R.e.m

My favourite band, kept the quality so high throughout. Even their later albums (Around the Sun excepted) have their moments.
Favourite tracks off the top of my head (no order):
Kenneth, Perfect Circle, Gardening at Night, Country Feedback, Fall on Me, Nightswimming, Driver 8, So. Central Rain, Daysleeper … too many really.

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Made lots of very good albums over a long period of time although they never quite made a full-on masterpiece imo (although Murmur comes close). They dipped a bit after New Adventures. Up and Reveal aren’t in the same league as everything before but even they’re decent. Cba with anything after that (although I have heard Accelerate, it’s ok but it’s not my favourite album).

I was probably 9 or 10 when I first heard them through Reveal, as my dad had it on cassette. I remember it being played in car journeys on holidays. It’s always been a nostalgic softspot for me even though I know it’s not their best work.

My dad’s one of those ‘I got into them during Green’ fans and genuinely thinks Out of Time is one of their best albums, but I guess that’s what most R.E.M. fans were like before the internet existed.

Automatic is their masterpiece.

‘Fall On Me’ was probably the first ‘proper’ song I really fell in love with as a kid when my dad had their first greatest hits compilation. Remember listening to it on repeat for ages and still love it to this day.

green did see a huge influx of new fans & they went from smaller venues to arena’s in the UK,
there was a big boom with the previous album, document, as well thanks to the popularity of the singles on that - it’s the end of the world etc, finest worksong, the one i love

that green world tour though, incredible stuff
was at poly at the times & hadn’t seen them before, totally blew me away

favourites for me are the more plaintive songs, the likes of
camera, perfect circle, swan swan h, fall on me, nightswimming, country feedback

This

I’m just going to say it - I like Shiny Happy People

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Nothing wrong with Shiny Happy People, Out of Time would be less of an album without it.

Never understood the hatred for that song.

It’s like the Will Smith vehicle Wild Wild West - it has a reputation for being awful despite the fact that it’s really good.

Facts:

39 live songs comp is perfection.
Monster is a lot of fun and underrated.
They kept Writing good songs til the end…eg Discoverer.
Up is Like Marmite, but anyone who ‘hates’ it is narrow-minded. Hope is one of the best things they ever did.
It is hard to look beyond Murmur, Automatic and New Adventures as their best albums. Quite different but all perfection sustained in album length.
Fall On Me… pop genius plus not play the game art rockers… To a slightly lesser extent… Imitation of Life really is like sucking on cinnamon and dancing around drunk.
I am very fond of Harborcoat.
They did really good earnest songs too… Daysleeper… New Test Leper… Cuyahoga…
For several years my favourite was Be Mine. Such a nothing chorus on paper but his vocal imbues it with so much more.

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I love the version of Country Feedback on Road Movie, the film of their Monster tour. Sensational.

Recent convert here too - like in the last couple of months, after finding Mrs JH’s full back catalogue in the garage. So far, by far my favourite bits, and this is far from controversial, are the mega-hits, which have aged incredibly well.

There is a really funny Family Guy style sketch to be made though, of the guys in the studio, Stipe laying down some emotional lyrics then whatshisname barrelling in on every song giving it “WOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAH-OOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAH”.

I like his BVs, sure, but man does he steam in on every song with the same thing.

Love every album up and including New Adventures - they were excellent at reinventing themselves without turning shit.

Fave albums, Life’s Rich Pageant, Reckoning, Green and New Adventures.

Fave songs, We Walk, So. Central Rain, Fall on Me, World Leader Pretend, Hairshirt, Half a World Away, Country Feedback, Nightswimming, Let Me In, Strange Currencies, E-Bow The Letter

first 4 albums are the best. thereafter is less essential but still some good stuff, particularly on Automatic for the People obv

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My dad doesn’t really know their IRS albums (although he bought Document on CD years later) which I always thought was a bit odd considering he’s a big fan. Or New Adventures in Hi-Fi for that matter.

I imagine that’s the same for a lot of R.E.M. fans of that time since they were relatively unheard of before 87/88.

The live versions of the deluxe edition of Murmur.

Wow.

Everything i want a band to sound like.

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Loved them since Out Of Time entered my tiny musical stratosphere, aged 10 or 11. Their last few records were a distinct low-point in their long, long career but basically everything up to and including Reveal is golden as far as I’m concerned.
Favourites would be Murmur, Life’s Rich Pageant, Automatic For The People and New Adventures in Hi-Fi.
I’d argue that Murmur could easily stand as the finest debut album ever recorded.

Even without my Stipe bald cap on I would find it hard to disagree. Particularly taking into account music in 1983 America (well worth reading It Crawled From The South for context) Murmur was just wholesomely different. And that it stands up to scrutiny today is quite some legacy.

Even by today’s music it sounds fresh and brand new. Stipe’s vocals are so…stretched and constant, and the guitars so punchy, it’s pretty hard to believe it’s nearly 35 years old.

I don’t even like R.E.M, really, but they just strike me as, over those first two records, somehow being the perfect guitar band. It’s weird. I’m sure that’s not what they were going for. It’s a great pop record. A great nu-wave record. A great punk record. You might consider it none of those things, idk. I think it’s an astonishing piece of work. Bar one song, Perfect Circle, it’s as near as i’ve heard to a perfect album.