R.E.M. was is one of my favorite bands of all time. They are without question some of the wisest, most prescient, and transcendent voices I’ve ever heard from the wider world. And, thanks to their maturity and creative commitment, they’ve been in my life for practically as long as I have been. So naturally, I wanted to do something as a tribute to this merry group of strangers that has felt like family, and has seen me through good times and bad.
I wanted to come up with a playlist. Now I’m sure there are going to be dozens hundreds of these floating around this month. They’ll call attention to “Radio Free Europe” and “The One I Love” and “Losing My Religion” and “Nightswimming.” That’s fine — there’s no question that these songs were both personal and revolutionary — but they were also the songs that we heard on the radio and saw on TV, praised by critics from Pitchfork to Rolling Stone. All well and good, but one of the things I always loved most about R.E.M. was the strength of their entire body of work, and this as a direct result of their unending, searching pursuit of their muse. Odds are, if you pick any random track off of any random R.E.M. album or EP, and you’ll find something outwardly beautiful and inwardly complex. Many of these songs were never recognized by critics, or the industry, or even many longtime fans. If they’re unfamiliar, they’ll seem like new material altogether. These are ten glorious R.E.M. songs that have, by-and-large, stayed out of the limelight.
One last note. You may notice that this list is skewed disproportionately toward the last five R.E.M. albums. It’s not that I think this work is better, but that it is more neglected. I mean, pretty much everything released under I.R.S. is worshiped, and R.E.M.’s fan base was so huge through the mid-90s that those early Warner Bros. albums are also well recognized. Even as their work from Up onward has drawn inconsistent praise, from jangly rhythms to ethereal sweetness, these are still R.E.M. through and through. Which is to say, they are magnificent.
10. “I Wanted to be Wrong” from Around the Sun
There is no debate that Around the Sun is the least loved of R.E.M.’s fifteen studio albums. Although the shimmering grace of “Electron Blues” and “The Outsider” are underappreciated in my book, the real gem here is “I Wanted to be Wrong.” Released almost exactly one month before W. thumped Kerry in the 2004 elections, this song seemed premonitory and weighed down with sadness. It’s a sequel, of sorts, to the frazzled energy of “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” and the jagged defiance of “Ignoreland,” with Stipe having seemingly given up, for a moment, exhausted by inertia and the walls of willful ignorance. Still, there is something inexplicably comforting here. Perhaps the sadness implies empathy, and empathy is redemptive? Who can say for sure? All I know is that this song seemed to be elegantly of that moment, which is powerful when expressed by a band that had already been around for 24 years.
9. “Hope” from Up
Of all of R.E.M.’s albums, none has been as unfairly disparaged as Up. Seriously: Kraftwerk-style electro meets the Byrds and Paul Simon? Why didn’t everyone recognize this work as the masterpiece it was? Well, people were upset about Bill Berry being replaced by a drum machine. Also, Up was well north of an hour long. Oh yeah, and Kid Rock was becoming the hot new thing. It wasn’t great timing. Okay, well history has had its say. Here’s mine: Upis like a concept album without any of the things that make concept albums suck. It is a collection of a character studies of people who have one connection: that they are all stunned, deer in the headlights, because life has caught them exhausted and off-guard. A late night stock worker. An alcoholic professor. A disheveled cellist auditioning for a major gig. And then there’s this song “Hope,” about a mysterious duel with chronic illness and death. The outcome is almost certain catastrophe. It will resonate with anyone who has ever seen or struggled with a long and inevitable battle with cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or any other fatal illness. Listen to it, and then give all of Up another chance.
8. “Perfect Circle” from Murmur
Okay… I guess I’m cheating here (but I’ll only do it this once).
Is any song from Murmur really underappreciated? Probably not, but I always felt that the album’s best song was overshadowed by its neighbors, and especially among younger fans. People are so eager to seize on the abstraction and distraction at the beginning and end of the album that they missed its critical center. In an album whose every word and note is colored by deliberate ambiguity, there is one song, surprisingly gentle and straightforward, grounding the listener in the reality of legitimate, observed moments. Don’t be fooled. “Perfect Circle” is as ambiguous as anything else on Murmur. The references sound specific enough, but what on earth is actually going on here? Whatever it is, it comes from a place of watchful vulnerability.
7. “Let Me In” from Monster
Monster wasn’t underappreciated. Monster was maligned. Monster just goes to show that you can blow your critical capital in exchange for artistic purity, and then everyone calls it commercial opportunism. Fuck that. Structurally in line with Up this album cross-examined Dan Rather with River Phoenix and Kurt Cobain, so while it certainly isn’t a “concept album” per se, there’s something decidedly anti-commercial happening here, and with a kind of lyrical artistry you’d never get from, say, Green Day. Now most of the songs on Monster were disguised as something more innocent than their reality. The opposite is true of Let Me In. It is, if anything, more direct than most people give it credit for being. It’s about Cobain — openly — and in this case raw emotion translates to raw sound, completely bypassing the irony and parody involved in the album’s other tracks. It is a very elegant use of naked distortion.
6. “You Are the Everything” from Green
Okay, for some reason, this song has its most long-lasting traction as an R.E.M. spoof and people use it as a great launching point to ridicule Michael Stipe’s words and voice. But people always back off whenever I play this song for them. It’s in those words. It’s in Peter Buck’s freaking mandolin. Listen to it, again, and tell me you don’t feel even slightly optimistic about our world and its future.
5. “Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter” from Collapse Into Now
Okay, this one was victim to that generic charge, “it sounds like a weaker version of what they did before.” There is no refuge for the aging rock star! If they look toward new horizons (Monster, Up), they’re selling out / giving up. If they return to their roots (Accelerate, Collapse Into Now), they’re nostalgia fiending. But this song isn’t about young kids searching out their way or young adults flexing their muscle. It’s an anarchic bid for the middle-aged to pick up the slack from today’s kids by using the vocabulary of youth. And don’t you dare blaspheme in the presence of Patti Smith!!!
4. “Saturn Return” from Reveal
Probably one of the most underappreciated songs on any R.E.M. album, Saturn Return seemed to vanish without a trace, even among critics who liked Reveal. That’s a shame because in its sounds and airs, it’s very much another take on the same subject of “Perfect Circle,” rewritten by men in their forties, and sung in 2001. And how does this bizarro “Perfect Circle” sound, twenty years later? Just as fragile and unadorned. More vulnerable, naked, and reluctant. Just as gorgeous. A confession offered up to the night in quiet moments when “everyone’s sleeping or pulling a long haul.”
3. “Auctioneer (Another Engine)” from Fables of the Reconstruction
So Fables has been getting a lot more love in recent years than it did early on, but a lot of the praise has seemed to have sailed right over this one. It’s one of the most driving and straightforward melodies on this utterly murky and enigmatic album, and this pairing is a major part of its appeal. But look at these lyrics:
“Take this penny and make it into a necklace when I leave.
What is at the other end and I don’t know.
Another friend, another wife, another morning spent.”
Songs with lyrics like that are not supposed to rock. This one does.
2. “Walk Unafraid” from Up
One of the trickier ones to explain, in part because on the page, the lyrics do look really saccharine, overly sweet. Plus this song is quietly upstaged by “Daysleeper.” “Unafraid” only works with its driving rhythm, Scooby Doo chirps and whines (which you lose a bit in the live version below), and the distorted, mangled guitars. It’s a simple song about standing tough in the face of conformity and adversity, but the very sweetness of the sentiment is legit because it sounds like it’s being sung from the middle of a storm. Adversity comes in waves, evidently.
1. “Departure” from New Adventures in Hi-Fi
“But it’s word salad!”
Shut up. It’s all about traveling and contradiction and the fallacy of established wisdom, and that’s life (and not, I mean “death,” or whatever). It was also written at the exact midpoint in the career of a band that only existed because of their obsessive commitment to travel and touring. So I’m a fan of symmetry. Anyway, most of my favorite R.E.M. songs are pensive and moody. This one is not. I thought it would be fitting to wrap up this list with a lot of energy. R.E.M. brought thirty years of energy. Now it’s our turn to bring it.