It’s very easy (I find) to forget just how good R.E.M were a few years ago. I heard The Great Beyond for the first time in ages today. It’s perfect R.E.M. Apparently, it was their highest chart placign single in the UK as well.
Video in the comments.
Their second Andy Kaufman referencing song (Man On The Moon being the other)
I first heard it at a concert before it was released. I liked it quite a bit, the soundtrack album much less so, typically of the post Bill Berry era for me.
A great song. My fav REM will always be the first three albums but this is fab too.
I would probably go:
1. Automatic for the People
2. Murmur
3. Life’s Rich Pageant
They are a funny lot, R.E.M. albums; I bought Chronic Town and then Murmur, my first long-format encounter with them, and liked what I heard. Then I enjoyed the next two or three LPs, then really enjoyed the next five or six LPs, but then for some reason realised that they’d become their own cover band, and I haven’t heard anything at all since Up, which got played once. So they remain a 20th Century band for me!
They made 15 albums which can be divided into 3 eras.
Indie/IRS era:
Murmur
Reckoning
Fables of the Reconstruction
Lifes rich Pageant
Document
Major Label era starts:
Green
Out of Time
Automatic for the People
Monster
New Adventures in HiFi
Post Bill Berry era:
Up
Reveal
Around the Sun
Accelerate
Collapse into Now
Plenty to like in first 2, but much less so in the 3rd.
Saw them 5 times I think, the pick being the Green tour when they were still playing small venues, at least in Europe.
Regarding the OP, I don’t think they have been forgotten at all, at least not in my house. A reunion tour would make big bucks. I may be wrong though.
Or big Peters, as the band might call them.
Couldn’t agree more vulpes. Lost me at Monster.
Yes, Monster was where I started to lose touch as well. Not keen on much at all post Berry, although there is a very occasional gem to be found.
For nearly a decade laid claim to being the best band around. Should have packed it in at least three albums earlier than they eventually did.
I heard Bad Day the other day – that made it a good day.
Most people will switch off when I talk about REM.
The album I place at number one is Monster, and Automatic For The People struggles to make the Top 7 in my list (but still sits above Out Of Time)
Yikes!
Agreed @dai.
I never recovered my love for REM after hearing Monster.
I would like New Adventures In HiFi more if it hasn’t followed Monster as it’s an album closer to the Document/Green mix of electric and acoustic and a jumble of all their influences and ideas. But it struggles to get out from under the shadow cast by Monster.
So two eras of REM for me. Everything up to and including Automatic For The People and everything after.
New Adventures nearly made no. 3 in my favourites.
REM – the soundtrack to my late adolescence-early adulthood / possibly (?)Adult-lescence.
There are fabulous tunes in every record, but I must confess I have always been someone who picks a footy team and sticks with them in thick and thin, other opinions available. There are parallels as the 1990s-2000s wore on and I won’t pretend there weren’t some thin times with this group. But whatver HMV was charging for their CDs I almost always felt I got my money’s worth from them.
This track is one that never appears on their studio records – it’s not in the actual canon of REM cds but finds a home on 1999’s Man in the Moon soundtrack, and later on the ‘In Time’ mopping up comp (along with the previously mentioned, less vaunted, tunes Bad Day and Animal).
The thread, in addition to re-acquainting me with Great Beyond, reminded me that their nominal MOTM soundtrack, which I bought & own but don’t play also contains this pretty curio.
That’s weird Matt, I don’t know anyone who changes what football team they support unless of course they are pre- puberty.
Does that actually happen?
Great bands lose the keys to the kingdom at some point and don’t get them back. The drummer leaves, life gets in the way, they fail to take enough risks. This single is just a bit too much Stipe, a bit clumpy. Not bad but compared to their best work it’s a bit lacking, unsurprising.
They will reform – with the original lineup – and headline Glastonbury in the next few years.
Bet you 25 p.
There was a full stage reunion a week or so ago, to the audience’s delirious delight:
https://www.uncut.co.uk/news/watch-r-e-m-reunite-to-play-pretty-persuasion-149089/
Wow! Did Michael Stipe just get seriously upstaged?
Bit of a mess really. The other band were playing and REM guys joined them one by one. They did a proper one song reunion last year
For those missing new REM music, this might fit the bill (berry). The album ‘Significance’ is very good indeed.
Ooh that’s good. They’re like a proper band with real guitars ‘n’ stuff, and a Michael Stipe soundy-likey. Will give the whole album a listen.
Monster was a bit of a let down, athough – if I had one – “..Kenneth” would be near the top of favourite REM songs list.
I bailed after Up, which was REM do Kraftwerk and the Beach Boys. What’s not to like?
I really liked Sad Professor off Up.
Accelerate and Collapse into Now are both decent albums which would have made more sense if they had been released after New Adventures. There’s an excellent interview (below) in which the band addresses again the possibility of a full-scale reunion (still pretty much zero). What comes across is what nice guys all four of them are and how unassumingly they have slipped out of the limelight. A proper reunion does seem unlikely but it would make a lot of people very happy.
Nice one. I’m now going to listen to “Murmur.”
I think this was the first song Stype ever wrote. Not bad for a first attempt.
He wrote the words
Clive wanders of sheepishly muttering “The shame, the shame”. We’ll probably never see him again ….,
Don’t look at me I’m disgusting
Could we agree on he wrote the song words? Then everyone is happy.
I think he probably wrote nearly all the words for everything they recorded. The other guys wrote the tunes. Bill Berry supplied the tunes for some of their biggest hits. e.g. Everybody Hurts, Man on the Moon, hence losing him was not just about drumming
You know what? I think they were a great band. All of the albums are basically good, with some excellent ones. The constant ‘not as good after xyz thing’ discussion takes away a lot of the fun. By all means, dislike them, but… they were REM, ffs..!
I find them generally rather boring and uninvolving. But I am listening to ‘Up’ right now, and I quite like its subdued lack of the ‘in-your-faceness’ of some of their overplayed megahits.
I absolutely love REM – the BBC box has been getting a lot of plays for the last few months, as has the Up re-issue.
Like many above, I’m (relatively) not mad keen on Monster, though WTF Kenneth and Crush with eyeliner would both make my top 20, if not top 10.
New Adventures has grown on me over the years – I always felt there was just too much of it to digest at once. Up though, is just fantastic and hangs together well as an album. Lotus is just excellent. Reveal has Reno and Imitation of Life – both top drawer.
Put it this way, I like all of the songs mentioned above better than anything on Automatic or Out of Time.
I really enjoyed the REM at Later… show, much more than the contemperaneous album(s).
Up is better than Murmur. Fight me.
Outside! Now!
I have done this previously, but I am here to defend Around The Sun. I love a lot of REM, but this is my favourite album of theirs. (It certainly has my most listened to track of theirs in ‘Make It All Okay’, which I think is just gorgeous).
I will concede it tails off & could have probably been trimmed by two songs, but when it soars it soars. It is well worth a re listen
A shout out for New Adventures In HiFi for having a strong core too. An album which has E-Bow The Letter, Leave & Departure back to back is impressive.
Around the Sun for me is just so dreary and one dimensional. They seemed to be short of ideas musically. I can listen to one or two tracks in isolation but the album is a slog for me
I love that we can have such differing views of the same album. Me & my brother have this with pretty much every band we share a love for. If we listed our favourite tracks they would be so wildly different! It’s what makes music great isn’t it?!
I have managed to convert one person to this album & I will continue to plug away 🙂 I’ve had it on this morning & the end of Leaving New York with the different vocal lines is just wonderful to my ears.
I’ve argued long and passionately on here in favour of this album. It has some of their most beautiful and affecting songs in my opinion.
me & you against the wor(l)d @BlackType! We can’t help being right!
I had it a lot yesterday & agree. There are some really affecting songs on here & his voice is beautifully warm & superbly produced. I Wanted To Be Wrong, Leaving New York & Make It All Okay would all trouble my top 5 REM tracks. (E-Bow & Orange Crush are the others)
To be fair I really like Leaving New York and, for me, a number of the other tracks come across better on the live album from the tour that followed the ATS release
https://www.discogs.com/master/57928-REM-Live?srsltid=AfmBOor47J0nzPZ4pL0-j1Clywd-0naD5G24UtpaWLXzQ6Hb9K9QM1br
On the album everything is just too long and samey sounding
I’ve always thought that too @dai, probably because when played live the songs have a much fuller band sound rather than the electronic bells and whistles with which they were recorded.
I always had a real soft spot for Reveal, as well as the early albums (everything up to Green) obviously. It was one of 10 CDs I had with a Discman on a trip around the USA, so will be eternally connected in my mind to views through the windows of Greyhound buses.
Start your own REM thread. Some topics:
1. They were quite good, weren’t they?
2. They weren’t quite as good after Bill Berry left.
3. It was all downhill from Murmur.
4. One of their fifteen studio albums is criminally under- over-rated.
5. They should/shouldn’t get back together (though I would be first in line for tickets/want to preserve intact my memories).
1 yes
2 yes
3 no
4 yes
5 shouldn’t (Stipe said it ain’t going to happen)
Call me shallow, but over the years I’ve found that In Time is all the R.E.M. I need. One of the greatest greatest hits.
That’s shallow