Crush with Eyeliner

Crush with Eyeliner

R.E.M.

“Crush With Eyeliner” is the second track on R.E.M.’s ninth studio album, Monster. It was released as the album’s fourth single and featured a Spike Jonze-directed music video.

Like much of Monster, the song is a distortion heavy grunge-meets-glam number about identity and authenticity. Thurston Moore provided backing vocals and additional guitar.

Of its sound, Matthew Perpetua wrote:

Peter Buck’s exaggerated tremolo effect on the song is perhaps the most iconic sonic element on the record, and its colorful, cartoonish sound ranks among the most distinct guitar tones in a decade overflowing with inspired noise–makers. The oscillations come in a woozy intervals that recall the image of waves of heat rising off of concrete on an oppressively humid summer day, and it lends the song a stoned, slightly aloof feeling that fits nicely with Stipe’s intensely self-aware lyrics.