“Shiny Happy People” by R.E.M.

"Shiny Happy People" followed "Losing My Religion" off R.E.M.'s seventh album, Out of Time, in 1991, and it's the band in full technicolor, bright and bubbly to the point of giddiness. Kate Pierson of the B-52s joins Michael Stipe and Mike Mills on vocals, and her voice pushes the thing somewhere close to a playground singalong.

All four members share the writing, with Stipe on the words, and Scott Litt produced it with the band. Peter Buck's electric guitar jangles, Mills doubles on bass and organ, Bill Berry handles drums and percussion, and Peter Holsapple sits in on acoustic guitar. The result is so relentlessly sunny that it's hard to tell whether they mean it or are winking at you.

In America it reached number 10 on the Hot 100, the last time R.E.M. would crack the top 10 there, and in Britain it climbed to 6, their first UK top 10 and their only single to go top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic. Ireland took it to 2. Katherine Dieckmann's video, with Pierson in it, drew on the 1948 film Letter From an Unknown Woman, and the band played it with her on Saturday Night Live on April 13, 1991.

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