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.

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.

[3] Once guitarist Peter Buck received the basic tracks of the song from Mills, he too found the music reminiscent of Wilson.

[6] 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.

[6] Commenting on the song's musical similarities to the work of the Beach Boys in his book Inside Classic Rock Tracks, Rikki Rooksby wrote that "At My Most Beautiful" was "a tribute to that sound, at once conveying something of R.E.M.

"[9] He states that the song's use of an F chord with an A bass note in the verse follows the example of Brian Wilson's use of inversions on his band's Pet Sounds album, and that the cellos at the end heightens the section's resemblance to the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations".

[10] The lyrics reference leaving messages on a love interest's answering machine and what Rooksby terms "knowing obsession".

performed "At My Most Beautiful" for an episode of Party of Five, a television series which had included music by the band in the past; the show's producers determined the choice of song to be featured in the program.

[13] The clip follows a cellist (portrayed by Rain Phoenix) experiencing a "bad day" on her way to an audition overseen by Buck, Mills, and Stipe.

[14] Though the song was a moderate hit, its success failed to stimulate sales of Up, which by 1999 had sold a relatively low three million copies worldwide.