Michael Stipe sings the line ‘I will try to sing a happy song’ on what is actually the album’s saddest song, ‘The Wrong Child’, and he does it without any irony. Most of the album is set in the singer’s immediate surroundings, but ‘Orange Crush’, a song about a war that Stipe knew only peripherally, is a reminder that it isn’t enough to stand in the place where you live. Yes, it’s the 11th song on Green, but the way it’s written, you’d think it was the 11th song to not have a title.