At My Most Beautiful  "At My Most Beautiful" is a song by the American alternative rock band R.E.M. During the song's creation, members of the group noted its similarity to the work of the Beach Boys and purposefully fashioned it to resemble that band's output. Singer Michael Stipe strove to make his lyrics the most romantic he had ever written, and the piano-driven ballad became R.E.M.'s first straightforward love song. Released on the group's 1998 album "Up", it was issued as the third single from that record the following year, reaching number 10 on the UK Singles Chart. R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills stated that after he composed the piano part to "At My Most Beautiful", he felt it sounded like music the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson would have written two decades prior. Once guitarist Peter Buck received the basic tracks of the song from Mills, he too found the music reminiscent of Wilson. Instead of avoiding the comparisons, the group instead opted to "[run] toward it", in Mills' words. "The idea for it happened driving up and down Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles when I was putting together the Patti Smith book "[Two Times Intro: On the Road with Patti Smith]" last year," Stipe said in 1998. "I had CDs and tape of new songs in the car. I came up with this one line, 'I found a way to make you smile.' All I knew was The Beach Boys had a record or a song called "Smile" – is that right? – so I was like, 'Well, this will be my gift to "[bandmates and Beach Boys fans]" Peter and Mike, and Bill at the time. It was hard to write. It was a high order to say, 'I found a way to make you smile.' I had to come up with, 'OK, what are those ways?' That was tough." Of the line, 'I found a way to make you smile', Stipe later recalled, "I just thought, that's the most beautiful thing in the world." Stipe had difficulty writing lyrics for the "Up" album. In the case of "At My Most Beautiful", it took the singer a year to write the song's verse because he needed to figure out what one could do to prompt the action described in the opening line. The solution finally occurred to him one morning, and he finished writing the words in 45 minutes. After a conversation with Patti Smith, Stipe was convinced that he needed to be fearless in his songwriting approach.