It’s music week on the blog!
R.E.M. released 15 studio albums between 1983 and 2011. I tend to group the albums into three eras:
- The Early Years. This covers their first four albums from 1983-1986.
- The Big Success. This covers their platinum sales era, six albums from 1987-1996.
- The Post-Berry Funk. The five albums they were under contract to do after drummer Bill Berry left the band. Covers 1998-2011.
I’ll eventually come back and justify my rankings but for now here are two lists, the first is all 15 albums in chronological order followed by my arbitrary list of best to worst.
- Murmur, 1983
- Reckoning, 1984
- Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985
- Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986
- Document, 1987
- Green, 1988
- Out of Time, 1991
- Automatic for the People, 1992
- Monster, 1994
- New Adventures in Hi-fi, 1996
- Up, 1998
- Reveal, 2001
- Around the Sun, 2004
- Accelerate, 2008
- Collapse Into Now, 2011
My ranking:
- Automatic for the People
- Lifes Rich Pageant
- Monster
- Collapse Into Now
- Murmur
- Reckoning
- New Adventures in Hi-fi
- Fables of the Reconstruction
- Out of Time
- Accelerate
- Document
- Reveal
- Green
- Up
- Around the Sun
It’s a testament to the ultimate resilience and strength of the band that the top five albums encompass their entire 28 year span of releasing albums.
Although I do not listen to it as often these days I still rank Automatic as their best album because it’s a perfectly balanced combination of maturity, experimentation and accessibility. The band went ‘dark’ but lost none of their tunefulness in the process. They also produced some of their most beautiful songs.
Their follow-up Monster nearly matches every strength of Automatic, including having no filler but does so with a completely different sound, as brash, weird and cacophonous as Automatic is quietly majestic. In between the two I’ve placed their final album Collapse Into Now which has the band exiting in fine form with an album that offers a little of everything in an energetic, well-crafted package that recalls their best work while staking out its own identity.
At the bottom of the list is the only R.E.M. album I’d describe as weak. Around the Sun is not a poor effort but much of it has a listlessness that suggests the band was either bored or tired of the whole thing.
Illustrating how whimsically I can change my mind, reference this post in which I ranked the top five R.E.M. albums as follows:
- Lifes Rich Pageant
- Murmur
- Automatic for the People
- Reckoning
- Collapse Into Now