What this song is really about is: I remember reading that the title came from a piece of Chinese propaganda that the Chinese government put out after Tiananmen square, that had a first line that translated to read "the shiny happy people holding hands", which always lead me to believe that the entire song was not only meant to be sarcastic, but it was meant to be almost bitterly so. Simply put, a song to mock the overly happy fits of lunacy that people put out to mask real life problems.
Unfortunately for REM, the song became what it was mocking.
What this song is really about is: I remember reading that the title came from a piece of Chinese propaganda that the Chinese government put out after Tiananmen square, that had a first line that translated to read "the shiny happy people holding hands", which always lead me to believe that the entire song was not only meant to be sarcastic, but it was meant to be almost bitterly so. Simply put, a song to mock the overly happy fits of lunacy that people put out to mask real life problems.
Unfortunately for REM, the song became what it was mocking.