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R.E.M. were one of the most influential and beloved rock bands of the last 40 years, comprised of Michael Stipe, Bill Berry, Peter Buck, and Mike Mills.

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The story of how a band of young hopefuls with independent aspirations and a shared love for American – specifically New York City – new wave/punk ended up putting up the college town of Athens, Georgia, on the musical map is pretty much the definitive tale of third-phase rock music enthusiasts. To begin with, R.E.M. locked into place as a quartet and grew up in the studio and on stage with such passion and élan that they swept their generation along with them. Like kindred spirits U2 in Dublin, they succeeded in elevating the alternative into a credible strain of mainstream without compromising too many ideals or alienating their fan base.

Since their formation in 1980, the band has sold in excess of 85 million albums, enjoyed countless Top 10 singles and thrilled crowds on stage. From small-town origins they would end up inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1987 and then announced an amicable split in 2011, though each member has – and always did – pursue other activities beyond the integral band of brothers. Along the way they have developed various strains of music, incorporating jangly Byrdsian melodies into more contemporary sounds. They’ve never shied from technology, or avoided prevailing trends if it suited their modus operandi; but nor have they slavishly followed fashion. R.E.M. set out quietly to begin with and then dragged the music business round to their way of thinking. Political activism has always been within their compass too, and Michael Stipe has insisted on a liberal and politically correct outlook. A supporter of PETA (not all the band fall into line all the time), Stipe has also pushed for democratic causes, while the entire group worked on behalf of the Freedom Campaign in Burma. Since they have acquired wealth and fame along the way, these causes have sometimes drawn flak from the press, but their power to raise awareness on certain issues seems genuine, and they have done more than most to preserve local landmarks in the historic parts of Athens, GA.

From humble enough beginnings a band is born. Michael Stipe and guitarist Peter Buck met in a local record store where they found they shared a love for the 70s pioneers such as Television and Patti Smith, and The Velvet Underground  before them: a natural lineage that necessarily embraces strands of classic rock music while seeking to adapt to the times.

How Debut Album ‘Murmur’ Spread The Word About R.E.M.

‘barcelona’: how freddie mercury and montserrat caballé made opera rock.

Mike Mills and Bill Berry, who would form the rhythm section, were enlisted from the local University Of Georgia. They rapidly became celebrities in the locale (not always to the pleasure of other bands) and cut their teeth with solid touring throughout the southern states. The group’s debut single, ‘Radio Free Europe’, cut at producer Mitch Easter’s Drive-In Studios in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was a classic beginning that was voted one of the 10 best singles of the year in the New York Times .

R.E.M. threw another curveball with the Chronic Town EP, in late 1981, and were picked up by IRS Records, who acquired the band’s demos and gave them a professional setting for the forthcoming years. We are delighted to say that their classic early albums are available here.

Avoiding too many of the tropes and clichés of classic rock bands, they convened to record Murmur in 1983 with Easter and partner Don Dixon perfecting the jangly pop sound of the era on a classic set that included a cover of the Velvets’ ‘There She Goes Again’ (on the IRS Vintage Series edition of the album), as well as out-and-out landmark R.E.M.. tracks such as ‘Talk About The Passion’. Exploring avant-pop and art-rock with a flair unmatched by many outside of, say, Talking Heads, R.E.M. wowed the scene. Stipe’s semi-mumbled and deeply mixed, often incoherent lyrics, only added to their mystique, while Buck’s guitar prowess was evident even as the group fought against giving their audience the bleeding obvious. Murmur was a five-star beginning and sold well enough to make the No.36 slot in the US while becoming a cult artefact elsewhere. The re-recorded ‘Radio Free Europe’ single arrived with a slightly cleaner sound and did well in the UK, but what followed set R.E.M. on the path to stardom.

1984’s Reckoning found the band writing and recording with prodigious energy. With Stipe, Mills and Berry hitting on a tasty harmonised central core, and Buck leaping off on tangents on occasion, this album contains such essential pieces as ‘Harbourcoat’, the enigmatic ‘So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)’ and the much-loved ‘Don’t Go Back to Rockville’. Look out for the IRS Vintage Years edition of the album for a cracking live-in-the-studio ‘Pretty Persuasion’, and check out the 2009 Deluxe Edition bonus disc ( Live At The Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, July 7, 1984 ) to hear the band in their early pomp.

Fables of the Reconstruction , a conceptual album concerned with the exploration of the US South’s rich mythology and gothic landscape, was recorded with Joe Boyd in London. Moving their sound away from the full-on jangle of before, R.E.M. began to utilise strings, brass and a wider range of guitar sounds. Even so, the layered, acoustic bedrock of ‘Driver 8’, ‘Can’t Get There From Here’ and ‘Wendell Gee’ mark this out as vintage R.E.M. The Athens Demos bonus, available on the 25th-anniversary edition, contains three different songs and some subtle variations. Inroads were being made, as the album went gold soon after its release – yet there’s still a feeling that the band’s first three albums have been missed by many who picked up on the commercial breakthrough years post-1987, and we’d direct you towards them without demur. They each deserve rediscovery because they’re remarkable works.

1986’s Lifes Rich Pageant was produced by Don Gehman, an old-school control man; it’s undoubtedly another essential disc and still one that has slipped through many a net. Once again, the IRS Vintage Years and the 25th-anniversary editions are recommended, but even without those, the core brilliance of ‘The Flowers Of Guatemala’ and the dense ‘Begin The Begin’ are durable and lovely. Gehman succeeded in liberating Stipe and company from the dense sonic undergrowth of their previous albums. and while the new-in-your-face production was a shock. it hasn’t diminished the album over time.

On the following year’s Document , the band finally made major headway. Now established as a critically favoured entity, the reviews for the album were so ecstatic that something had to give – and it did, as R.E.M. cracked the US Top 10 and beat a path towards commercial supremacy with a slew of ever more classic songs, from ‘Finest Worksong’ and ‘The One I Love’ to the sure-fire festival singalong ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)’. This latter functioned as a clever update of a Bob Dylan protest song such as ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ – though a younger fan wouldn’t need to get the reference in order to feel the thrill and power of the track.

Despite leaving IRS after their contract expired, R.E.M.’s move to Warner Bros didn’t see them change their principles. Their next album, Green , recorded in Nashville, teamed them with producer Scott Litt, a noted power-pop expert who had worked with Chris Stamey’s The dB’s, Matthew Sweet and Beat Rodeo. Litt had already worked closely with the R.E.M. on pre-production for Document , resulting in an atypical disc. For Green, it was decided to, if not throw the rulebook away completely, give it a kick up the rear. The results were eclectic – some said “experimental”. Certainly, Green was lyrically challenging, with stand-out tracks such as ‘Orange Crush’ referring to the chemical defoliant used in the Vietnam War, while ‘Stand’ was an attempt to create a modern bubblegum pop song – ie, something both inane and absurdly catchy. The band continued to slip out fine covers on the single B-sides: Suicide’s ‘Ghost Rider’ and Syd Barrett’s ‘Dark Globe’ were typically audacious flips for ‘Orange Crush’, while ‘Get Up’ was backed with a quirky take on the David Bowie / Iggy Pop  song ‘Funtime’.

Just as Green eventually hit global platinum status so Out Of Time continued to up the ante, promoting R.E.M. from world’s biggest cult act into global superstars, though it still managed to land three Grammy Awards in 1992, including one for Best Alternative Music Album. However, “alternative” was stretching it by now: Out Of Time topped the UK and US charts, and began a period of uninterrupted chart domination across Europe to boot. It almost seems like a greatest hits collection: consider the inclusion of ‘Radio Song’, the epic ‘Losing My Religion’ (which Stipe compared to The Police ’s ‘Every Breath You Take’, if only for the obsessive-compulsive nature of the lyric). The lovely ‘Near Wild Heaven’ could have appeared on any of the earlier albums, but it was the anthemic ‘Shiny Happy People’ that proved to be the charm. The band’s increased clout was evidenced by the number of studios used (with mixing accomplished at Prince ’s Paisley Park) and the cast of guests – among them, Kate Person of The B-52’s duetting on ‘Shiny Happy People’, KRS-One adding some hip-hop thrust in ‘Radio Song’, and friends such as John Keane and Peter Holsapple helping keep the sound on a cool pop tip.

Now firmly established as US rock royalty, in Autumn 1992 R.E.M. would unleash the album many count as their defining moment. The legendary Automatic For The People stood alone at a time when many of the other great alternative acts had packed up, filling any void with the likes of ‘Drive’ (referencing both David Essex’s ‘Rock On’ and any of Queen ’s stop-start stadium fillers), the Andy Kaufman homage ‘Man On The Moon’, the oblique ‘The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight’ and the deliberately heavy angst of ‘Everybody Hurts’, a song that managed to appeal to woebegone adolescents and wannabe-young-again oldsters, with John Paul Jones’ orchestral arrangement increasing the emotional overload.

Whatever the formulae, they were all working: sales off the scale, constant airplay, non-stop five-star reviews, bigger and bigger live shows (once the group resumed road work). Not too shabby when one considers the album was conceived during a dark time and dealt with genuinely traumatic reflections on suicide, mortality and the harsh fact that everyone is going to reach the finishing line at some point. Yet more perplexing than Automatic… was 1994’s aptly named Monster , which had plenty of density, though it returned to a more formal band structure. Introduced via the single ‘What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?’ (a song that may have the oddest title in rock history – at least insofar as commercial success goes), its best bits arguably lie in the margins: ‘King Of Comedy’ and ‘I Don’t Sleep, I Dream’, on which Stipe appears to be addressing the nature of galloping celebrity and that tricky relationship between stars and fans.

1996’s New Adventures In Hi-Fi was partly recorded during the Monster tour, and has an air of travelogue about the edges, with at least 10 different studio set-ups. This deliberately disruptive process didn’t hinder the album’s chart action, though. The poignant letter-never-sent song, ‘E-Bow The Letter’ (with Patti Smith adding a vocal), is distinctly offbeat, while ‘Bittersweet Me’ sounds like work in progress – though the single release contained a sterling version of Jimmy Webb’s ‘Wichita Lineman’ as a B-side. In fact, the idiosyncrasy of New Adventures … adds to its longevity as a fan favourite: an album to be played on special occasions, or perhaps to bamboozle those only familiar with R.E.M.’s top-line hits.

Bill Berry had quit the year before 1998’s Up was released (Joey Waronker now sat behind the kit), and Dublin-born producer Pat McCarthy was at the controls. In their continued attempt to maintain a level of difference, R.E.M. loaded Up with a few disorientating pieces, such as ‘Daysleeper’, one of many songs in the group’s canon that reflects their name in some way or other, and the brilliantly gloomy ‘Suspicion’. The Beach Boys -styled ‘At My Most Beautiful’ is the perfect antidote and is many fans’ all-time favourite Stipe love song.

If Up sometimes felt like more of a downer, 2001’s Reveal maintained the Beach Boys feel, nodded at Jimmy Webb again in ‘All The Way To Reno (You’re Gonna Be a Star)’, and harked back their old sound in ‘Imitation Of Life’. Possibly aware of shifting patterns in the outside rock world, R.E.M. bided their time before releasing 2004’s Around the Sun , an album that reflects what happens when 40-something rock stars start to drift apart. There are plenty of virtues to be found (‘Aftermath’ and ‘Leaving New York’ are excellent), but the songwriting tides are starting to conflict.

To that end, the band made a concerted effort with 2008’s Accelerate , taking a step back to examine their sonic core. A good job was accomplished with return-to-form numbers ‘Man-Sized Wreath’ and ‘Supernatural Superserious’, both of which have an element of send-up about them. Produced by Jacknife Lee, the sound was crisp and straightforward, and the group maintained a similar approach on 2011’s Collapse Into Now , where they examine the peaks and troughs of a magnificent career in the knowledge that they are about to bow out – which they did while recording in Berlin’s Meister Halle.

After nigh-on 30 years, R.E.M. left us with a fine goodbye; a lovely disc that sounds like a proper album at a time when, as Stipe himself asked in Interview magazine: “What does an album mean in the year 2011, especially to generations of people for whom the word ‘album’ is an archaic term?… This is what we do,” he continued. “We put together and sequenced the strongest body of work that we could possibly come up within this moment in time and put it onto this record.”

Among the many R.E.M. compilations on offer, Eponymous is a true gem that doesn’t simply cash in on the familiar. Different mixes, the original Hib-Tone version of ‘Radio Free Europe’ and an alternate ‘Gardening At Night’, for instance, make it a must-have for completists. Meanwhile, The Best Of R.E.M.  is a very handy précis containing 16 sparkling tracks, while R.E.M. : Singles Collected compiles all the A- and B-sides from 1983 to 1987. Their biggest-selling collection is, however, In Time: The Best Of R.E.M. 1988-2003 (check this for the bonus disc, Rarities And B-Sides ), while lovers of the 7” single could hunt down the 7IN-83-88 box set. Then again, Complete Rarities: Warner Bros 1988-2011 offers a vast listen, and there are also Unplugged and live discs to pursue.

The group’s early albums, with all their extra adornments, epitomise the charm and freshness of R.E.M. as they grew up in public, and before they became a radical sort of household name; the second phase, where stardom ensues, is equally gratifying.

But those early albums are where it all began, and constitute a terrific body of work. Talk about the passion…

Words: Max Bell

Michael Onufrak

January 14, 2024 at 3:14 am

What happened to Reveal and Accelerate which were pre-orderedlast year for a Sept 22 release?

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R.E.M., one of the most celebrated rock bands in America, had its roots deep in the red Georgia clay. Formed in Athens in 1980, the band’s rise from the college rock scene to international fame was long and steady. Despite its commercial success, R.E.M. maintained a reputation for hard work and an independent, no-compromise approach to its music.

The Early Years

In 1979 Michael Stipe, an art student at the University of Georgia (UGA), befriended Peter Buck, an Emory University dropout who worked at the Wuxtry record store in Athens. At a party the pair met Mike Mills and Bill Berry, friends from Macon who were also students at UGA. Around March 1980 the four formed R.E.M. and began rehearsing in an abandoned Episcopal church, with Stipe handling vocals, Buck on guitar, Mills on bass, and Berry on drums. By the summer of 1980, R.E.M. was playing shows in Athens at Tyrone’s and the 40 Watt Club . Their single “Radio Free Europe” met with critical acclaim in 1981; Village Voice named it one of America’s best-ever singles, and the New York Times placed it among the top ten singles of the year.  Chronic Town , t he band’s five-song extended play (EP), was released by I.R.S. Records in 1982 to solid reviews. The EP was followed by the richly textured and obliquely lyrical Murmur (1983), hailed by Rolling Stone magazine as Album of the Year. Within a year the album had sold 200,000 copies and reached number thirty-six on the Billboard charts .

Over the next four years the band released four albums: the cryptic Reckoning in 1984; the folksy  Fables of the Reconstruction in 1985; Lifes Rich Pageant in 1986, the band’s most successful album up to that point; and Document in 1987, a cynical, more overtly political work that gave R.E.M. another hit single, “The One I Love.” In this time frame the band also released two collections: an album of B-sides and outtakes entitled Dead Letter Office (1987) and a collection of I.R.S. hits named Eponymous (1988).

Rise to Fame

After fulfilling its contract with I.R.S., R.E.M. signed a five-record contract with Warner Brothers for $10 million, a hefty sum for a band identified with the college rock movement. R.E.M.’s first album for Warner Brothers was Green (1988), which the band members called their most positive work thus far. The album garnered ecstatic reviews, with some critics calling R.E.M. the best band in the world. Their next release was Out of Time (1991). While R.E.M. had spent the 1980s touring for each of its albums, the group chose not to do so for Out of Time . Nevertheless, the album became the first record by a rock group to top the Billboard charts in over a year, its success eclipsing even that of Green . Out of Time also became one of R.E.M.’s top-selling records and gave the band the smash hit “Losing My Religion.”

The Mature Work

Considered by some to be the band’s strongest work, the elegiac Automatic for the People was released in 1992—the title taken from the slogan of Athens soul-food restaurant Weaver D’s. This powerfully evocative album, hailed as a masterpiece by critics, had string arrangements by John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin fame and contained the hit single “Everybody Hurts.” After a five-years hiatus, the band decided to go back on the road to support the hard-driving album Monster , released in 1994. While promoting the album, Stipe responded to questions about his sexuality by saying that he had romantic relationships with both men and women—thus outing himself for the first time to the public. This tour proved to be traumatic for the group as drummer Bill Berry suffered from a near-fatal brain aneurysm in Switzerland. After Berry’s recovery the band released New Adventures in Hi-Fi in 1996. Soon after the album’s release, R.E.M. signed another five-record contract with Warner Brothers for an unprecedented $80 million—the highest sum ever paid to a band at the time.

Despite the level of success R.E.M. had reached, Berry decided to leave the band in 1997, explaining that he “was ready to do something else.” In the wake of Berry’s departure, R.E.M. released the fragile, quiet Up in 1998. Up harkened back to Automatic ’s introspection and offered, in lieu of drummer Berry’s work, guest drummers, drum machines, and tape loops.

The band released Reveal in 2001 and Around the Sun in 2004. In 2006 R.E.M. was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame , and the following year the band was selected for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The band released Accelerate in 2008 and its final album, Collapse into Now , in 2011. In September 2011 R.E.M. announced that it had “decided to call it a day as a band.” At the time it disbanded, the group had sold more than 70 million records, cementing its reputation as one of the most successful bands in American history.

Cite this Article

Gordon, Stephanie. "R.E.M." New Georgia Encyclopedia, last modified Sep 19, 2023. https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/r-e-m/

Gordon, S. L. (2003). R.E.M. In New Georgia Encyclopedia . Retrieved Sep 19, 2023, from https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/r-e-m/

Gordon, Stephanie. "R.E.M." New Georgia Encyclopedia , 17 September 2003, https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/r-e-m/.

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Formed in Athens in 1980, R.E.M. (left to right: Mike Mills, Michael Stipe, and Peter Buck) has become one of the most critically honored rock bands in America.

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Reckoning Album Cover

The cover art for Reckoning (1984), the second album by rock group R.E.M, features a painting by folk artist Howard Finster.

Photograph by Bradley Loos

The rock band R.E.M. (left to right: Peter Buck, Bill Berry, Michael Stipe, Mike Mills) was formed in Athens in 1980. The group was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 2006 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.

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Original R.E.M. Lineup Appears Onstage Together for the First Time in 17 Years

R.E.M. fans were in for a surprise as singer Michael Stipe, bassist Mike Mills, guitarist Peter Buck and drummer Bill Berry all appeared onstage together Thursday night (Feb. 8) for the first time since their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2007, though they did not perform.

What brought them all together? The band members were attending a concert featuring actor Michael Shannon and musician Jason Narducy, who have been touring while playing R.E.M.'s Murmur album on a nightly basis.

While the full four R.E.M. members chose not to play together, their presence onstage at the end of the show served as a stamp of approval for Shannon and Narducy's touring tribute.

"Speaking on behalf of Bill and Mike and Peter, we are so fucking thrilled to be here tonight," said singer Michael Stipe to the audience in footage from Scene SC that can be seen below.

The Thursday performance took place at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia, where R.E.M. got their start as a band. That made the homecoming all the sweeter for fans in attendance.

Per fan accounts, it appears as though Berry, Mills and Buck joined Shannon and Narducy at different times during the band's set, but Stipe did not perform, only joining his bandmates with Shannon and Narducy's band onstage at the end of the evening.

This was not the first time that an R.E.M. member has shown up during the tour, with Mike Mills previously joining Shannon and Narducy during a Chicago show last year.

The current Shannon / Narducy tour  celebrating Murmur continues through Feb. 14 at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York.

READ MORE: Michael Stipe Gives Update on Solo Album

R.E.M. Original Lineup History

R.E.M. originally formed in 1980 in Athens, Georgia. The core four of the lineup remained intact through 1997, when drummer Bill Berry left the band. The drummer had previously suffered a brain aneurysm while onstage in Switzerland in March 1995.

The band continued as a trio, utilizing touring and session musicians in Berry's absence for the remainder of their career.

On Sept. 21, 2011, the band announced that they were "calling it a day as a band."

The original four members recorded 10 albums together, with 1996's New Adventures in Hi-Fi being Berry's last record with the band. After Berry's exit, the group recorded five more albums.

As previously stated, Berry joined his bandmates in 2007 onstage for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Since that time, it's been rare that all four members have been seen together in public. They all did appear at the 40 Watt Club in 2022 for an all-star tribute to the band's Chronic Town EP, but during the show only Buck and Mills were seen onstage.

Upon announcing their retirement, R.E.M. have been one of the few acts that actually held true to the declaration. They have not returned to the stage as a four-piece (with then drummer Bill Rieflen) to perform since a 2009 appearance at New York's Carnegie Hall . The trio of Stipe, Mills and Buck did play an impromptu performance of "Losing My Religion" in France in 2016 to celebrate the birthday of their manager Bertis Downs.

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R.E.M. confirm they'll never reunite for "tacky, money-grabbing" reunion tour

Michael Stipe rules out the idea of R.E.M. getting back together, describing it as "wishful thinking"

Michael Stipe has dismissed the prospect of R.E.M. getting back together for a reunion tour, describing the idea as "really tacky and probably money-grabbing".

In conversation with radio station WNYC to discuss his contribution on the new Velvet Underground tribute compilation – which will see the likes of Sharon Van Etten, St.Vincent, Iggy Pop and more performing every song on The Velvet Underground & Nico album – Stipe issued his thoughts over a potential R.E.M. reunion. The frontman disregarded the idea – which was proposed in a Rolling Stone article from 2019 –  as "wishful thinking".

He explains: "We will never reunite. We decided when we split up that that would just be really tacky and probably money-grabbing, which might be the impetus for a lot of bands to get back together.

"We don’t really need that, and I’m really happy that we just have the legacy of the 32 years of work that we have".

As one final nail in the R.E.M. coffin, after the interview, Stipe posted a reprise of the statement the band originally released when they broke up in 2011, which read "To our Fans and Friends: As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished.

“To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening.”

In other news, R.E.M. will be releasing a reissue of their lauded 1996 album New Adventures In Hi-Fi, in celebration of its 25th anniversary, due out October 29.

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Liz works on keeping the Louder sites up to date with the latest news from the world of rock and metal. Prior to joining Louder as a full time staff writer, she completed a Diploma with the National Council for the Training of Journalists and received a First Class Honours Degree in Popular Music Journalism. She enjoys writing about anything from neo-glam rock to stoner, doom and progressive metal, and loves celebrating women in music.

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How to Listen to R.E.M.’s Final Years

There is an argument to make that the end of R.E.M. came on March 1, 1995, in Lausanne, Switzerland.

It was early on, during the tour behind R.E.M.’s latest album, the glammy and heavy Monster . The follow-up to Automatic for the People went No. 1 in the U.S. and several other countries, despite being the band’s first non-masterpiece of the ’90s. Its tour, though massive and stressful for the band, was, at the time, the biggest rock tour in the world. It was a surreal peak for four guys who went from mumbling through Athens house parties to playing fancy Swiss indoor arenas named “Patinoire De Malley” a decade later. It should have been a celebration. Instead, Bill Berry, founding drummer, collapsed and suffered a brain aneurysm while playing Monster ’s “Tongue” onstage. An immediate and successful surgery brought Berry back to health, but the frightening experience was a physical and emotional toll. (Berry later told Mojo that his hospital stay, which canceled the tour’s final European dates, was “a kind of spiritual ordeal.”)

It was also a sign. Berry had expressed dissatisfaction with being in a band as far back as the Out of Time sessions, and the aneurysm confirmed that something had to change. Leaving wasn’t his initial idea. However, by 1997, after sleeping through 1996’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi and not feeling compelled to record new music while his marriage was collapsing, it became the only option. Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, and Mike Mills, his friends and bandmates for over 15 years, were shocked, but they supported Berry’s decision. However, the new trio, previously adamant about breaking up if any of them left, still wanted to play as R.E.M. And having just signed the largest recording contract in history at the time (a reputation-damaging $80 million five-album deal to renew with Warner), the trio was legally obligated to make more music. They decided to keep going with Berry’s blessing.

Instead of a classic, messy rock-and-roll breakup, R.E.M., who spent their entire career upending the classic the rock-and-roll narrative, were left with something unexpected even for them: the loss of an essential member. When MTV asked Stipe in 1997 how R.E.M. would now sound, he replied, “your guess is as good as ours.”

It doesn’t help that New Adventures in Hi-Fi , the final album Berry played on, was widely considered the last “essential” R.E.M. record. Though it has aged well, it is at times too long and scattershot, and was not an overwhelming critical success upon its release. More importantly, it sold fewer records than what had come before. The following releases — 1998’s Up, 2001’s Reveal , 2004’s Around the Sun , 2008’s Accelerate , and 2011’s Collapse Into Now — all experimented with different sounds to uneven results. Stipe took to calling his band “a three-legged dog,” and fans and critics had no reason to disagree.

There were other non-Berry factors contributing to R.E.M.’s struggles, most notably the departures of Scott Litt, R.E.M.’s producer since Document , and longtime co-manager Jefferson Holt. Most notably, Stipe, Buck, and Mills were all pursuing various side projects and living in different cities. The distance between everyone was literal, and it showed. The result is a painfully mixed collection of music living in Berry’s shadow, though many moments were still pleasant. Some were even great. Even would-be classics like “At My Most Beautiful” and “Imitation of Life” were accompanied by a caveat: “good, for post-Berry.”

Writing about Murmur , Seth Colter Walls observed that R.E.M. was never about jangly guitars. Instead, they were about the power of one cohesive ensemble. It’s indie’s greatest lesson:Your technical abilities mean little in comparison with how you connect to your bandmates. Your band is your family, and R.E.M. acted like an actual family.

R.E.M.’s final chapter is the story of how a family publicly tried to carry on after losing one of its own. In that sense, these last albums loosely and unintentionally play out as different stages of real-life grief. The coldness of Up is the sound of shock and denial, with drum machines replacing the human Berry. Reveal , touted as the “happy” record upon its release, is full of aimless and muted anger, but in that Brian Wilson way of feeling helpless and bitter on a beautiful day. Around the Sun , having nothing to say, awkwardly tries to bargain with new ideas: What if we left New York? What if we got rid of all electric guitars? What if we collaborated with Q-Tip?  Accelerate sounds as fun as a midlife crisis. By the time the band released Collapse Into Now in 2011, they finally sounded comfortable as a trio. Then it was all over.

We glorify artists for what they leave behind, but we don’t often praise how some artists carry on after their moment seems to pass. There’s a lot to take away from R.E.M.’s twilight years, in their decision to stay together and journey through vulnerability and sorrow until their amicable end. If you spend enough time with them, these five messy albums make the final years of R.E.M. more interesting and more rewarding.

In honor of R.E.M.’s recently released BBC box set , which features many songs from Up and after, Vulture has put together a sort of supercut of R.E.M.’s post-Berry career. This list is presented to flow as one album with the tracks organized, intentionally, out of time. (Listen to this supercut via Spotify .)

“Living Well Is the Best Revenge”

It’s hard to overstate, after a decade of farting into keyboards, how alive R.E.M. sounds on Accelerate . The first four tracks alone almost justify the idea that this was R.E.M.’s comeback. (If only the rest of the album was as memorable.) They never wrote guitar music this loud or fast, so this return to form is more about energy than sound. But what energy; “Living Well Is the Best Revenge” ranks up with “Radio Free Europe,” “Harborcoat,” and “Begin the Begin” as one of R.E.M.’s most immediate album openers. Furious without being Monster sluggish, the track also features Stipe’s most engaging vocal performance and lyrics since the also overtly political Document . This is not “good for post-Berry.” In the words of the comprehensive and encyclopedic R.E.M. podcast R U Talkin’ R.E.M. RE: ME? , this is just good rock-and-roll music.

“Supernatural Superserious”

In this alternative R.E.M. supercut world, “Supernatural Superserious,” also from Accelerate , would be its first single. The song debuted during the band’s 2007 five-night Dublin residency (later released as 2009’s Live at the Olympia ) and was originally called “Disguised” until Chris Martin called it crap . Like “Living Well Is the Best Revenge,” “Supernatural Superserious” benefits the most from being born onstage; after a decade of writing orchestra ballads under Pat McCarthy’s well-intentioned but dragging production, R.E.M., now working with Bono-approved Garret “Jacknife” Lee, needed to remind the world they were first and foremost a killer live band. They succeeded. The song is freakishly easy to love, especially with Mills’s harmonies (always their secret weapon) and an opening Buck guitar that inspired a new generation to find R.E.M. on Ultimate Guitar.

“Why Not Smile”

The electronic and spacey Up , which turns 20 this month, was R.E.M.’s first post-Berry album, though the initial plan was for him to be on the record; after contemplating his departure for weeks, Berry announced his leave on the first day of rehearsals. The rest of the band, in a state of shock, decided it was best to move forward and finish the album. Though much of the album was already written with an experimental mind-set (in Tony Fletcher’s Perfect Circle , Bucks says the early demos sounded like Elton John as performed by Suicide), “Why Not Smile,” like the rest of Up , took on the gentle sound of that raw confusion and hurt. Stipe is disarming as he whispers “you’ve been sad for a while” over glowing keys and beehive guitars. This mood is hard to sustain across an entire album — and initial reviews were too quick to declare that it all worked — yet within one song, it is striking.

“Mine Smell Like Honey”

Knowing this would be their last album, R.E.M. constructed Collapse Into Now as a loving collage of every past album. For the first time, the band was okay with looking back to recapture the sounds that made them so beloved in the first place. And whereas every track on Accelerate was forced to fit its “we need to ROCK” agenda, tracks like “Mine Smell Like Honey” were comfortable with just being good R.E.M. jangles. (The best Collapse Into Now review came via CokeMachineGlow: “If there’s any band that’s completely earned the right to gracefully knock themselves off, it’s R.E.M. It only took them fourteen years.”)

“I’ve Been High”

In Johnny Black’s Reveal the Story of R.E.M. , a recharged Stipe compared Reveal to Automatic for the People ’s “Nightswimming,” stating both captured “the summer as an eternity and kind of an innocence that’s either kind of desperately clung onto or obviously lost.” While “Nightswimming” is innocent and scared as hell, “I’ve Been High,” a highlight of Reveal ’s more baroque songwriting, sounds numb. The general praise for Up and its successful tour gave the trio a much-needed confidence boost, so much so that they decided to expand “I’ve Been High” across an entire album. If Up was self-conscious, Reveal was too secure in itself. Like U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind , this was R.E.M.’s attempt to return to a “classic sound” that never existed: Out of Time meets Automatic for the People meets synths. And like U2, initial reviews were overwhelmingly positive for a record that sounded more slick than good. “I honestly don’t know if ‘I’ve Been High’ is a real capture-the-moment thing, or someone thinking they’re capturing the moment,” said Buck.

“Airportman”

The underwhelming Up opener becomes a necessary instrumental break. It turns out the Radiohead influence worked both ways.

Maybe more than any other R.E.M. record, Collapse Into Now is concerned with location. “Überlin,” its best song, is not so much a pun on Berlin as it is a tribute to any city or town to call home. It sounds like a more mature “Losing My Religion,” one that’s thankful to know a place instead of mourning the loss of an idea. Berlin is also important to R.E.M. for one specific reason: the city’s famed Hansa Studios was where the band recorded their final session and, with a teary live take of “ Discoverer ,” where they played their final show.

“The Great Beyond”

For his 1999 film Man on the Moon , itself an adaptation of the Automatic for the People highlight of the same name, director Milos Forman asked Stipe to write a new song about Andy Kaufman that was as good as “Man on the Moon.” To Stipe’s credit, he got close.

This is also the time to talk about the great one-offs of post-Berry R.E.M. The rest of the R.E.M.-penned Man on the Moon soundtrack is worth at least one listen. The 1986 demo “ Bad Day ,” finally released in 2003, still holds up even after becoming “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” Their cover of Tommy James’s “ Draggin’ the Line ” for the Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me soundtrack is refreshingly goofy, like “Underneath the Bunker” and “Zither.” And “ We All Go Back to Where We Belong ” is a worthy addition to the essential 2011 R.E.M. collection Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982–2011 . Also, shout-out to Stipe for covering Dashboard Confessional and Joseph Arthur (what Around the Sun should have sounded like).

“At My Most Beautiful”

Someone can write an entire book on the beauty of this song. For now, we can say this: “At My Most Beautiful” is impossibly lovely.

“Imitation of Life”

This whole supercut has been leading to its emotional core, which is Reveal ’s best song and one of R.E.M.’s best songs period. It’s a soaring take on the ambivalence of fame (“no one can see you try” matching with “no one can see you cry” and sounding like a sing-along) without the showiness that drags down the rest of Reveal . (According to David Buckley’s R.E.M. Fiction: An Alternative Biography , Mills said they almost cut the song because it sounded too much like R.E.M.) Rob Sheffield wrote upon its release that this ethereal gem, so delicate it could break in your hands, was their most beautiful song since “Man on the Moon.” He’s not wrong.

“Electron Blue”

As two Accelerate tracks kick things off on a high note, two tracks from Around the Sun , the hardest R.E.M. album to love, closes this supercut on a somber, reflective mood, because there’s nothing more somber than mid-tempo rock. “We had a great record on our hands before we spent six months playing with it,” Buck told Q , hinting that there is decent songwriting hiding under all the early-aughts rock production. And yes, every song, including the Q-Tip track, is the same tempo. At its best, like on “Electron Blue,” Around the Sun plays up the band’s newly found standards influence as a legacy act. (They had just put out their massive In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988–2003 collection and were too comfortable as a global touring force to prove anything new in the studio.) There’s a freaky Burt Bacharach cover of “Electron Blue” that needs to exist, and that’s the best thing you can say about Around the Sun .

“The Ascent of Man”

Because this is R.E.M., you have to end every album on a longing note. “The Ascent of Man” faithfully fulfills the role as it dribbles on like Bob Dylan writing “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” but about taking a nap. (Berry’s best contribution as a songwriter: knowing when to cut songs short.) At least Stipe sounds fantastic; his maturing voice is the best part about Around the Sun , and the “yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah” chorus proves again how great R.E.M. can be when their songs are about everything and nothing at the same time. It seemed that R.E.M. read all the bad reviews for Around the Sun, because they soon returned to guitars on the short and lean Accelerate . For now though, thanks to this supercut, you can enjoy the best of what would have been, what could have been, and what is a brilliant career.

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• July 30, 1995 Setlist

R.E.M. Setlist at Milton Keynes National Bowl, Milton Keynes, England

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• What's the Frequency, Kenneth? Play Video
• Crush With Eyeliner Play Video
• Drive Play Video
• Turn You Inside-Out Play Video
• Try Not to Breathe Play Video
• I Took Your Name Play Video
• Undertow Play Video
• Bang and Blame Play Video
• I Don't Sleep, I Dream Play Video
• Strange Currencies Play Video
• Revolution Play Video
• Tongue Play Video
• Man on the Moon Play Video
• Country Feedback Play Video
• Half a World Away Play Video
• Losing My Religion Play Video
• Pop Song 89 Play Video
• Finest Worksong Play Video
• Get Up Play Video
• Star 69 Play Video
• Let Me In Play Video
• Everybody Hurts Play Video
• Fall on Me Play Video
• Departure Play Video
• It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) Play Video

Note: This show was broadcast on the radio worldwide.

Edits and Comments

14 activities (last edit by allenz , 30 Jan 2024, 06:41 Etc/UTC )

Songs on Albums

• Bang and Blame
• Crush With Eyeliner
• I Don't Sleep, I Dream
• I Took Your Name
• Strange Currencies
• What's the Frequency, Kenneth?
• Everybody Hurts
• Man on the Moon
• Try Not to Breathe
• Pop Song 89
• Turn You Inside-Out
• Country Feedback
• Half a World Away
• Losing My Religion
• Finest Worksong
• It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

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R.E.M. Gig Timeline

• Jul 27 1995 Murrayfield Stadium Edinburgh, Scotland Add time Add time
• Jul 29 1995 Milton Keynes National Bowl Milton Keynes, England Add time Add time
• Jul 30 1995 Milton Keynes National Bowl This Setlist Milton Keynes, England Add time Add time
• Aug 01 1995 Waldbühne Berlin, Germany Add time Add time
• Aug 03 1995 Oslo Spektrum Oslo, Norway Add time Add time

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