"Electrolite" was the third single to be released from R.E.M.'s tenth studio album, New Adventures in Hi-Fi. The song peaked at #96 on the Hot 100 and #29 on the UK Singles Charts. "Electrolite" had the second-lowest peak on the British charts in R.E.M.'s previous 18 British releases.
The single's video, directed by Peter Care and Spike Jonze, "involved dune buggies, crazy costumes, and rubber reindeer" according to Peter Buck in R.E.M. Inside Out: The Stories Behind Every Song by Craig Rosen.
In June 2006, the website of the Los Angeles Times featured an article on Mulholland Drive. The article included excerpts from an essay Michael Stipe wrote about the 55-mile-long highway: ::Really deep. :"Mulholland is the place in films where you get a distance, and the awe, of the city built on dreams and fantasy. Far away enough to not smell it but to marvel at its intensity and sheer audacity. Kinda great. During R.E.M.'s performance on VH1 Storytellers, Stipe introduced the song thus: "I had a dentist in Los Angeles, who was also a dentist to Martin Sheen, and Martin Sheen was in the dentist’s chair, getting his tooth drilled, when I went up to him and said, 'We have a record coming out in a couple of weeks and you’re mentioned in one of the songs, and I just want you to know that it’s honoring you; I don’t want you to think that we're making fun of you.' And he was [impression of Sheen speaking with the dentist inside his mouth, saying ‘Thank you very much!’]. He was very nice about it."
The song was included in R.E.M.'s Warner Brothers "best-of" album In Time; the video can be found on the accompanying DVD, In View.
