Was R.E.M. the greatest Gen X band?

Looking at bands from the 80s & 90s (the prime new music years for Gen Xers) are R.E.M. the best?

Great catalog
Excellent live act
Fantastic writers and players
Quit while they were ahead
Broke college-alternative Rock
Innovative while rooted in history
Critical and commercial success
Culturally significant

The only other contender seems to be U2 who had trouble maintaining their quality.

Do you agree or disagree? Why? Who else best represents Gen X?

 

Quit while they were ahead? Not in my book. After Bill Berry left, they stunk In My Opinion.

 

As a GenXer, for me it will always be Nirvana.

 

Great before they signed with the bunny. It was over after that. The IRS years were incredible.


It's not an uncommon scenario. Band switches labels to the big time when their career peaks, but everything after isn't up to the same standard.

And to bobo's point above, they never recovered from the loss of Bill Berry. If there was ever a band that was both the sum of its individual parts and somehow greater than that, those guys were it. I guess REM was a band. And after Bill left, it wasn't.

 

Sounds like Talking Heads to me. (Or are they "boomer"?)

 

^ Better live act, too.

 

Radiohead. They're Gen X, right?

 

The R.E.M. guys are boomers.

 

As a gen xer its either them or New Order for me, both fantastic

 

Greatest Gen X band: The Pixies. Hands down.

 

Nope.

 

I'm one of those guys (meaning a fan of the band), but definitely don't consider myself a boomer. Graduated HS in '86. I feel that my cohort falls in that awkward period between the Boomers and Gen X - like proto Xers? Pre Slackers?

I feel much more closely aligned with the gen X crowd....

 

For me, U2 and R.E.M. were probably the two best bands we were all introduced to in the 80's.

 

R.E.M. were a great band (well, at least up to and definitely including Automatic For The People). That's what counts. "The greatest" don't matter none to me.

 

In a word, no!

 

Everything that’s great about R.E.M. has nothing whatsoever to do with any dopey generational labels. I’d really avoid hanging a terminally uncool trend moniker on one of the coolest bands of the 80’s and 90’s.

Plain old great works for me R.E.M.-wise. “Greatest” contests gives me a headache.

 

Exact generational divides are vague and artists tend to be slightly older than their fans. Most people solidify their musical tastes roughly between their early teens and late 20s. That's the 80s & 90s for most Gen Xers, hence why I consider REM a band primarily for Gen Xers.

I agree that they lost the plot a bit after Bill left but none of those albums are bad and the last 2 were a strong finish.

 

For a certain strain of Gen Xers, maybe they were. I'm not of that strain (nor am I a Gen Xer...I'm a Baby Boomer). I really only liked "Chronic Town". The Replacements, the Pixies, Nirvana, a host of others were far more creative. REM always seemed like the 80s version of, I dunno, Journey or REO Speedwagon.

 

No, Guns N' Roses were.

 

I'll disagree. I love all of the IRS albums, bought Reckoning on vinyl within a week of it's original release.

But it wasn't over after that. They made 2 of their best albums for WB - Out of Time and NAIHF. NAIHF is as good as any of their albums on IRS, IMO.

And Green and Up were both very solid (and Up had a great tour too - Wilco opened for them). The rest are hit or miss for me.

 

REM were at their best from 1982-1992 roughly the same period as U2's best. I would argue that they were the best band during this time but they're not for everybody. I was a fan since Chronic Town but a lot of people I know won't even listen to Out Of Time and Automatic which I consider their peak. I have never even thought of them as a Gen X band.

 

Wonderful band, and a blueprint for bands in every member being absolutely pivotal in a creative sense... but they should've quit sooner, Reveal just about got away with it imo, but it was pretty weak stuff all round afterward.

I'm not sure they were "culturally significant", though they certainly played a pivotal role in the alternative scene in the 80s. Nirvana were and still are far more significant as a cultural aspect imo.

 

I meant the guys in the band, all of whom were born between '56 and '60. If you graduated in '86 you are a Gen-Xer.

 

I'd go with Nirvana as the greatest Gen X band. They embodied all of it - good and bad.

If R.E.M. had never made another album after (the triumph of) Automatic For The People then R.E.M. would be getting my vote for sure. But R.E.M. tarnished their legacy after AFTP. They lost their touch. It got really noticeable once Bill Berry left the group. They definitely should've called it a day once he quit. And in the first dozen years of the group, those 4 guys always said that R.E.M. was the four of them and that if one of them left the group they'd stop. But Bill left not too long after R.E.M. signed that jillion dollar deal with Warner Bros. and I think it was too difficult to turn away from all that money. They came across to me as almost depressed after they continued on post-Bill Berry. There was not much sense of excitement from them any longer (that's what prompted Berry himself to quit). If they'd stopped in '93 R.E.M. would be my vote for all-time greatest American band.

 

The best Generation X band was Generation X.

But actually, I'll go with R.E.M. Their climb in sales and popularity from their EP through Automatic For The People is super impressive, given how they maintained their vision and artistry though it all. I'm not the world's biggest Automatic fan, but I appreciate it more now than I did then.