This definitive ranking of R.E.M.’s discography first appeared in 2017, several years after the band called it quits. It will remain not only to commemorate all the great music R.E.M. has given us over the years but also to burn like a candle — and keep vigil — just in case we one day get to add to it. Either way, we’ll keep going back to Rockville until it truly is the end of the world.
It’s been over 40 years since R.E.M. played their first show, a friend’s birthday party in an abandoned church in Athens, Georgia, on April 5th, 1980. It’s hard to believe that a band with a catalog we kept holstered, cocked, and ready throughout our adolescences have turned such an advanced age. (We also must acknowledge that we’ve been drifting through a slightly emptier world for some time now without Athens’ favorite sons.) This was a damn fine band when they were at the height of their powers, and they were nearly as fine when they officially hung it up in 2011.
You can’t make that claim for many bands. Then again, R.E.M. wasn’t like many other bands. And looking back through their body of work, you also realize they were far from a perfect band. But what made them special was a singular momentum that allowed them to evolve, adapt, and carry on. They always seemed to be figuring things out rather than polishing what they’d built and perfected.
The toll of popularity, rigors of touring the globe, losing a founding band member, pressures to follow up both groundbreaking and career-stalling records — none of these challenges, or any others, seemed to ever keep Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry down for very long. In fact, the band made a habit of coming back and feeling more indispensable than ever — gifting us albums, songs, and performances that once taken in can never be truly taken away.
We grew up on them, we grew with them, and now we’re growing old together… and we feel fine.
— Matt Melis
15. Around the Sun (2004)
Runtime: 55:21 (13 tracks)
The Song I Love (Best Song): Nearly every song off of Around the Sun works better live (listen to the R.E.M. Live release), but one that actually works just fine in studio-recording form is a deep cut in an album full of them: “The Ascent of Man.” It has more passion in the chorus than you’ll find on any other track here. The chorus technically has lyrics, but it’s dominated by Stipe wailing “Yeah” with added syllables over and over again. If not indisputably intense, it’s at least going for it, which is more than anyone can say for the rest of the album.
The Worst Song Ever (Worst Song): A wise man once said that if you throw a dart at a map of the world, you’ll hit the world. I think that analogy works here, and to be honest, I think I made it up. Anyway, let’s see (randomly points at track listing on Wikipedia entry). Eureka! It’s “Wanderlust,” a listless song that aims for “Stand” or “Shiny Happy People” goofiness but ends up, for lack of a better expression, generic as fuck. The mix is so dialed back we’re wondering if they forgot to finish it. This is a familiar feeling throughout.
Harmonycoat (Best Harmonies): “Leaving New York” has a good harmony section in its back half that is curiously only performed by multiple recordings of Stipe. This isn’t a rare instance. In the decade that followed drummer Bill Berry’s departure, Mike Mills’ vocal harmonies disappeared. We could still hear him during tours, so it wasn’t a physical issue, but we never got him on record. You’d figure after losing a quarter of your band, you’d want to double down on familiarity, but hey, I’m just a listener. Check out the track on R.E.M. Live to hear the fully realized version.
Mine Smell Like Honey (Stipe-iest Lyric): “Leaving was never my proud.” –“Leaving New York”
Imitation of Life (Best Music Video): The victor goes to “Aftermath,” which features band members acting out in front of what is obviously a green screen for no reason. Stipe leaves his apartment, “walks” down the street, hops in elevators, “runs” down glitchy pathways. The rest of the band joins him as the video goes on, but the real reason why it’s the best video is because Peter Buck’s wearing striped pajamas during the proceedings, holding a book on DNA. Why? Who knows? The “Aftermath” video has a unique association to Around the Sun’s history: it’s not predictable.
Reckoning (Analysis): Personally, I could go to bat for every R.E.M. record … except this one. Hell, we here at CoS were just about universal in Around the Sun coming in dead last. Say what you will about Up and Reveal, but at least those records had focus, a connection, a mission statement. Producer Pat McCarthy worked on those as well as Around the Sun, but instead of feeling ethereal, the band’s unlucky 13th album feels lost in space. Buck perfectly captures the whole experience: “[It] sounds like it did because we were bored of playing the songs over and over again for no reason.” R.E.M. would correct its course going forward. It would have been awful to go out on Around the Sun. You could say it would have been (puts on sunglasses) “The Worst Joke Ever.” — Justin Gerber
14. Reveal (2001)
Runtime: 53:43 (12 tracks)
Any Sides With That: Side one – “Chorus Side,” Side two – “Ring Side”
The Song I Love: Trying to be kind, but “Imitation of Life” is the proverbial oasis in the middle of the desert. It’s the equivalent of pronouncing the patient dead a half-hour ago and then all of a sudden finding a pulse. It’s quirky, bursting, and utterly lovely — a lone blossom in that aforementioned desert.
The Worst Song Ever: Does someone have a seven-sided coin to flip? At a certain point, you start to lose the ability to differentiate between quiet, whispered songs that sound as though the band went out for a smoke break and just left a recording playing on repeat. I’m not even going to attempt to play this game. Life’s too short.
Harmonycoat: Stipe goes it alone here as far as we can tell, and, as far as we know, there is no truth to the rumors that Mike Mills had a trial membership in a monastery during these sessions and was practicing his vow of silence. Simply put, times had changed.
Mine Smell Like Honey: “Now, sweet/ You’re so sugar sweet/ You may as well have had ‘kick me’/ Fastened on your sleeve” — “All the Way to Reno (You’re Gonna Be a Star)”
Imitation of Life: Johnny Cash played in prisons. R.E.M. opted instead for a Brooklyn Catholic high school in the video for “All the Way to Reno (You’re Gonna Be a Star)”. As clever as the life-on-repeat zooming of “Imitation of Life” remains, nothing bests seeing Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, and Mike Mills take to the halls of Bishop Ford Central with the help of Michael Moore and four student camera persons. Whether it’s watching the band float through the hallways alongside students, Buck and Mills getting their dreams of being musicians shot down by a guidance counselor, or Stipe instigating a food fight, the song, particularly its refrain of “You’re gonna be a star,” coupled with the faces of so many bright, young people can’t help but feel inspiring. It really is the band at their most beautiful.
Reckoning: If Up was R.E.M. at its most experimental as it searched for a new identity following Bill Berry’s departure, Reveal finds a band that sounds confident and assured in what they have settled upon. From the swirling atmospherics of opener “The Lifting” and the chirping glitches of follow-up track “I’ve Been High,” Reveal makes known that it’ll be an album that floats rather than soars. That’s not necessarily a negative attribute on its own. However, the album’s painfully consistent polish, tempo, and quiet hum bleeds together to the point where it’s a challenge to differentiate between songs and not succumb to boredom.
Only “Imitation of Life,” with its warm chug, manages to ground itself in something unique and memorable — just as a song like “The Great Beyond,” also from this time period, found its magic in a building chorus that mandated sing-alongs. The real shame here is if many of these songs were to pop up in an R.E.M. playlist, they’d perhaps charm or offer a welcome change of pace or atmosphere. On Reveal, they’re resigned to simply being track numbers on a long, snoozy record. — M.M.
13. Up (1998)
Runtime: 64:31 (14 tracks)
Any Sides With That: Side one – “Up Side,” Side two – “Down Side”
The Song I Love: Unlike Reveal, Up’s got some truly magnetic experiments, like the blissful ASMR vocals and Chinese scales of the opening “Airportman” and the skittering, electronic Leonard Cohen homage, “Hope,” but the most fully realized song is still the one that most resembles classic R.E.M., the woozy waltz of first single “Daysleeper,” with its “talk of circadian rhythms” for a nocturnal worker whose nights are “colored headache gray.”
The Worst Song Ever: “Diminished” uses an unsettling lounge backdrop to spin a first-person narrative of a guilty defendant, but for once, Stipe isn’t oblique enough, and lines like “I watched you fall / I think I pushed” and “Can I charm the jury?” are just painfully on-the-nose, especially for six minutes. Monster’s “You” was a creepier character study.
Harmonycoat: Latter-day R.E.M. began to lose interest in harmony around this time, but the unabashed Beach Boys homage “At My Most Beautiful” delivers what its title promises.
Mine Smell Like Honey: “And you want to cross your DNA/ To cross your DNA with something reptile” — “Hope”
Imitation of Life: “Daysleeper,” a stop-motion animation of hundreds of still photos, disappointingly works better on paper, so the homoerotic and angular blue glow of “Lotus” takes this prize easily, as it’s the sexiest performance Michael Stipe has ever given.
Reckoning: In the wake of Bill Berry’s 1997 departure, R.E.M. didn’t just take the opportunity to use technology such as drum machines to reassess what R.E.M. was. They used technology to reassess how they could create beautiful sounds: “Why Not Smile” used the same chintzy materials as “Everybody Hurts” to arrange a sort of lullaby, but they went off the rails with various noises and percussion presets and synthesized harpsichord. “Daysleeper” took a page from Beck’s playbook and put a found field recording in the bridge, and tracks like “Suspicion” and “Diminished” utilized vibraphones for half-successful mood pieces.
It’s easily the band’s most experimental record, and its greatest virtue is its unforced nature; even completely alien ideas like “Airportman” were totally sincere and warm in their embrace of new frontiers. It was the Zooropa to Reveal’s Pop. — Dan Weiss
