R.E.M.

R.E.M. did not revolutionize anything in the history of rock, but they established themselves as the foremost authors (in an artistic/intellectual sense) of the modern ballad form, managing to maintain an exceptionally high standard of quality over the years. There is perhaps no other band in the world that has produced music of this level for so many years. (Even harder to find is a band whose lineup has remained stable for so long). It is no coincidence that, unlike cult groups whose success lasted only a few years, R.E.M. never represented anything particular sociologically (their audience has always been primarily college students and young urban professionals), nor did they create a genre that defined an era. The history of rock without the Ramones would not be the same, while the history of rock without R.E.M. would be the same. Yet R.E.M. remained at the crest of the wave, indifferent to the turbulences tearing through the vast ocean of rock music.

R.E.M. coined existential folk at its finest. Both the random ramblings of their early years and the hypocritical earnestness of their later period have little to do with the core of their art, which is primarily an intelligent recovery of America�s �roots� (both moral and musical) according to an aesthetic that is fundamentally conservative and revisionist. Perhaps the quintessence of their message lies rather in the paradoxical nature of their guitar work, which manages to fuse raga and jingle-jangle�that is, millennial transcendence and adolescent enthusiasm�into a spirit that perfectly reflects the alienated and neurotic mood of the era.

R.E.M. was formed in Athens in 1980 by Peter Buck (guitar), Michael Stipe (vocals), Bill Berry (drums), and Mike Mills (bass). Under the guidance of Peter Holsapple and Mitch Easter, leaders of the Southeastern alternative scene, the band recorded the single Radio Free Europe (1981). Its epic, choral-like chorus with overlapping voices, ennobled by Peter Buck�s Byrds-style Rickenbacker arpeggios, offered a kind of guitar boogie suspended between wakefulness and sleep, in which the epic and visionary accents of Patti Smith were still evident. At the same time, the harmony was arranged in a far more intricate manner, with constant tempo changes and even occasional dissonances.

The EP Chronic Town (IRS, 1982) continued along that path with a handful of songs that broke traditional codes without ever being truly revolutionary: 1,000,000 sounded like a limping punk-rock, marrying grit with poetry; Carnival Of Sorts was a soft Byrds-like cantilena immersed in a sinister atmosphere of suspense; Wolves was a driving psychedelic carousel; and above all dominated the surreal raga-rock of Gardening At Night. With the incessant rhythm of a bright jingle-jangle and the fluid, plaintive vocal lines, R.E.M. created a type of song that was simultaneously trance-like and enlivened by melodic progressions worthy of liturgical hymnody and psychedelic ecstasy.

The music of their first album, Murmur (IRS, 1983), was sensational because it managed to fuse classical poise with the spirit of the times. On one hand, there were the vocal and guitar harmonies of folk-rock, with their crystalline clarity and na�ve approach; on the other, there was the oppressive weight of angst crushing alienated urban youth. Over Buck�s delicate filigree, the characteristic offbeat pulse, and a monotonous power-pop cadence, the band was able to stretch out afflicted, agonizing melodies. Whispered through Michael Stipe�s languid, sandy tenor, these melodies would suddenly soar into triumphant choruses. The singer�s Middle Eastern-like vocal runs, extending through very long vowels, evoked more the calls of muezzins than the roar of rockers.
It is precisely on an epic lament and an Eastern cadence that Pilgrimage opens, featuring a typical crescendo of contrapuntal voices echoing across registers, with characteristic tempo shifts that lead into a psychedelic march. The duality of their sound is also evident in Moral Kiosk, whose vocal interweavings occupy a register somewhere between yodeling, honky-tonk, and Tibetan monks, and whose rhythm alternates between danceable phases, a Native American-like dance, and a breakneck gallop. In 9-9, the same vocal hybrids appear, even more visionary, verging on the mantra, along with a similar taste for convoluted, almost funk-like rhythms.
Each song is different from the next, yet the vocabulary they use belongs to the same dialect: Talk About The Passion and Shaking Through fully exploit the magic of jingle-jangle and the eccentricities of the psychedelic era; Laughing adds the charm of Indian-like melodies; Perfect Circle experiments with classical-style harmony; Sitting Still retreats into the classic melodic progression of power-pop; and Catapult delivers a passionate country-rock ballad. The rest of R.E.M.�s career would only deepen these styles.
Following the example of Talking Heads, R.E.M. shifted the emphasis in rock music from the �hero� (singer or guitarist) to group dynamics. On their records, the drums, in particular, play a more active role, constantly moving across all fronts. Buck, for his part, invents a �full� guitar style, pushing jingle-jangle and wall-of-sound extremes, while Stipe�s vocal harmonies redefine the gospel concept of �call and response.� Small cacophonies and eccentric sounds appear here and there. The lyrics, which caused a stir for being unintelligible, added only a touch of mystery to the band�s r�sum�too intelligent to indulge in stories of teenage romance. Like the best film-noirs, the underlying theme of all the tracks seems to be that of inescapable fate. The tone is that of an indecipherable oracle, reflecting both the absence of a universal voice and an intimate need for redemption.

Their second album, Reckoning (IRS, 1984), lost the arcane charm of those lyrics and, having to rely solely on the music, seemed like a retreat. In reality, it was more studied in its arrangements because that was the direction the band would always follow. And the harmonies, still eclectic and epic, had become more human because Stipe had little in common with the rebels of his generation and instead possessed a complex, literate, philosophical personality. The result was a confused, overly rock-oriented album, which at times strayed from the main path of folk-rock to venture into the less congenial territory of the Southern boogie from ten years earlier. The tracks (the Dire Straits-style blues-rock of Harborcoat, the fluid highway music of South Central Rain, the dramatic ballad Pretty Persuasion, the neurotic Velvet Underground-like raga of Time After Time, the fatalistic Dylan-esque speech of Second Guessing, the tender Camera, the solemn march of Letter Never Sent) do not have the same force and originality as the previous album. The rustic, spontaneous tones of this country-soul, especially Rockville, halfway between ragtime, boogie, and gospel, made them reminiscent of The Band. Willingly or not, R.E.M. ended up being identified as the standard-bearers of the �grassroots� renaissance that relegated punk-rock to the background. Many songs, however, rely on the psychedelic-style crescendos the band was digesting to make it their trademark.

Despite the usual bursts of energy, R.E.M. seemed in crisis, though perhaps it was merely a transition from alternative to mainstream: like reconstructing dignity in a suit and tie. Fables Of Reconstruction (IRS, 1985) completely eliminates eccentricities, further strengthens the arrangements (with strings and saxophone), and attempts to approach the English folk ballad. However, the album represents the lowest point of their trajectory: despite the country-soul of Driver 8 and the funky-boogie of Can't Get There From Here (the only track with the vocal harmonies of old), the mournful, nostalgic impressionism of their songs�more psychedelic, like Feeling Gravity's Pull, or more transcendent, like Maps And Legends�becomes self-indulgent. As with the previous album, there is much �style,� but the breakthrough song is missing.

The transition period ends with Life's Rich Pageant (IRS, 1986), an album tainted by the populist fever sweeping the rock nation. From the beginning, R.E.M., with their cryptic epics, had personified the positive aspirations of the new generation, in contrast to the depressed pessimism that had been the punk slogan. Now R.E.M. concretizes their optimism with a collection of songs addressing contemporary social and political themes, even though their vision of international events remains highly romanticized.
The vibrant funky-boogies of Just A Touch and Begin The Begin, the populist Mellencamp-like anthems of These Days and I Believe, and the country-soul elegy of Flowers Of Guatemala serve as the manifestos of this new commitment, finding lyrical expression in Fall On Me, one of their tenderest and simplest melodies (though borrowed from Love Is All Around by The Troggs), and Cuyahoga, a sorrowful, nostalgia-laden ballad. The epic enthusiasm of Hyena (with a touch of Radio Free Europe) embodies the most mainstream optimism, the emotional syntax of Reaganism, while the album simply experiments with the grittier AOR chart productions. Having reached the nadir of decay with the Fables, R.E.M. built themselves a new, more lucrative career. Style increases, but the equation remains unchanged: R.E.M. teaches how to construct a historic hit, yet cannot actually create one.

Yet it is precisely from that direct, deafening sound that the verve of Document (IRS, 1987) emerges, and from that verve in turn come the FM station classics that Buck and Stipe had stubbornly sought from the start: The One I Love, a phenomenal, irresistibly catchy chorus, and This Is The End Of The World, an apocalyptic-vaudeville romp echoing Bob Dylan�s Subterranean Homesick Blues and Chuck Berry�s Too Much Monkey Business; as well as Finest Worksong, a martial rock and roll with a spine-tingling chorus, the ideal revolutionary anthem. To a more unusual comic register belong Exhuming McCarthy, a satirical gag worthy of The Fugs, and King Of Birds, with raga plucking and a western march. This time, the pattern is reversed: the album is not as cohesive as its predecessors, but some of the songs elevate it to classic status. R.E.M. finally admits, first and foremost to themselves, that they are a singles band, not an album band. And the crowds reward them with their first gold record. It is with this album that R.E.M. steps out of the narrow college circuit and becomes an international star.
After the collection of rarities Dead Letter Office (IRS, 1987), a disc of little substance, Green (Warner Bros, 1988) consolidated that triumphant sound with Stand, a melodic carousel worthy of The One I Love, I Remember California, spectral and psychedelic, Turn You Inside Out, a fervent rock and roll worthy of Finest Worksong, Orange Crush, a hypnotic protest song continuing the saga of End Of The World, the romantic You Are The Everything, and Pop Song 89, an electric ballad in the style of The Doors. Both albums of their maturity follow the same template of lighthearted songs, political ballads, rock and roll, and novelty tracks. Green is practically a poor copy of its predecessor, yet even this poor copy contains at least a couple of classics (Stand and Orange Crush).

The decade thus closes triumphantly from the singles� standpoint, somewhat less so from the perspective of the albums. R.E.M. experimented with vocals, arrangements, rhythm, and ultimately the song form itself, in a subtle manner that remained easy to listen to. Their hits are built on an apparently innocent harmonic structure (a simple chorus and basic rhythm) gradually deformed by guitar and vocals, upon which a psychedelic melodic "hook" suddenly soars. Songs like Radio Free Europe, South Central Rain, Fall On Me, The One I Love, and Stand represent milestones of rock formalism.

The band also performed as Hindu Love Gods, releasing Hindu Love Gods (Reprise, 1990).

The first album of the new decade, Out Of Time (Warner Bros, 1991), is also the calmest and most reflective of their career, the most marked by rural moods (mandolins, steel guitars, Hammond organs, and female backing vocals abound) and the most heavily arranged (keyboards, strings, and brass). Once again (R.E.M. had learned the lesson), a handful of unrelated songs rise above the others, justify the album�s existence, and enter the repertoire: Radio Song, a James Brown-style funky soul; Shiny Happy People, a canonical repetitive folk-rock litany in the vein of Stand; and Losing My Religion, the pinnacle of their chronic melancholy and of the entire album (related, incidentally, to The Police�s Every Breath I Take).
Yet too many tracks sink into mediocrity, and only Half A World Away, a country ballad with a baroque-psychedelic arrangement of harpsichord, mandolin, organ, and string section, offers a glimmer of evolution.
Out Of Time is nevertheless their first album to reach number one on the sales charts.
Buck�s guitar often remains in the background compared to keyboards, strings, and brass (reminiscent at times of The Beatles� Penny Lane, The Moody Blues, and The Love of Forever Changes); the vocal harmonies are more elaborate (somewhat like the late Beach Boys), partly because Stipe no longer simply sings but creates mosaics of syllables, verses, and words that suddenly�and almost subconsciously�release the phrase that gives the song its identity.

In a sense, R.E.M. understood the simple formula for restructuring old blues, folk, and country tropes into modern pop songs, something that was originally spontaneous. Now they merely apply it mechanically, fully aware of doing so. What is missing is the spiritual component of the operation, which once filled the heart before it reached the ears.

Automatic For The People (Warner Bros, 1992) confirms a year later the latent crisis, taking inspiration precisely from the weaker songs of the previous work, accentuating orchestral arrangements and the elegiac mood. R.E.M. often changed personality from one album to the next, and Automatic perhaps represents the peak of this schizophrenia. Suddenly, Stipe immerses himself in a dark and fatalistic atmosphere, halfway between a heroin addict�s nightmare and the last note of a suicide. Drive manages to rise into one of their epic psalms, perhaps the most moving of their career, underlined by orchestra and accordion. Buck delivers one of his masterpieces of �understatement� and restraint, limiting himself to strumming the motif on acoustic guitar.
Obsessed with the theme of death, the album ruminates moods without offering solutions. Drive passes the torch to Everybody Hurts, an even more introspective meditation, sung in a high, soulful, vibrant register (with another riff borrowed from The Troggs), which in turn passes it to the tender dedication of Man On The Moon (where the tragic fate of comedian Andy Kaufman becomes a metaphysical allegory), finally with a vintage flourish. That torch ends with Find The River, at the end of the album, a subdued existential lament echoing many nostalgic choruses of singer-songwriters like Gordon Lightfoot and John Denver.
The arrangements are intricate without being mannered, as shown by the baroque prelude for organ and cello in Sweetness Follows, the airy folk-rock ballad of Try Not To Breathe, and the sorrowful piano-and-orchestra fantasy of Nightswimming, which seem like acoustic songs but actually conceal a profusion of background sounds. The only remnants of rock and roll appear in Ignoreland, the politically oriented track, and in The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite, surprisingly jovial for this album�yet both would have been minor tracks even on previous albums. The album suffers from a rather monotonous program and a soporific tone, or, if you prefer, from the lack of tracks that awaken the listener from the daze into which Stipe�s mood wants�and manages�to plunge them. While credit is due to the band for reaching a highly sophisticated level of �storytelling,� the fact remains that many of these songs are no more original or brilliant than countless light-pop ballads.
Considered by many to be R.E.M.�s masterpiece, Automatic feels more a senescent and self-indulgent album, valued more as a work of sophisticated �pop� than as an innovative �rock� work.

Monster (Warner Bros, 1994) manages to pull the band out of the sentimental and baroque quicksands with a suddenly loud and tearing sound (some of the material comes from tracks discarded from the previous album for being too rock and roll for Automatic For The People). While previous albums had marked the attainment of a somewhat senile serenity with the world and life, Monster exposes the loss of any certainty, the surrender to the madness of fate, the imprisonment within the grip of neurosis and violence that strangles society.
Stipe�s chorus, repeated to nausea, and Buck�s discreetly reverberated distortions (reminiscent of the Debris) propel the hit of the moment, What's The Frequency Kenneth (one of their masterpieces), but R.E.M. perhaps have never been as grim and decadent (and epic) as in Crush With Eyeliner, sung behind a filter and under a heap of distortions to the pace of a slowed boogie in a funeral march. From there on, boogie moves and bursts of distortion infest the entire album, up to I Took Your Name. Sinister, cruel, and sensual, the record luxuriates in its depressed mood: the Talking Heads-style Native American beat driving I Don't Sleep I Dream is softened by a Marvin Gaye-inspired soulful wail; the Police-style reggae chords in Bang And Blame are choked in a vibrant Nirvana-esque chorus. Self-references are not lacking: from the epic vigor of End Of The World resurrected in Star 69 to the heartfelt crooning of Everybody Hurts cloned for Strange Currencies.
In the end, it is their best album of the last decade. Not a compliment�it�s a fact.

New Adventures In Hi-Fi (Warner Bros, 1996), recorded largely between concerts, sounds mostly like a collection of outtakes and rehearsals. The acid-rock of Undertow, the rock and roll of Wake Up Bomb, the folk-rock of New Test Leper, the tender ballad Leave, the Dylan-inspired ode Departure (with a riff borrowed from Billy Squier�s Everybody Wants You), the southern-rock of Binky The Doormat (halfway between CCR and ZZ Top) are tributes to the colorful styles of their past albums, from the cryptic folk-rock of their early days to the apocalyptic garage-rock of Monster. The experiments (Patti Smith inspiring E-Bow The Letter and the Christian Bob Dylan inspiring New Test Leper) remain, as always, on the plane of atmospheric ballads. In this sense, the real star is former bassist Mike Mills, now in the role of keyboardist: he paints the opening of How The West Was Won, the lead track.
The album is simultaneously encyclopedic regarding popular music and the career of R.E.M. However, as a summation, it fails spectacularly: it seems to subtract more than it adds, exposing the limits of an art of imitation that transcended stereotypes when it embraced the fatalistic/epic drive, but sinks into monotony when it settles into this domestic/everyday tone.

Berry quit REM due to health reasons.

Peter Buck joined the experimental ensemble Tuatara for Breaking the Ethers (1997) and remained until Shamanic Nights (2016), and joined the pop super-group Minus 5 for Old Liquidator (1995) and remained until Stroke Manor (2019).

Stipe, Bucks and Mills mostly dispense with conventional rock percussion on Up (Warner, 1998), the album recorded after the departure of their drummer. The shrunk line-up forced them to be more experimental than ever, but their obsession remains the "moody pop ballad", a genre that they virtually invented and then refined with paranoid determination. The results are comic: At My Most Beautiful and Parakeet invoke the late Beach Boys; Hope, the catchiest tune here, sounds like a synth-pop version of Leonard Cohen's Suzanne; You're In The Air harks back to acid-rock and The Apologist is another Patti Smith-influenced ode. Airportman is supposed to be the manifesto for the new-born band, but ends up sounding like Brian Eno and late Pink Floyd at a cocktail party. Only Daysleeper and Lotus recall the REM sound of past days. There is no standout track, no memorable refrain. What saved even inferior REM albums was the atmosphere, the mood, the existential feeling. Up fails on all fronts.

Reveal (Warner Bros, 2001) is the least "innovative" of all REM albums because it merely dresses up with electronic sounds the classic R.E.M. sound. It is also the most disappointing of all REM albums because, by doing that, the trio reduced the impact of the melodies. REM's strength has always been their minimal arrangements for maximum melodic impact (REM best songs are carefully sculpted with only the most essential sounds). Here with the almost symphonic The Lifting, Beachball, Summer Turns To High and She Just Wants To Be what you have is the opposite equation: maximum bombast for minimum impact. This is also the least coherent and cohesive of REM albums, running the gamut from lame litanies to futuristic lieder (I've Been High, Saturn Returns).
Imitation Of Life is a classic minor-key jangly elegy. It would be a minor track on Monster: here it towers over everything else.

In Time (Warner, 2003) is an anthology of the years from 1988 to 2003.

Around The Sun (Warner, 2004) is one long yawn. Leaving New York and Make It All OK are third-rate AOR. Never a title such as High Speed Train has been more misleading. Imagine Morrissey fronting Revolver-era Beatles. But, after all, this is just the logical conclusion of a journey that went through Find the River, You Are the Everything, Half a World Away, Losing My Religion and Nightswimming, to name a few of past symptoms of Stipe's incipient senility. This album is not any worse than New Adventures In Hi-Fi, Up or Reveal, but even the staunchest friends of R.E.M.'s powerful label may get tired of hailing their terrible albums as masterpieces.

Despite being bookended by two timid rockers (Living Well is the Best Revenge, I'm Gonna DJ), the brief album Accelerate (Warner Bros, 2008) is yet another parade of mundane ballads (Supernatural Superserious, Sing for the Submarine). Middle-aged yuppies may call this "hard-rock music" but the truth is that this is still relaxing muzak. It is not Monster (that was truly a rebirth, although downplayed by all the industry-friendly critics who now praise Accelerate), but it does sound like a desperate attempt to repeat Monster.

Collapse Into Now (2011) was another terrible album, possibly their worst ever (despite Mine Smell Like Honey). They decide to disband a few months later.

Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011 (2011) is a career retrospective.

Peter Buck helped Mark Eitzel on West (1997) and Robyn Hitchcock between 2006 and 2010.

Peter Buck released solo albums: Peter Buck (Mississippi, 2012), I Am Back to Blow Your Mind Once Again (Mississippi, 2014), Opium Drivel (Mississippi, 2014), Warzone Earth (Mississippi, 2015), Dear December (Yep Rock, 2017).

The hyper-active Buck also played in: in the Baseball Project, a supergroup with Mike Mills, Scott McCaughey of Minus 5, Steve Wynn of the Dream Syndicate and Linda Pitmon which released Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails (Yep Rock, 2008), High and Inside (Yep Rock, 2011), 3rd (Yep Rock, 2014) and Grand Salami Time! (Yep Rock, 2023); in Tired Pony, another supergroup, this one formed by Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol with Richard Colburn of Belle And Sebastian, Scott McCaughey and others, which released The Place We Ran From (Fiction, 2010) and The Ghost of the Mountain (Fiction, 2013); in Filthy Friends, a supergroup with Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney, Scott McCaughey, Kurt Bloch of Young Fresh Fellows, Krist Novoselic of Nirvana, Bill Rieflin of Ministry, which released Invitation (Kill Rock Stars, 2017) and Emerald Valley (Kill Rock Stars, 2019); in Arthur Buck, a collaboration with Joseph Arthur, which released Arthur Buck (New West, 2018) and Arthur Buck 2 (2025); and in the No Ones with McCaughey and Norwegian musicians, which released The Great Lost No Ones Album (Yep Rock, 2020) and My Best Evil Friend (Yep Rock, 2023).

Buck also played on solo albums by Luke Haines of the Auteurs: Beat Poetry for Survivalists (Omnivore, 2020), All The Kids Are Super Bummed Out (Cherry Red, 2022) and Going Down To The River To Blow My Mind (Cherry Red, 2025).

Buck formed Drink the Sea with Lizette Garcia, Duke Garwood, Alain Johannes of Eleven and Barrett Martin of the Screaming Trees, which debuted with Drink the Sea I and II (Echo Base, 2025).