R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe posts correct lyrics for ‘It’s the End of the World As We Know It’

R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe took some time during the holiday weekend to make sure everyone knows the correct lyrics to the band’s song “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).”

Stipe’s signature vocal style long made it hard to understand exactly what words he was singing. That issue is particularly exacerbated in “It’s the End of the World As We Know It,” which features Stipe singing so fast that you’d be forgiven if you could only discern the song’s title in the chorus and the part where he yells, “Leonard Bernstein.”

Nearly 40 years after “It’s the End of the World” dropped in 1987, Stipe has clarified two particular lines in the song’s first verse in posts to the social networking site Bluesky.

“It’s ‘Left of west and coming in a hurry with the Furies breathing down your neck,'” Stipe writes in one post. He then adds the correct version of the following line, “Team by team reporters, baffled, trumped, tethered, cropped, Look at that low playing, fine, then.”

The R.E.M. Instagram account has shared a screenshot of Stipe’s post in a Story alongside the caption, “Michael shares some lyrics on [Bluesky].”

“It’s the End of the World” appears on R.E.M.’s 1987 album, Document, which celebrated its 38th anniversary on Monday.

R.E.M. broke up in 2011, though the four members reunited for one-off performances in 2024 and 2025. Stipe performed a parody version of “It’s the End of the World” during a 2016 guest spot on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

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