Why R.E.M. Don't Get The Credit They Deserve

Of course this is only my personal opinion.

But I think that one of the fundamental problems is too much pretension. Instead of doing straight-ahead rock, or pop rock music, they kept insisting on very elaborate "art rock" releases and New Adventures in Hi Fi is a good example. Instead of choosing "Bittersweet me" as the lead single they pick the more complex "E-bow the letter" which might have a cool music video and intelligent lyrics but isn't a radio single. By the time they realised that they should write "short and effective" songs (citing Michael Stipe in 2008) it was too late. "Tinfoil tiareas", "Mingus, Chet Baker and chess", "pomegrante afternoons", surely none of those lyrics helped in creating an image of a band that "rocked" and Michael Stipe's interests in the world of modern art and politics, which isn't a bad thing, and he's surely entitled to pursue his own interestss, surely none of this helped either.

 

I don't think "people are stupider" is necessarily accurate (although stupidity has been not only normalized but increasingly championed during the course of the past 30+ years. I still see Jerry Springer as the tipping point).

I used to think that the movie Idiocracy was ridiculously far-fetched. Now, its humor bites a lot harder, and it seems depressingly prescient.

But while I don't think people, in general, are necessarily stupider, I do think they are, by and large, less educated. And that is something that can be proven empirically. The number of college graduates is shriking exponentially with each passing decade.

I don't think that is because people are not intelligent enough to attend college. I think it's more to do with the fact that college is out-of-reach for the average American these days, unless they want to take on lifelong, crippling financial debt.

But the byproduct of a lack of education is the inability to filter and parse truth from fiction in the news media. There is a great deal of misinformation floating around on both sides of the political aisle. And I think people would be better able to distinguish fact from fiction if they were better informed on college fundamentals like researching for a term paper.

I think we're drifting a bit far afield here, and I certainly don't think that this is the sole reason that R.E.M.'s popularity is fading. But when the avatar for cultural relevence is Honey-Boo-Boo, there is something to be said for R.E.M. being a band out of time. YMMV.

 

80's aesthetic worshiped today is not what REM did. No synths, big hair, drum machines, dance moves, association with a hip subculture a la goth, thrash metal or punk, defining visual moments up on Youtube (Live Aid, movie, MTV awards).

"College rock band goes mainstream step by step" is not a brand that creates tons of interest these days. Plus their t shirt designs are terrible. They looked lame even in the 80's.

 

I just bought my new vinyl copy of NAIHF, and I'm waiting for the weekend to give it a full listen, so I can give it the full attention it deserves. But I've heard nothing but good things about this pressing, and it's one of my favorite R.E.M. albums. So, my hopes are high.

 

I think they get sufficient credit, although I will state that IMO they are on the absolute shortest of short lists for GOAT U.S. band ever, at least when the dog had all four legs, which is probably an outlier opinion LOL.

Re>Berry, I’ve stated this before in REM threads, my understanding is he was their best “editor,” if that makes sense, and that was the biggest thing they lost when they lost him.

 

What's unique about their legacy is that none of the 4 members kept the music alive on solo tours after 2008. Think Morrissey/Johnny Marr/David Byrne/Paul Weller/Gallaghers/Mark Knopfler/Sting. 3 of them barely released new music since 2011. Buck does his low profile solo side projects and very limited touring that seem more "hobby" than anything else.

 

I get the impression that Buck was the only one that really wanted to be a musician.

 

Apologies for just picking out one thread of your thought-provoking post...but this just got me thinking about how the passage of time and the context of certain periods in rock history can alter so many things. Like if...at the end of, say, the 1980s we were looking at the state of play and reflecting...

The Stones had split permanently after Dirty Work.

Floyd never got back without Roger...and he'd won the lawsuit to stop the name being used....Final Cut was their last album.

Dylan's output continued to go downhill and Oh Mercy or Time Out Of My Mind never happened.

Led Zep continued to be remembered for Live Aid and Bonham's death, the reappraisal of their work and Page/Plant getting back was still in the distance.

Freddie Mercury had lived, and the band never found that latterday focus driven by his immiment demise.


We could freeze a moment in time back then, and how all of those artists might have been perceived. It's always a complex thing, as you say.

Perhaps REM went on a bit longer than they should have, but only an album or so. Depeche and The Cure could have learned from that.

EG.

 

Buck is the only one with the drive and fire in his belly to keep making music to this day, long after he became a multi-gazillionaire, long after R.E.M. lost the plot (whether you deem that fall from grace to have occurred after Reveal, after Berry quit, after Automatic, after they left I.R.S., after they signed with I.R.S, blah blah blah).

For those who still care enough to pay attention, there is good to great music to be found on Buck’s three solo albums, the Arthur Buck album (which took me a while to warm up to, but features some of his best-ever guitar work), and the two Filthy Friends albums. When he can steal Corin Tucker away from Sleater-Kinney, he’s still capable of turning out music worthy of R.E.M. at their best. In my opinion. Maybe it’s the indie rock equivalent of a tree falling in a forest with no one in the woods to hear it, but it’s out there for those still care enough to seek it out.

 

Isn't the joke about "Unsatisfied" that the word is actually "dissatisfied"?

 

Oh man...I love Peter *and* Corin but Filthy Friends is the biggest snooze.

 

No apology necessary. I found yours to be an equally thoughtful post. And I agree with everything you cited, with one caveat:

While in my opinion, I found all of their albums of merit to some extent, from a commercial standpoint, their album sales started declining with Monster (which was still a huge hit initially, but didn't have the "legs" of Automatic. And that trend continued, for the most part, for the remainder of their career.

Almost every album saw a decrease in sales until, by the end, Michael Stipe noted that one of the most common comments in threads announcing their retirement was, "I didn't know they were still around" or "I thought they had retired already."

That's how much their sales / fanbase shrunk during the final decade of their career. So, at least from a commercial point, they didn't overstay their welcome by an album or so. More like 6 or 7, depending on how you count.

But I still liked them.

 

Their 15 studio albums can be neatly divided into thirds: The Rise, The Imperial Phase, and The Decline. It's almost too perfect.

 

I don’t love their records but each one has 2-3 songs that get me excited like REM records used to

 

Exactly. One of the most critically lauded and commercially successful bands of their day. Had the talent to back it up too.

 

While I agree with @ghoulsurgery that the Filthy Friends albums aren’t start-to-finish perfect - and, of course, so few albums by any artist, including R.EM., are - there are two or three songs on both records that get me excited like R.E.M. used to, and, at this point in the game, what more could you ask for?

To my mind, this is what Accelerate should have been - both from a production and songwriting standpoint. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel of what Peter Buck does, but, again, at this point in the game, that’s not really what I want, and 21st century Corin is a better and more engaged frontperson than 21st century Michael Stipe.



If other people want to pretend that Stipe died after Automatic or that they broke up after Berry quit in order to preserve their perfect legacy, have at it. I still care enough to keep up with the good, bad, and puzzling records Buck continues to crank out.

 

They were a band who, in a strange way, became TOO big for the kind of band they were and wanted to be. They ended up suffering a sort-of backlash after Monster which was partly a drop in quality, partly losing Bill, partly over-saturation from MTV and the music press, partly just the sheer ubiquity of their 1991-1995 period. Out Of Time bled into Automatic almost seamlessly, the sales and success going up and up (scuse the pun), they reacted to it with Monster yet sales were still pretty good (okay so we'll overlook that famous online pic of a used store with rows of unsold/donated copies of it!).

You can't really blame them for the over-saturation; if the media were so obsessed with them, and people kept buying millions of their albums, then it takes an iron heart to step back and be more circumspect....because you never know when the media and the public are going to say...you know what, we've had our fill of you now...and move on. So there's that temptation to always go again, to make another record, do another tour...maybe some new magic will happen.

(I make fun on my blog of the regularity with which Q magazine seemed t0 put REM on the cover, but they were one of my 5 favourite bands of the 90s, so it's said with some affection).

EG.

 

Oh and if REM had quit in the 90s, we'd never had got Reveal and earlier this year I rediscovered how stunning that album was.

EG.

 

There was a 90's trend of releasing mildly WTF album tracks as initial singles. The Fly/Numb by U2 being prime examples. Hi-Fi wasn't going to have a tour and had a built in first week sales, so why not save the best singles until AFTER you need to chase the fence sitters or need to stretch out an album campaign for 6 months.

Revisiting HIFI this week after many years I realized how most of the album is really strong, but how they got a bit schizo about singles from Monster onward. Bittersweet/Currencies/Lotus/Be a Star - sometimes felt like they were chasing singles too much.

It was weird how much E-Bow was a momentum killer for this album AND their career. Built up goodwill got them thru Monster era then fans walked. Or maybe E-Bow/Daysleeper were them purposely shedding pop fans, subconsciously or not(Stipe had become "trouble walking down the street" level famous in early 90's)

 

As the 25th anniversary reissue program soldiers on, if it soldiers on, I am confident there will be a lot of “Wow, that record is nowhere near as bad as I thought it was”/“That record is actually pretty great” reassessments of both Up and Reveal.

Whether Around the Sun can ever be rehabilitated is another question.

 

I think REM were brilliant in the context of their times, but they lacked a consistent aesthetic ‘hook’ for future generations to grab hold of.

Plus, midtempo acoustic strumming with basic arpeggios and little sad introspective poet man lyrics were so thoroughly absorbed by mainstream culture by the late 90s, in such a mediocre fashion, because it’s so easy to do, that I think it’s difficult for new fans to see what was cool about them. Like, wow, they were a major influence on Six Pence None the Richer and Hootie and the Blowfish? Who cares.

 

I've only skimmed the first album but did my homework on the 2nd one before seeing them live. They are not a compelling live act.

 

I think that, as with Led Zeppelin or other bands of that stature, a certain amount of arrogance crept in - “We’ll release E-Bow and make them like it!” - or whatever. It is what it is. I still think “Bittersweet Me” should have been the lead single, and always will, but, at the end of the day, the story was inevitably going to play out the way it did. U2 stayed on top of the mountain for twenty years, from 1980 to 2000. After All That You Can’t Leave Behind, they remained commercial superstars, but, from that point onward, their artistry suffered a far bigger train wreck than R.E.M.’s ever did. Berating R.E.M. for not managing to remain multi-platinum superstars and the most critically adored band in the world into the third decade of their career just strikes me as an exercise in pointlessness. No band has ever done that. The Stones made Dirty Work. The Who made It’s Hard and then imploded. Dylan made Empire Burlesque. R.E.M. made Around the Sun. If you stick around that long, it happens. So be it.

 

This is highly arguable. If anything, they reached comparable levels of blandness.

 

Everybody hurts. Sometimes.