared to the rest of the song; it almost feels like the slow motion of a nightmare. This is an expression of the relationship between the slackers and the adults - out of tune and running at different speeds.

The last two pulp items appear in the last verse along with Generation Xers "dogging the scene." They hang out somewhere, ignoring everything and everyone else and just communicating inside their own group; the ultimate way to show off all their accumulated reality-shunning tricks and miscellaneous trinkets to each other and to the world. After all, there is no point in ignoring something if nobody notices that you ignore it, is there?

The rest of the song consists of flashbacks to the most important key lines, most dealing with not understanding anything or with shunning reality and society. Finally, the singer says "don't fuck with me" and gives up. Now he knows that these people want to seem clueless, even if they are not, in order to be invulnerable to outside opinions and directives. He comes to the conclusion that there is nothing he can do about it and leaves the stage, angry and frustrated, not looking back.

Is this Michael Stipe's personal experience or just a narrative describing the situation as he sees it? I think the latter. Bear in mind that he is not only fairly young (36), but he is also an active part of the pop culture that Generation X loves. The Monster album is in all respects kitsch, from the bright orange album cover to the styles of the songs. As R.E.M. said in an MTV interview in the spring of 1995 regarding the release of Monster, "there are only fourteen rock clichés, and on Monster, we covered twelve of them." They then proceeded to tell us that they actually made an effort to do exactly that, which must lead us to the conclusion that they embrace and willingly participate in youth culture.

Stipe just wanted to say that he understands how the older generation must feel about it. The singer in What's the Frequency, Kenneth? is not really him. It is just the role he is playing.