How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us: An REM Thread

[epilogue]

I think Let Me In is my favorite.

Easily.

I do believe you.

[epilogue]

Bittersweet Me is a contender for my favorite REM song.

[Kevin Davis]

It's up there for me too. I am surprised it didn't make either of their greatest hits collections; I remember it being all over MTV at the time, far more so than "E-Bow the Letter" or "Electrolite."

Still can't quit the 1995 show from the BBC box. I love how Stipe introduces almost every song as "Okay, here's a song."

[BootsToAsses]

It's up there for me too. I am surprised it didn't make either of their greatest hits collections; I remember it being all over MTV at the time, far more so than "E-Bow the Letter" or "Electrolite."

Still can't quit the 1995 show from the BBC box. I love how Stipe introduces almost every song as "Okay, here's a song."

That's all he said at the shows I saw, in 2005 and 2008 respectively.
Every now and then he'd throw in "We're R.E.M. and this is what we do" just to mix it up.

[VinylGuy]

Stipe talked a lot in the 2008 show i saw.

[BootsToAsses]

Stipe talked a lot in the 2008 show i saw.

He may have spoken more, I really can't remember. Saw them in Twickenham in 2008 which wound up being their last ever UK show

[Jorge]

He was very excited about Obama

[VinylGuy]

yeah that was hilarious. Talking about Obama and i think they even put a pic on the big screen. Like ey guys, good news! They did that in all the shows in south america.

[Norah]

Bittersweet Me is a contender for my favorite REM song.

It's barely top 5 on its own album, nevermind the whole catalog.

[epilogue]

Bittersweet Me is a contender for my favorite REM song.

It's barely top 5 on its own album, nevermind the whole catalog.

It's a good thing you're pretty.

[Chris_H_2]

I remember watching them play I Don’t Sleep I Dream on SNL in 1994, and I’ve lived that song ever since. That and Circus Envy are two of my favorite “non-popular” REM songs of all time.

[verb_to_trust]

They are just such a great example of class and dignity. Are there R.E.M. fans on a board somewhere that hate them like most of us do Pearl Jam? It's hard to imagine.

[epilogue]

Man, UP is such a good album. I know most people go all the way back to Murmur to talk about REM's amazing run of records, but for me they didn't really get a consecutive run of great albums until Automatic dropped. The run of Automatic through Up is just lights out fantastic.

[epilogue]

New Adventures in Hi-Fi
Automatic for the People
Lifes Rich Pageant
Monster
Up
Fables of the Reconstruction
Green
Reckoning
Document
Out of Time
Murmur

[Blaine Ryan]

Automatic
New Adventures
Fables
Green
Reckoning

After that they get pretty tough for me to rank.

And I agree about Up -- it's a great album, with some of Stipe's best lyrics in the whole canon. "Daysleeper" is one of my favorite R.E.M. songs.

[LoathedVermin72]

Based on the bits I’ve heard from the podcast, Up, Reveal, and Around the Sun sound completely unlistenable to me.

[epilogue]

Based on the bits I’ve heard from the podcast, Up, Reveal, and Around the Sun sound completely unlistenable to me.

I despise Reveal. I'm not even looking forward to that episode of the pod. That album is a piece of shit. My memory of Around the Sun is that it has a couple of standout tracks but fails as a complete cohesive piece. But it's been forever since I revisited it.

[washing machine]

Based on the bits I’ve heard from the podcast, Up, Reveal, and Around the Sun sound completely unlistenable to me.

They are complicated listens. The definition of "grower" albums. Up really made more sense to me when I discovered that the album was a major inspiration for Kid A (I was listening to a lot of Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada at the time too), and once that one clicked with me and i wanted more, Reveal was there and ripe for discovery. I'm still not a huge fan of Around the Sun, but then again, every time I listen to it I think to myself "this is better than I remember."

Post-Berry REM is interesting.

Man, UP is such a good album. I know most people go all the way back to Murmur to talk about REM's amazing run of records, but for me they didn't really get a consecutive run of great albums until Automatic dropped. The run of Automatic through Up is just lights out fantastic.

REM and Sonic Youth are very similar to me in that they had large patches of great runs throughout a 30+ year career.

[epilogue]

And I agree about Up -- it's a great album, with some of Stipe's best lyrics in the whole canon. "Daysleeper" is one of my favorite R.E.M. songs.

[epilogue]

Up might be too low in my rankings, honestly.