R.E.M. part 3

It was in 1987 with the album Document that R.E.M. finally broke through to the mainstream. They managed to do this with a fierce, top quality record.

The record was the first to be co-produced by Scott Litt and the band, a collaboration that brought about the six most popular and quite possibly their best albums. The new production team made the instruments as well as the vocals sound clearer and offered very interesting dynamics.

Returning to Document, the reviews were great, the album finding its way into numerous "best of the 80s" lists: Rolling Stone (#41), Slant (#17) and others. Commercially, it was their first ever album to make the US Top 10 and achieve platinum status. In the UK it went gold.

The Finest Worksong opened the album. it was to be the 3d and final single from this record and the group's highest-charting single in the UK at the time.

Exhuming McCarthy makes an explicit parallel between the red-baiting of Joe McCarthy's time and the strengthening of the sense of American exceptionalism during the Reagan era, especially the Iran-Contra affair. (Remember Oliver North?)

My favorite song from this album and my #3 all-time favorite R.E.M. song is It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine). A stream of consciousness song reminiscent of Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues, it's a song that never fails to lift my spirits. I often need that, believe me!

Berry's drumming has never been more forceful, Mills' background vocals are perfect, Buck's playing a mean guitar and Stipe's vocals had never before been more convincing, or as fast. Don't try this at karaoke, unless you're an expert. Here are the lyrics: on first read, they appear not to mean anything, but if you alllow yourself to get into them, it's very rewarding.

That's great it starts with an earthquake

Birds and snakes and aeroplanes

And Lenny Bruce is not afraid

Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn

World serves it's own needs, dummy serve your own needs

Feed it off an aux speak grunt no

Ladder with a clatter fight, fear flight down height

Wire in a fire representing seven games and a government for hire in a combat site

Left of west and coming in a hurry with the furies breathing down your neck

Team by team reporters baffled, trumped, tethered, cropped

Look at that low playing, fine, then

Uh-oh overflow, population common food, but it'll do

Save yourself, serve yourself, world serves it's own needs

Listen to your heart bleed dummy with the rapture and the revered and the right, right

Vitreolic, patriotic stand, fight, bright, light

Feeling pretty psyched

It's the end of the world as we know it

It's the end of the world as we know it

It's the end of the world as we know it

And I feel fine

Six o'clock TV hour, don't get caught in foreign towers

Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn

Locking in, uniforming, book-burning, blood-letting

Every motive escalate, automotive incinerate

Light a candle, light a votive, step down step down

Watch your heel, crush, crushed uh-oh this means

No fear cavalier, renegade, steer clear

A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies

Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives

And I decline

The other night I dreamt of knives, continental drift divide

Mountains sit in a line, Leonard Bernstein

Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs

Birthday party, cheescake, jellybean, boom

You symbiotic patriotic slam book neck

Right? Right!

The One I Love was the big hit of the album: it made #9 in the US Hot 100 and #11 in Canada. The song features Peter Buck's best guitar work and it's on the subject of manipulation, when "The One I Love" is "A simple prop to occupy my time."

King Of Birds is a complex song, with multi-layered vocals and contemplative lyrics. It's a good example as to why the R.E.M. albums were great: they weren't just 3 good singles and filler, but a collection of fully-realized songs that would unlock their charms upon multiple listens.

The album closes with Oddfellows Local 151. A song of underlying unease, augmented by Mike Mills' menacing bass line.

Frustrated that their records did not see satisfactory overseas distribution, R.E.M. left I.R.S. when their contract expired, right after Document was released, and signed with a major label, Warner Bros. Though other labels offered more money, they were won over by Warner's assurance of total creative freedom.

Green (1988) was the first album they recorded for their new label. It was more electric and more assertive than their previous work. The boys wanted a departure from their trademark sound and they occasionally achieve it. It's an eclectic album, similar to what the Beatles did in The White Album. The record received warm critical reaction and went double-platinum in the US and gold in the UK.

The opening track is Pop Song 89. The video was directed by band frontman Michael Stipe and features him and three women, all of them topless, dancing to the song. When MTV asked Stipe to put censor bars on the three women in the video, he superimposed black bars on the chests of all four dancers, himself included, later stating, "a nipple is a nipple."

Get Up was next: the final single from Green, it failed to chart. This was Stipe's call for Mills, who always seemed to sleep late during their recording sessions, to get up and work.

You Are the Everything was one of the few slow songs in the album. It featured banjo and accordion.

Stand was the most successful song from Green. It was their simplest song, lyrically. It was used as the theme song for the 1990–92 sitcom Get A Life.

World Leader Pretend is a political song and the lyrics deal with one of Stipe's recurring themes: personal responsibility.

Side two has two hard rocking songs, the one after the other: first there's Orange Crush. It was a hit for them.

Finally, Turn You Inside-Out was as intense and carried an environmental message.

Tomorrow we'll have our TV Themes & Statistics and on Monday we'll deal with R.E.M.'s two most important albums: one is among the best albums of all-time and the second contains my favorite R.E.M  song, which is also the best song of the 90s over all. We'll also have a first look at Michael Stipe's sexuality.