It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

Document's second single was recorded in 1987 at Sound Emporium in Nashville and released by I.R.S. on November 16. The album version runs 4:04 and the single 3:29, with a Floyd Cramer cover, Last Date, on the B-side. It grew out of an unreleased track called PSA, which the band later reworked as Bad Day in 2003. Stipe said the L.B. names, among them Leonard Bernstein, Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs, came from a dream, and described the song as a collection of streams of consciousness. Buck placed it in the tradition of Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues.

It reached No. 69 on the Hot 100 and No. 16 on the Mainstream Rock chart in 1987, and No. 87 in Britain, then No. 39 in Britain on a 1991 re-release. In 2020 it reached No. 4 on the Hot Rock and Alternative Songs chart. James Herbert directed the video, with a skateboarder in an abandoned farmhouse, and the dog's appearance was unscripted.

The UK 7-inch carried This One Goes Out, a live acoustic version of The One I Love, on the B-side. The 1991 reissue CD singles added Radio Free Europe and, on one of them, White Tornado. Stipe told Q in 1992 that the words came from everywhere, including TV channel flipping. In 1992 a Cleveland station, WENZ 107.9 The End, launched its format by playing the song on a 24-hour loop. Downloads rose 184 percent in March 2020.

Live and covers

Setlist.fm counts 476 performances, the fourth most of any R.E.M. song. Great Big Sea covered it in 1997, No Doubt played it on MTV on January 1, 2000, and Chris Carrabba recorded a version in 2011. It appeared on a 2001 Clear Channel list of lyrically questionable songs.