How a parking lot inspired REM’s ‘Stand’: “My God!”

Posted On December 15, 2025December 15, 2025

Can you ridicule the system while simultaneously inviting people to be passionate participants in it? You can if you write a silly tune like REM.

REM is maybe my favourite rock band, so calling them silly is really no attempt at ridicule. It’s not just any frontman that would admit to being inspired by a parking lot to write a song, and recall the sentiment so proudly: “It surprises me when I walk by a parking lot, and I’ve been walking by that parking lot for eight years, but, for the first time, I look at it and say, My God! There’s a parking lot! and I wonder why, for eight years, I’ve chosen not to look at it.”

Michael Stipe explained to Q magazine the thinking behind ‘Stand’ in 1992, but the lyrics only came after a jam with guitarist Peter Buck. He got into a very silly state with a stupid guitar riff, and Stipe decided to write some similarly stupid lyrics to match. “Your head is there to move you around,” they sang, in a rock version of ‘Head & Shoulders, Knees & Toes’.

The result became a hit sensation with sitcoms, since it’s really exactly what you would imagine in the background of some witless white family comedy. But the genius in the song is beyond the silliness, the “dumb-head plow-that-riff” as Buck put it in 1994. The lyrics are a repeated merry-go-round of the same tune, but it doesn’t reduce the divisive value of their message: most people are standing in the place where they live, they work, and don’t think about why. 

Stipe hid a lot of distaste in the thoughtless human condition with no lack of poetry: “If wishes were trees, the trees would be falling.” REM urged a “confused” mass into thinking about their direction in life, and about who is guiding them there. Stipe told Q, “It’s about making decisions and actually living your life rather than letting it happen.” 

Although the band took a stand against the foggy, brainless effects of widespread consumerism and unsustainable working culture, the way they decided to do so attracted some mixed responses. When it came to REM’s 1988 album Green, the critical reception matched the general dissatisfaction felt by hardcore fans, reluctant to embrace the band’s sudden decrease in moodiness. 

REM’s new playful sound was expressly made accessible: “We’ll write something that’s really complicated, where it changes keys in the bridge and there’s these really interesting modulations, and there’s these great harmonies, but nobody ever notices that!”

“Not that we’re going for the idiot audience or anything, but I like that kind of stuff too. The Ramones write the best songs in the world. It’s all one song, but it’s a great song. Some of those old Velvet Underground records have two chords on ‘em,” said Buck. 

The switch from alternative to exuberant was parodied and looped on MTV, with its similarly bizarre music video. It is one of REM’s most underrated tracks, possibly because people walking past a parking lot never realise what’s right under their nose.

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