Michael Stipe has confirmed precisely this.
i can probably pick the top ten in the Iditarod better than 99 out of a random 100…. Maybe unless the 100 people are from the interior of AK
Heheeh, yeah, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t recite it sans melody.
Congratulations, Bill! You’re a law!
OH, YEAH!
I do pretty good with Subterranean, but I usually stumble around “try hard get barred get back write braille get jailed jump bail join the army if you fail”
mmm
Back in the 90s I played bass in a small local band. We were a trio and it was usually up to the guitar player or the drummer to sing, since I couldn’t sing and play bass (keeping a melody and a rhythm in my head simultaneously is just very difficult for me). So to give them a break we decided I would sing Subterranean Homesick Blues since the rhythm and melody are basically the same. I was astonishingly good at it, so I suggested adding End of the World to the set list. That one took a lot longer to get down, but I did it. The key is to practice the song one verse at a time until it becomes automatic. Then you only need to memorize the order of the verses. At one gig after we finished with End of the World, a guy came up to me and said “that’s not a song, it’s a party trick.” After that my group of friends starting competing at parties to sing End of the World as far as you can without a mistake. We still do it sometimes, and I’m not as good as I used to be, but I can make it to “vitriolic, patriotic, slam fight, bright light”