R.E.M. joined a long list of artists when they began covering Wichita Lineman on tour in 1994 and finally released it as a B-side two years later.

I’ve heard other versions of Jimmy Webb’s classic, once described as “the first existentialist country song” – and also as the greatest song ever written, by no less a judge than Bob Dylan.

You can’t beat the original by Glen Campbell, who asked Webb to come up with another geographic song after his hit By The Time I Get To Phoenix.

Many have tried, with varying degrees of success: among them Tom Jones and Johnny Mathis, Andy Williams and Engelbert Humperdinck; Dennis Brown turned it into a reggae tune and Jose Feliciano gave it a Spanish twang.

There are more: Ray Charles and Smokey Robinson, The Meters and Billy Joel, Johnny Cash and James Taylor, George Benson and (heaven help us) Guns N’ Roses, and most recently Nick Cave on a jazz album.

The list goes on and on – but I had no idea it included R.E.M.

In their version, released in 1996 as a B-side, they do a pretty good job of capturing the desolation, the sadness, the loneliness, the longing and the fatigue of that lonely guy suspended atop a telegraph pole pining for his girl.

And has there ever been a more romantic couplet than: “And I need you more than want you / And I want you for all time.”