“Orange Crush” by R.E.M.

"Orange Crush" was the first single from Green, R.E.M.'s sixth studio album, in 1988, and it takes its title from Agent Orange, the defoliant Monsanto and Dow Chemical made for the U.S. Defense Department and that was sprayed in the Vietnam War. Michael Stipe's father served in that war, and on the Green World Tour Stipe opened the song by singing the Army's recruiting slogan.

It's R.E.M. at their most martial and muscular: Peter Buck's guitar churning, Mike Mills' bass and Bill Berry's drums marching in step, Stipe's voice cutting clean through the din. All four wrote it, and Scott Litt produced it with the band, engineering and mixing it with Jay Healy for Warner Bros. Records.

It never got a commercial release in the U.S., yet it hit number one on both the Mainstream and Modern Rock Tracks charts, and its eight weeks on top of Modern Rock beat U2 for the record back then. In Britain it reached 28, their highest chart hit there so far, and they made their Top of the Pops debut to push it. Matt Mahurin's black-and-white video, in which the band never appears, won them their first VMA, the first ever for Best Post-Modern Video.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.