intedomine
Rock n' Roll Doggie FOB
Absolute bollocks, numbers.
He "came out" in 2001. New Adventures and Up both had relatively average sales. In fact I'd say REM album sales have steadily declined since the lofty heights of Automatic For The People.
REM just became a less and less attractive proposition for mainstream exposure. That's why their commercial success waned. Their image was not congruent with anything capable of such success. Whether Stipe was a known gay or not is irrelevant.
On the other side of the coin, their musical output (since '97) has proved widely unfavourable amongst critics and within channels that are popular with alternative/indie audiences (JJJ in Australia especially).
They got stuck in that vacuum where they weren't commercially exceptional nor critically exceptional... Not that they really seemed to care anyway.
Most artists get into that vacuum. Travis and Strokes are two artists who have similarly experienced such a diminishing. It's just the duration of REM's career and their legendary-ness magnifies their diminishing somewhat.
He "came out" in 2001. New Adventures and Up both had relatively average sales. In fact I'd say REM album sales have steadily declined since the lofty heights of Automatic For The People.
REM just became a less and less attractive proposition for mainstream exposure. That's why their commercial success waned. Their image was not congruent with anything capable of such success. Whether Stipe was a known gay or not is irrelevant.
On the other side of the coin, their musical output (since '97) has proved widely unfavourable amongst critics and within channels that are popular with alternative/indie audiences (JJJ in Australia especially).
They got stuck in that vacuum where they weren't commercially exceptional nor critically exceptional... Not that they really seemed to care anyway.
Most artists get into that vacuum. Travis and Strokes are two artists who have similarly experienced such a diminishing. It's just the duration of REM's career and their legendary-ness magnifies their diminishing somewhat.