Only Because Realer Men Punched Them When The Real Men Didn’t Change The Radio Station

Apparently, a British survey of some sort REM most likely to make men cry:

EVERYBODY Hurts by REM is the song most likely to make grown men cry.

The teary ballad sung by Michael Stipe and used as a Haiti earthquake charity single earlier this year was named in a recent survey.

On one hand, this survey was taken in Britain, where we have secretly replaced Real Men with yobs on crystal, and apparently no one has noticed. On the same hand, they don’t have resonant patriotic songs over there.

Because, frankly, I cannot speak ex cathedra about what real men might or might not do, but there’s not an REM song in the world that moves me in any fashion whatsoever.

Songs that move me (and by move, I don’t mean make me cry, but make my breast well up and my eyes pinch a bit) include “The Star-Spangled Banner”, “God Bless America”, “God Bless the USA”, and some other patriotic songs when I think about the heritage I might pass onto my children. Sometimes I get twinged by songs about fathers and sons (not “The Living Years”, though). When I was a young man, the song that made me saddest in a romantic vein was “Hearts Away” by Nightranger. Go figure.

But “Everybody Hurts”? Come on, that’s a retread of Wilson Phillips “Hold On” if you slowed it down, made it more self-indulgent, and shaved Chynna Phillips’ head.

Maybe after a decade and a half of Labour in power in Britain, though, it’s a song everyone there can relate to.