Mullen4Prez
Banned
REM appreciation thread
REM
Imitation of life
REM
Imitation of life
MERGED ---> REM appreciation thread + R.e.m.
- Thread starter Mullen4Prez
- Start date
The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
typhoon
New Yorker
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2002
- Messages
- 3,021
Automatic for the People is one of the coolest anythings anywhere.
tiny dancer
Blue Crack Distributor
typhoon said:
Ditto!
Zoots
Blue Crack Supplier
They're one of my favorite bands. I love pretty much every album of theirs from 1986's Life's Rich Pageant to 1998's Up. Except for parts of Murmur and Chronic Town, I can't really get into their early stuff though. Stipe sounds too incoherent and obscure. The music is too... I dont know.. lowkey?
elevatedmole
Rock n' Roll Doggie
I think I'm the only person in the world who likes Monster better than Automatic for the People.
I always like the "black sheep" albums best -- Midnite Vultures by Beck, Pop by U2 are both masterpieces to me. I don't think Monster is a masterpiece, but I do really love some of the tracks.
..
I always like the "black sheep" albums best -- Midnite Vultures by Beck, Pop by U2 are both masterpieces to me. I don't think Monster is a masterpiece, but I do really love some of the tracks.
..
Zoots
Blue Crack Supplier
I love Monster even though I prefer Automatic. Whats the Frequency, Crush With Eyeliner, Bang And Blame, Strange Currencies, Star69, I Don't Sleep I Dream, I Took Your Name... love it all. 
Mullen4Prez
Banned
What does everyone think of new adventures in HI FI? I am finding it hard to get into the this album.
Zoots
Blue Crack Supplier
I like New Adventures but havent listened to it in a long time. I see it as an album of many good songs... not just a few brilliant ones and a few duds.
blueeyedgirl
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
elevatedmole said:I think I'm the only person in the world who likes Monster better than Automatic for the People.
I always like the "black sheep" albums best -- Midnite Vultures by Beck, Pop by U2 are both masterpieces to me. I don't think Monster is a masterpiece, but I do really love some of the tracks.
..
No you're not alone! If I never hear "Everybody Hurts" again it'll be too soon! Though I did sing along with everyone else when I saw them live this month.
But I do love the rest of the album.
IWasBored
Blue Crack Supplier
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2002
- Messages
- 36,783
i think the correct spelling is "pwnz"
yertle-the-turtle
ONE love, blood, life
'Country Feedback'
beegee
Neon Zebra
blueeyedgirl said:
i get so happy at their shows when they play it
because that's when i take a restroom break.
Zoots
Blue Crack Supplier
bonosgirl84 said:
Well... it may be overplayed and boring now. But it's a beautiful song nevertheless. (and I have good memories about the video too) Those lyrics are just
When the day is long and the night, the night is yours alone,
when you're sure you've had enough of this life, well hang on.
Don't let yourself go, everybody cries and everybody hurts sometimes.
Sometimes everything is wrong. Now it's time to sing along.
When your day is night alone, (hold on, hold on)
if you feel like letting go, (hold on)
when you think you've had too much of this life, well hang on.
Everybody hurts. Take comfort in your friends.
Everybody hurts. Don't throw your hand. Oh, no. Don't throw your hand.
If you feel like you're alone, no, no, no, you are not alone
If you're on your own in this life, the days and nights are long,
when you think you've had too much of this life to hang on.
Well, everybody hurts sometimes,
everybody cries. And everybody hurts sometimes.
And everybody hurts sometimes. So, hold on, hold on.
Hold on, hold on. Hold on, hold on. Hold on, hold on. (repeat & fade)
(Everybody hurts. You are not alone.)
I just had to post that.
Catman
Rock n' Roll Doggie
Mullen4Prez said:
I love the song "Leave"
beegee
Neon Zebra
Zootlesque said:Those lyrics are just
i always thought they were rather cliche
and far too basic for a writer as brilliant as mr stipe.
DeadMansParty
Rock n' Roll Doggie
night swiming
Cooper2000
The Fly
R.e.m.
Any R.E.M. fans in here?
What are your favorite songs/albums and whatnot from R.E.M.?
Best song ever? Video?
Post away
Any R.E.M. fans in here?
What are your favorite songs/albums and whatnot from R.E.M.?
Best song ever? Video?
Post away
VertigoGal
Rock n' Roll Doggie FOB
I only have their Greatest Hits, but I really like it and would like to buy/burn more of their albums. So I will be using this thread for suggestions as far as what I should buy
My favorite song is E-Bow the Letter, also love Nightswimming obviously.
My favorite song is E-Bow the Letter, also love Nightswimming obviously.
financeguy
ONE love, blood, life
Don't have all the albums, my favourite of the 5 or 6 that I have is definitely Automatic for the People.
Cooper2000
The Fly
VertigoGal said:I only have their Greatest Hits, but I really like it and would like to buy/burn more of their albums. So I will be using this thread for suggestions as far as what I should buy
My favorite song is E-Bow the Letter, also love Nightswimming obviously.
Same, that is what i'm using it for
I like, Losing my Religion and E-Bow aswell.. Man on the Moon aswell, the story behind their songs are great.
Last edited:
VertigoGal
Rock n' Roll Doggie FOB
Cooper2000 said:
Same, that is what i'm using it for
i thought it was a bit suspicious you didn't give your own opinions on the matter
btw- i may only have the greatest hits, but i am still sort of a hardcore fan in that i know all the words to E-bow the Letter...
Last edited:
financeguy
ONE love, blood, life
Basing my opinion only on the albums that I own, I would say Automatic FTP, New Adventures, and Murmur are my favourites. Each of those three is brilliant.
My favourite song is probably Losing my Religion, fave video probably Man on the Moon. E-bow the letter is brilliant, as VertigoGal said.
My favourite song is probably Losing my Religion, fave video probably Man on the Moon. E-bow the letter is brilliant, as VertigoGal said.
Cooper2000
The Fly
VertigoGal said:
i thought it was a bit suspicious you didn't give your own opinions on the matter
btw- i may only have the greatest hits, but i am still sort of a hardcore fan in that i know all the words to E-bow the Letter...
Lol, you are definitly hardcore if you know the words
I just have the greatest hits, and automatic for the people.. I don't follow the band much, I just really like their music. I'm definitly not clueless tho, so don't wave that finger at me girl! Haha
beegee
Neon Zebra
hmm
maybe you should check the band index at the top of this forum that the lovely miss bonochick worked so hard on compiling for b&c's thoughts on REM
maybe you should check the band index at the top of this forum that the lovely miss bonochick worked so hard on compiling for b&c's thoughts on REM
MsMofoGone
Blue Crack Addict
My REM favorites are definitely the older classic tunes...
The One I Love
Orange Crush
Everybody Hurts
Losing My Religion
The One I Love
Orange Crush
Everybody Hurts
Losing My Religion
strannix
Acrobat
I like Up. There, I said it, and I'm not sorry.
Numb1075
ONE love, blood, life
REM, Big
saw them a couple of years ago and they opened up w/ Finest Worksong. What a wierd but cool song to open with.
I am Superman
Nightswimming
All of Eponymous, Monster, Out of Time (yes, even Shiny Happy People), Automatic for the People
Special shout out to KRS 1: now our children grow up prisoners, all their life, radio listeners !!!!!!!!!!!
saw them a couple of years ago and they opened up w/ Finest Worksong. What a wierd but cool song to open with.
I am Superman
Nightswimming
All of Eponymous, Monster, Out of Time (yes, even Shiny Happy People), Automatic for the People
Special shout out to KRS 1: now our children grow up prisoners, all their life, radio listeners !!!!!!!!!!!
bread n' whine
The Fly
- Joined
- Jul 1, 2005
- Messages
- 93
Automatic for the People and Lifes Rich Pageant are their two best records. Automatic is the best ALBUM, clearly, one of the best of all time. But Pageant captures them at their peak of excitement and creativity. You just have to put up with a tiny bit of filler, but it's my personal favorite. Maybe even more relevant now than 1986.
Up and New Adventures are tied in second. They finally realized how to make a great flowing album with no filler in the '90s, even as they lost a bit of the old energy (sometimes). These two are polar opposites musically, but they are both great travel albums. Take Up on an airplane, and New Adventures driving.
Fables a very close third (well really, fifth, after all those ties). It's weird how I've said their three most underrated albums are their third, fourth and fifth best but it's perfectly true. Fables is a folk rock masterpiece. "Feeling Gravitys Pull" is still maybe their most creative song ever. All the songs kind of sound the same, but that's fine.
Then Reckoning. If you think of "college rock" and a bad image pops into your head (like Dave Matthews drooling over some girl's skirt), all you have to do is listen to this again. Each of the previous albums including it, is a total classic. That's 6 out of 13.
Monster and Out of Time are simply very good. They have their flaws-- very different ones on each. They are REM trying out different styles of music and doing damn well at it, but not quite convincing. Monster deserves credit for being possibly the most consistent REM album besides Automatic for the People, and having some great lyrics, and Out of Time is one of the greatest springtime albums. 7th and 8th best, but I still love them.
Murmur is my 9th favorite. overrated. I do like it, but I rarely listen to it. I would probably like it more if it weren't for the way, like Document (which is even a lot more overrated) people put it above all the other stuff they did on the IRS label. It's a very good debut, nothing to criticize, except that it was followed by three that were way better. Yes, it's more original than Reckoning, more original than any REM album probably, and it rocks harder than Fables. I just like those better. They have better songs. And the songs on the Chronic Town EP are also better than the average on Murmur. Not an album to scoff at, still. "West of the Fields" is my favorite of their album closers.
Document... 10th best. Not a bad record, but not particularly great. Massively overrated. The only song I still really love is "Heron House." Document's politics and loudness are stronger than its music or creativity-- the only songs as interesting as the last album was are the last few, and they are some of the few songs from any artist that could be fairly called "failed experiments" (I don't like ever using that term). "The One I Love" feels completely out of place. It gets on a good political roll with all good songs on side 1 and makes a comeback with "King of Birds," but it just doesn't add up to what the album title promises. They made their definitive political statement in 1986.
Green is 11th. I see both Document and Green (and even Out of Time, a bit) as transitional records. Green has several GREAT songs, culminating in the brilliant "Orange Crush," REM's best single ever. Document didn't really have any GREAT songs, just some good ones. But Green is even less consistent and more lacking in purpose than Document. It's just an album of songs, basically, and it's overproduced at times, like Document was-- Scott Litt hadn't really caught on yet. You get the feeling of a band that was getting bigger but didn't know quite where it was going yet. A few songs aside, if I had been a fan in the mid '80s I might have lost interest until Automatic for the People.
Reveal is 12th. I didn't like this much when it came out... or actually, I loved it on first listen but then got bored. And discovered all the good older REM albums I hadn't heard. In retrospect, it's hardly awful. It's very consistent. It IS a nice summer album. The problem with it sometimes seems like mediocre lyrics and tunes, but it's almost entirely production. I can almost imagine "Beat a Drum" on Automatic for the People. But even the best songs here are somehow not presented in the best possible way. Only "Imitation of Life" comes out perfect. There are some good lyrics here and there. It's still the same old REM, just watered down too much. But it's still the same REM, that's important. It's a very nice listen actually, and much more consistent than either Document or Green, just lacking the former's sense of purpose (even if it only lasts for one side) and the latter's truly great songs. Reveal would have been a nice final album because it's just good enough, but not good enough to convince you they had much more to say.
13th best. Around the Sun. Is no longer the same REM, to me. Losing Bill Berry finally takes its toll as they make the entirely directionless, pandering, boring, unmelodic, trite, anticlimactic record that idiots said Up was. The best thing about Reveal was the way it returned to the sunny pastoral feeling of the earliest REM albums (and Automatic for the People/Out of Time). That's why I can forgive its many flaws. Around the Sun amplifies all those flaws, and scraps the classic REM pastoral thing. The best song "The Outsiders," could have been good with a less anonymous Dido-ish production job, but Pat McCarthy just seems to love those-- I don't get it, since he did a masterful job with Up and the Waterboys album I have.
Even on "The Outsiders" you've got a major problem when Q-tip rather than Michael Stipe supplies the most moving lyrics and vocals on an REM album. Stipe sounds tired. The band sounds like session musicians. It's just terrible. Even worse than How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, though I guess morally superior since it only sounds like it's trying to sell a lot, but thankfully didn't end up doing it. U2 has been quite a horrible influence on REM this decade, I have to say. They seem to think they can replicate U2's commercial success if only they write equally overproduced, pandering songs, but REM sucks at writing that kind of song, and U2 is quite brilliant at it. I have to give them credit. At least HTDAAB does rock at times, in its dinosaurish way. I can turn off my mind and enjoy bits of it. I'd have to turn off my ears to enjoy Around the Sun, which manages to be anonymously slick and unprofessional at the same time. It's hard to imagine any route out of mediocrity for REM now.
Up and New Adventures are tied in second. They finally realized how to make a great flowing album with no filler in the '90s, even as they lost a bit of the old energy (sometimes). These two are polar opposites musically, but they are both great travel albums. Take Up on an airplane, and New Adventures driving.
Fables a very close third (well really, fifth, after all those ties). It's weird how I've said their three most underrated albums are their third, fourth and fifth best but it's perfectly true. Fables is a folk rock masterpiece. "Feeling Gravitys Pull" is still maybe their most creative song ever. All the songs kind of sound the same, but that's fine.
Then Reckoning. If you think of "college rock" and a bad image pops into your head (like Dave Matthews drooling over some girl's skirt), all you have to do is listen to this again. Each of the previous albums including it, is a total classic. That's 6 out of 13.
Monster and Out of Time are simply very good. They have their flaws-- very different ones on each. They are REM trying out different styles of music and doing damn well at it, but not quite convincing. Monster deserves credit for being possibly the most consistent REM album besides Automatic for the People, and having some great lyrics, and Out of Time is one of the greatest springtime albums. 7th and 8th best, but I still love them.
Murmur is my 9th favorite. overrated. I do like it, but I rarely listen to it. I would probably like it more if it weren't for the way, like Document (which is even a lot more overrated) people put it above all the other stuff they did on the IRS label. It's a very good debut, nothing to criticize, except that it was followed by three that were way better. Yes, it's more original than Reckoning, more original than any REM album probably, and it rocks harder than Fables. I just like those better. They have better songs. And the songs on the Chronic Town EP are also better than the average on Murmur. Not an album to scoff at, still. "West of the Fields" is my favorite of their album closers.
Document... 10th best. Not a bad record, but not particularly great. Massively overrated. The only song I still really love is "Heron House." Document's politics and loudness are stronger than its music or creativity-- the only songs as interesting as the last album was are the last few, and they are some of the few songs from any artist that could be fairly called "failed experiments" (I don't like ever using that term). "The One I Love" feels completely out of place. It gets on a good political roll with all good songs on side 1 and makes a comeback with "King of Birds," but it just doesn't add up to what the album title promises. They made their definitive political statement in 1986.
Green is 11th. I see both Document and Green (and even Out of Time, a bit) as transitional records. Green has several GREAT songs, culminating in the brilliant "Orange Crush," REM's best single ever. Document didn't really have any GREAT songs, just some good ones. But Green is even less consistent and more lacking in purpose than Document. It's just an album of songs, basically, and it's overproduced at times, like Document was-- Scott Litt hadn't really caught on yet. You get the feeling of a band that was getting bigger but didn't know quite where it was going yet. A few songs aside, if I had been a fan in the mid '80s I might have lost interest until Automatic for the People.
Reveal is 12th. I didn't like this much when it came out... or actually, I loved it on first listen but then got bored. And discovered all the good older REM albums I hadn't heard. In retrospect, it's hardly awful. It's very consistent. It IS a nice summer album. The problem with it sometimes seems like mediocre lyrics and tunes, but it's almost entirely production. I can almost imagine "Beat a Drum" on Automatic for the People. But even the best songs here are somehow not presented in the best possible way. Only "Imitation of Life" comes out perfect. There are some good lyrics here and there. It's still the same old REM, just watered down too much. But it's still the same REM, that's important. It's a very nice listen actually, and much more consistent than either Document or Green, just lacking the former's sense of purpose (even if it only lasts for one side) and the latter's truly great songs. Reveal would have been a nice final album because it's just good enough, but not good enough to convince you they had much more to say.
13th best. Around the Sun. Is no longer the same REM, to me. Losing Bill Berry finally takes its toll as they make the entirely directionless, pandering, boring, unmelodic, trite, anticlimactic record that idiots said Up was. The best thing about Reveal was the way it returned to the sunny pastoral feeling of the earliest REM albums (and Automatic for the People/Out of Time). That's why I can forgive its many flaws. Around the Sun amplifies all those flaws, and scraps the classic REM pastoral thing. The best song "The Outsiders," could have been good with a less anonymous Dido-ish production job, but Pat McCarthy just seems to love those-- I don't get it, since he did a masterful job with Up and the Waterboys album I have.
Even on "The Outsiders" you've got a major problem when Q-tip rather than Michael Stipe supplies the most moving lyrics and vocals on an REM album. Stipe sounds tired. The band sounds like session musicians. It's just terrible. Even worse than How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, though I guess morally superior since it only sounds like it's trying to sell a lot, but thankfully didn't end up doing it. U2 has been quite a horrible influence on REM this decade, I have to say. They seem to think they can replicate U2's commercial success if only they write equally overproduced, pandering songs, but REM sucks at writing that kind of song, and U2 is quite brilliant at it. I have to give them credit. At least HTDAAB does rock at times, in its dinosaurish way. I can turn off my mind and enjoy bits of it. I'd have to turn off my ears to enjoy Around the Sun, which manages to be anonymously slick and unprofessional at the same time. It's hard to imagine any route out of mediocrity for REM now.
Last edited:
Similar threads
