R.E.M. cut an early version of this song for their first EP, which featured a rough version of "Radio Free Europe," their first song to gain national attention. They re-cut both songs for their debut album Murmur, with considerably better production values.
"Sitting Still" is perhaps the most famous example of Michael Stipe's indecipherable lyrics and pronunciation. In an interview with Rolling Stone in the early '90s, he said this is a song in which "syllabizes" the sounds as opposed to actually saying words. When asked if the song contains the line "City traffic, the big hill, wasting time, sitting still," Stipe said "no, there's no hill in it." True to form, he didn't clarify what he was actually singing.
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