Near Wild Heaven

The song simply decries a love situation where everything is "nearly" perfect but something is preventing the good relationship. One tries hard to make everything work out, yet something is still holding the two apart from each other. Almost everyone can relate to a relationship at some point in their lives where the lyrics would fit. R.E.M. are truly great musicians.

a down-to-earth lyric about love gone bad. clinging to love with the wrong one. there is no 'right' one (mr./mrs. right), just the one that is 'right for you'. sadly, sometimes, there IS love, but between two mis-matched people. alas, the love is NOT enough sometimes in these cases. this is what he's talking about.

Love when Mr. Mills takes the vocal lead.

So pure yet so sad

i adore the style of this song, how happy it sounds (even though the lyrics are forboding). the sound of the song was meant to pay homage to the Beach Boys.

how are there only FOUR comments on this song? it's hands down, the best REM song ever made. it's so upbeat

Interesting to read others (including the music critics referenced on Wikipedia) finding the song very upbeat. Until now I never would’ve thought to describe it that way—to me it’s always sounded sad, even without the lyrics. But after reading this I can see why people hear it that way. It’s also interesting that since I first heard the song about 10 years ago, I’ve had a totally different interpretation of what it was about. For me, the song wasn’t about a romantic relationship that’s fraying (though now I see that interpretation makes total sense!) For me the song was about being single and romantically/sexually frustrated. I took the “we” to be more general: “Whenever we hold each other” meaning “whenever people hold each other.” To me the phrase “near wild heaven” described the feeling of being constantly surrounded by other people and sensing the possibility of emotional and physical connection with them, but without ever being able to actually make that happen. “Living inside” referred both to the potential wild heaven inside each person, so close and yet so far, and also to the fact that the singer feels isolated and probably spends most of their time indoors. I now suspect my interpretation might say more about where I was mentally 10 years ago than about the song’s intended meaning XD

a boyfriend of mine once played this song for me and told me it reminded him of us. should have been a my first clue that it wasnt' going to work out. oh well, good song.

Side Of The Road by Lucinda Williams would come after this on my mix tape of songs describing love's imperfect moments. This Is Not A Love Song by P.I.L. might work but no - that's a different tape. Right?