Fall On Me

The song is about anything you want it to be. It could be about acid rain, but there is a double meaning. The sky is a metaphor for your reputation and living life carefree and how easily it can be tainted, polluted, by other individuals as well as yourself. You have to take care of it, be careful of your actions, who you share your secrets with....but is that really living? "Building towered foresight isn't anything at all"....if you do that then you aren't really living a genuine life. What is it up in the air for? You don't have to live a life of scrutiny if you hide. If it's there too long... exposed.... it will fall...maybe temporarily or permanently, or with certain people, and it sounds like your fault because "it's over, it's over me." You must deal with the repercussions raining back down on you....kind like tears...the song echoes failure pretty heavily as well....failing yourself and everyone else...and how we are all in this together. From the start the song contrasts different themes and sounds, feathers and iron are compared literally in the first verse, hitting the ground before the weight can "leave the air." It also starts out kind of like a ballad, and returns to that at times, lots of voices singing in the background strongly represent the theme of other people talking about your reputation. Will the sky, or whatever "it" is, fall or will it not? This could all be bullshit, of course, but I think it's possible. It just seems very alive, too complex and emotional to be just about acid rain.

I think this song is about the deterioration of quality in architectural design. The glamourization of high rise real estate(buy the sky sell the sky), and lack of mixed use planning in cities (found a way to talk around the problem, foresight isn't anything at all).

The first verse clearly refers to Galileo's experiments on gravity.

I was very young when this song came out and I had it on 45rpm.I somehow interpreted it as the individual against the world(symbolized by the sky)and the cry of "don't fall on me" as someone downtrodden pleading with whatever was more powerful than them to stop dropping burden after burden on them.

"Lift your arms up to the sky,and ask the sky and ask the sky,don't fall on me"

• the isolated,alienated,voiceless individual literally pleading with something/someone in a powerful position to please not burden them anymore(I'd already been through too much s**t at 13).

"There's a progress;we have found a way to talk around the problem...note it's "around" the problem,not talk about it,in other words,avoid and ignore the issue at hand and the suffering individual.

"I would keep it above,but then it wouldn't be sky anymore;so if I send it to you,you've got to promise to keep it whole"- the individual is making a futile attempt to use reason and logic and have a say,but they are still ignored.

Just my own interpretation.

yea, i still like to think of it as a love song every now and then...my problem with this song is that it only runs 2:45, it is absolutely incredible

Most gorgeous song I've ever heard. And I (finally) got to hear it live couple weeks ago - transcendant moment.

chichen little the sky is falling

One of the very best REM songs. the acid rain explanation is very good.

This songs means about the progress. It says that the human progress it is not being done in the right way. If we think about buy the sky and sell the sky, it could be interpreted as it is the only thing that human being has not conquered, ruled and contamined. Stipe is predicting the future saying the sky not to crumble on us once is conquered.

DonDiego is right on: the 1st verse really is a comment on theory of gravity--my H.S. freshman Science teacher liked to expand upon such concepts like: solid matter, i.e., abrick, can fall apart into it smallest particles and it's still going to be matter. Matter will never go away or disappear--then we'd segue into the concept of splitting the smallest particles to make atomic power--after a yr. of that, I was very "no nukes"even to this day! If that made anybody go, "What does this sh*t have do w/this song??", I saw Michael Stipe in an interview on MuchMusic around the time this song was popular and he explained how he wrote "Fall On Me" by splitting this song into 4 basic concepts! Whoa! Hey Mike, can't you just tell us peons in 1 or 2 paragraphs?!? I was thinking at the time, and now here we all are doing it! LOL Enjoy the song, folks--that's all it's about sometimes.