The Apologist

someone told me stipe wrote this about a guy who was in AA, and as part of the 12 steps he had to apologize to everyone he had hurt, but he was a real asshole about it.

I like this song, especially since I am kind of an "apologist". My friends threaten me everytime I say sorry b/c I say it so much.

yup. i feel the same. i quote this song alot to people...im an evil bastard u see

Yeah my dad gets mad at me like that too. Everytime anyone says something to me that could be considered negative, I immediatly start saying "I'm sorry" without letting them finish. They say it's really annoying.

Apologizing gets automatic after a while... I think that doesn't necessarily mean you don't mean it, though. This song is about guilt and regret, and its relative ineffectuality in the case of this guy. He's saying, hey, I'm really sorry if I hurt you, but this is the way it has to be.

This song came out shortly after Bill Clinton got caught with Monica Lewinsky and put forth a massive cross-country campaign apologizing for it and hoping to restore his image. Rightly or wrongly, I've always assumed this song was about him.

The "institution" of confession in the catholic church comes to mind. Especially related to parts: "When I feel regret, I get down on my knees and pray." and "Thank you for being there for me. Thank you for listening, goodbye." Michael seems to criticize how some people feel that they can make things right by showing remorse, and in time it can become a habit: thinking about the confession and regret even as you're doing the deed...

At VH1 Storytellers, Michael said it was about a character going through a 12-step program, like the AA, which includes, at some point, saying sorry to everyone the person has hurt in the past. But the truth is that the character is a worse person now than he was in his addiction.

I find the story referred to and by schlieffen - the first comment - as quite believable. It is confermed by yellowit in the last comment, by saying that he heard that directly by Michael on VH1 Storytellers. This is seems to be partially supported by an interview that I read on the Italian issue of the Vanity Fair magazine, that sort of magazine that I HAD NEVER READ. But I found it in the web some months ago, as I was searching for other information As usual, women's magazines are able to talk only about what's concerning sex and sexuality. So, even if interviewing the former leader - the issue dates back to 2020 - of a bunch of guys who have always been dealing with MUSIC. Serious and exceptional musicians and performers. When their songs were not deliberate non-sense, they dealt with life matters on a wide range of issues, politics and social relations patterns, not even writing a proper love song before that little At my most beautiful in 1998. The woman journalist interview, althouhgh, dealt of course only with Michael's sexual orientation and his so-called bisexual-homosexual coming out at the end of the 1990s. The article, wrttien by a supposedly American women journalist, translated into Italian, quoted a sentence by Michael, saying - I retranslate it, being left in Eng. only in its last part - IF I COULD APOLOGIZE WITH SOMEONE, I WOULD DO WITH ALL THOSE I SLEPT WITH, UNTIL I WAS 27 YRS OLD. BECAUSE I WAS A SELFISH, SHAGGY, COLD ASS. I think that when The Apoligist was released in 1998, at 38 he could be retrospectively honest in feeling a sort of auto-critical need to apologize with someone, or in a general sense, for some attitutude and behaviour he had held in the past, maybe especially in the sexuality sphere. This could be supported by the passage - I can forfeit selfishness - and the passage saying - When I feel regret and fall down to my knees and prey - They could allude to an originary feeling of the apologizing/forgiving value as a religious yielding one, even if luckily abstracted from this origin. I think that the story of the guy who had to apologize with everyone, as reported by schlieffen and yelllowt, though keeping nontheless - an asshole - could be the inspiration for the song lyrics, as well the tendency of many people to often apologize, because they feel that THEY HAVE TO DO IT, but non really feeling any actual belief in what their they're saying. At the same time, this inspiration, so a sort skeptical attitude towards apologizing as a gener habit and the way it's done, could have combined with a most sincere feeling of regret about some of his pastlfe action, behaviours, feelings, by the author of the lyrics. Musically, one of the two generally underated songs - Sad Professor is other one - of their most beautiful record, UP, of the 1990's. According to me, of course. Maybe of their post-great popularity career after 1988. Being, just Green, the worst.

[Edit: corrections]