REM was a great band, and that was the basis of their appeal. The thing that boggles me most about this comment though is the implication that music has improved since then. Is there anything now but vacuous pop?
I never got their appeal at all, far too much samey stuff and a real whining sound to the vocals - five minutes of them and you know pretty much all there is to know about their music.
Its not like they ever seemed cutting edge, seems to me they just made product.
They will never be forgotten in Athens, GA, at least it seems. They’re still milking them and B-52s for “things/people our town has produced”. Also, they own (or used to own) one very good vegetarian restaurant in town.
REM was pretty good but they were no Hindu Love Gods
I’m not really an REM fan, but this thread made me re-listen to Murmur last night on a drive. I’m not sure how you can listen to that album and call it “product.” I wonder if all the posters here are only familiar with the radio-friendly pop REM (and some of that stuff is nice, too, like the album Automatic for the People.)
Anyhow, despite me being lukewarm on REM in general, this thread just seems crazy to me. REM is one of the seminal 80s alternative bands. I don’t see any reason not to believe they will not be an important part of rock history for that period of time.
That was such a fun album.
I have been a fairly big REM fan since I was a teenager. First concert I ever wanted to be let go to was REM playing Slane Castle in 1995. I was 13 so wasn’t let go. 
I suspect that in 5 or maybe 10 years you will see a reassessment of them and their influence and a swath of younger bands citing them as an influence. Pop culture has to keep ever churning, ever churning. Post-Punk was largely unknown to a young audience in 2000 but due to Franz Ferdinand and a slew of other bands many of the original purveyors of that sound became rediscovered. And examples of this kinda thing happening litter the history of recorded popular music.
Even as a fan who has seen them maybe half a dozen times it still feels a bit like they stuck around too long. Although they went out on a high, *Collapse Into Now *is a fine album.
I was an R.E.M. junkie for many years, and the lame simplification that “their early stuff was great, but their more popular stuff was crap” does not hold water at all. They were hugely popular after 1987’s Document, getting constant MTV airplay (important at the time) and were named “America’s Best Rock Band” by Rolling Stone. Think what you will of that, but they had certainly arrived by then. After that album, they produced Green, Out of Time and Automatic for the People, both of which are incredible albums, easily as good if not better than their early material. Monster followed that, and while I am not a fan of that album, it’s not a bust. Then New Adventures in Hi-Fi, which is very good if not spectacular. After that, things begin to decline, IMO. But here’s a non-exhaustive list of stellar songs from their “popular” era:
“Finest Worksong”
“Welcome to the Occupation”
“Exhuming McCarthy”
“Disturbance at the Heron House”
“It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”
“Pop Song 89”
“Orange Crush”
“Turn You Inside-Out”
“Losing My Religion”
"Low
“Near Wild Heaven”
“Belong”
“Half a World Away”
“Drive”
“The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite”
“Nightswimming”
“Find the River”
“What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?”
“Strange Currencies”
“Bang and Blame”
“New Test Leper”
“Leave”
“So Fast, So Numb”
“Electrolite”
I think any band ever would take that kind of “jumping the shark.”
I agree with pretty much all of this. The early albums were great and filled with a lot of their best material but I think Automatic for the People is probably their best record. I’m in the minority, however, since I don’t really care for Out of Time that much but I like Monster. New Adventures in Hi-Fi is one of those albums that has grown on me over the years. I enjoy it much more now than I did when it came out.
IOW, like pretty much every major band this side of the Beatles and a handful of others.
I don’t see The Smiths having been discovered for the first time in a widespread way. Other than maybe college stations, who plays their stuff? AFAICT, they remain one of those bands you occasionally hear about, but rarely if ever hear.
20 years from now, more people in their 20s will recognize R.E.M.'s music than will recognize The Smiths. (I’d put a longer timeline on it, but I’d like to be around to know whether I was right or wrong. :))
I think it is regional. I think as REM being the US’s Smiths and The Smiths being the UK’s REM.
I agree. I’m also a fan of The Smiths but to say R.E.M. will basically be forgotten and The Smiths music will be popular for generations to come is a big overstatement.
The Smiths broke up in 1987 and I would guess that probably 90% of people under 40 have never heard of them and probably aren’t familiar with Morrissey’s solo work either.
I don’t really know, but I would also guess that they have a larger following in the UK than in the U.S. The Smiths were a very good band and Morrissey is an interesting character who has also produced some good material, but I think their fandom is a much smaller niche group than R.E.M.'s will ever be.
If you haven’t checked it out I really do recommend listening to Collapse Into Now.
To your list I’d add, from later records:
“Why Not Smile”
“At My Most Beautiful”
“Electron Blue”
“Walk It Back”
“Oh My Heart”
“That Someone Is You”
I would also toss in “The Great Beyond”, “All The Way to Reno”, and “Imitation of Life”.
Automatic for the People is one of my Top 5 albums of all time. Just an incredible piece of work.
I know only Losing My Religion and Everybody Hurts, both of which will stand the test of time, I feel, especially Losing.
The song isn’t a technical masterpiece or anything, but it gets to me nearly every time. The lyrics were deliberately made simple and repetitive to appeal to a depressed mind, I guess. Moreover, at the risk of over-analysing, I think the thrust of the song is not that your hurt will go away, but that everybody hurts (duh :D). You aren’t alone in hurting (like you might imagine), so just reach out to your friends. This message is comforting, yes, but it’s also simultaneously quite depressing.
Yes, I do need to check that album out, I’ve been remiss. I also like the first 3 songs you’ve listed here a lot. Don’t know the last 3 (yet).
I am also weird in that I think Reveal is a pretty good return to form, but, as one pundit put it, was released when no radio station formats existed anymore which would play it.
Yeah, just looking over the critical reception, I see the UK press via NME’s best albums of all time list has two REM albums in the Top 100, with Automatic for the People at 67 and Murmur at 69. (Then again, they have The Strokes Is This It? at number 4, which while a solid album, I hardly think it ranks anywhere near that high.) Rolling Stone’s list from a few years back has Murmur at 197, AFTP at 247, and Document at 470. Not too shabby, but seems the UK press is more a fan than the US press.
Now, granted, it’ll be more interesting to see what the critical evaluation is 20 years from now, but at least the popular music press is still quite respectful of their work.