Episode 58: R.E.M’s “Out of Time” (1991)

Summary

Episode 58: R.E.M’s “Out of Time” (1991)
Released on January 18, 2025
Host: acceleratedculture
Hosts: Lori & Scott Free

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Introduction

In Episode 58 of the Accelerated Culture podcast, hosts Lori and Scott Free delve deep into R.E.M.'s seminal 1991 album, Out of Time. Celebrated as a pivotal moment in alternative music, this episode explores the album's creation, its standout tracks, and its enduring legacy within the broader context of R.E.M.'s evolution.

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Shout-Outs and Personal Updates

Lori and Scott begin the episode by acknowledging their listeners and patrons. Notable mentions include:

• Paul Mackey (01:30): "I started listening to your show quite recently, so I'm just in the late 80s, but I'm loving what I'm hearing."
• Joe Hedgepith (02:36): Praises the hosts for their research and recommends the podcast to clients.
• Hadiya Biglow (02:40): The newest Patreon subscriber, with exclusive bonus content teased for listeners.

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R.E.M.'s Journey to Out of Time

The discussion traces R.E.M.'s origins back to 1980 in Athens, Georgia. Scott Free narrates the band's formation, highlighting the serendipitous meeting of Michael Stipe and Peter Buck at a record store, leading to the recruitment of Bill Berry and Mike Mills. This camaraderie set the foundation for their unique sound—a blend of Southern gothic tinged power pop and college rock.

Lori adds context about R.E.M.'s classification, noting, "They weren't New Wave, but they weren't not New Wave," emphasizing their distinct identity within the music scene.

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Transition to Warner Brothers and Green Album

After a string of successful releases and a dedicated college radio following, R.E.M. sought greater creative control, leading them to sign with Warner Brothers Records. Although the financial offer ranged between $6 million and $12 million, the allure of complete artistic freedom was paramount.

Scott Free elaborates on the Green album (15:02), describing it as a departure from their earlier work with more political content and experimentation with diverse instrumentation like mandolin and accordion. Despite mixed reception, Green set the stage for the transformative Out of Time.

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In-Depth Album Overview: Out of Time

Released on March 12, 1991, Out of Time marked R.E.M.'s ascent into global stardom. The album spent 109 weeks on the U.S. charts, selling over 18 million copies worldwide and clinching three Grammy Awards in 1992.

Lori cites Rob Sheffield's Rolling Stone article, stating, "R.E.M. reinvented themselves as space folk voyagers...," highlighting the album's thematic and musical evolution towards heartfelt love songs and experimental sounds.

Scott Free notes the extensive use of orchestration, mentioning, "I counted eight tracks total that have an orchestra...," underscoring the album's lush production.

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Track-by-Track Analysis

1. Radio Song (28:01)

• Overview: Opens the album with an unconventional collaboration featuring KRS-One, adding a hip-hop element.
• Quotes:
  • Scott Free: "KRS1 was originally only supposed to sing the hey hey hey on the song."
  • Lori: "It's like Sonic Youth and Chuck D on 'Cool Thing'."
• Analysis: While innovative, the track received mixed reviews for its jarring fusion of genres. The music video was praised for its creative visuals.

2. Losing My Religion (38:24)

• Overview: The breakout single blending mandolin and emotional depth, accompanied by a visually stunning music video.
• Quotes:
  • Scott Free: "Losing My Religion is just... epic."
  • Lori: "Losing My Religion... the title is actually a Southern phrase..."
• Analysis: Lauded as R.E.M.'s most popular song, it encapsulates the album's shift towards personal and introspective themes.

3. Low (50:31)

• Overview: Features Mike Mills on organ and a minimalist bass groove.
• Analysis: An underrated gem that showcases the band's versatility and depth.

4. Near Wild Heaven (52:58)

• Overview: Led by Mike Mills, blending cheerful melodies with underlying relational tension.
• Quotes:
  • Lori: "It's like looking out your window and seeing a perfect sunflower..."
• Analysis: Mixed reception due to its overly cheerful tone juxtaposed with deeper lyrical content.

5. Endgame (60:39)

• Overview: An instrumental track with melodica and flugelhorn, exemplifying the album's experimental edge.
• Analysis: Highlighted for its seamless fit into both the album and live performances like R.E.M. Unplugged.

6. Shiny Happy People (63:37)

• Overview: A collaborative track with Kate Pierson of the B-52s, embodying a bright, upbeat sound that contrasted R.E.M.'s usual tone.
• Quotes:
  • Lori: "Shiny Happy People is really about surly, petty bastards trying to take a chance..."
• Analysis: Polarizing among fans; lauded for its melody and criticized for its lyrical simplicity and overplay on radio.

7. Belong (75:39)

• Overview: A deeply emotional track with spoken word elements about a mother's bond with her child.
• Quotes:
  • Scott Free: "It's about the bond between mother and child, not defenestration."
• Analysis: Celebrated by band members and fans for its poignant lyrics and minimalist instrumentation.

8. Half a World Away (81:30)

• Overview: Another Mike Mills-led song blending personal emotion with intricate instrumentation.
• Analysis: Resonates with listeners for its heartfelt lyrics and complex musical arrangement.

9. Texarkana (84:35)

• Overview: Features Mike Mills on lead vocals with a driving tempo and thematic progression.
• Quotes:
  • Lori: "I get to count it as a number song."
• Analysis: Praised for its lyrical depth and energetic composition, though not universally favored by the hosts.

10. Country Feedback (89:19)

• Overview: A gritty track with pedal steel guitar and sustained feedback, exploring the complexities of a deteriorating relationship.
• Quotes:
  • Lori: "It's about having given up on a relationship."
• Analysis: Highlighted for its raw emotion and departure from typical R.E.M. sounds.

11. Me in Honey (95:38)

• Overview: Concludes the album with a duet featuring Kate Pierson, blending traditional R.E.M. elements with new collaborative textures.
• Quotes:
  • Scott Free: "This song had to be interpreted as Michael's favorite."
• Analysis: Celebrated for its harmonious vocals and fitting closure to the album's diverse soundscape.

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Personal Reflections and Opinions

Throughout the episode, Lori and Scott share their personal connections and critiques of the album:

• Lori expresses a deep appreciation for tracks like "Belong" and "Me in Honey," despite initial reservations about songs like "Shiny Happy People."

  "I have friends who... gave up on the band because of this album. I have others who love it..." (104:01)

• Scott reveres "Losing My Religion" and "Me in Honey" as top favorites, while finding tracks like "Country Feedback" less appealing.

  "I really like Losing My Religion... and me and Honey... are both very excellent songs." (102:25)

• They discuss the album's impact on their perception of R.E.M., acknowledging its role as a turning point that solidified the band's standing in alternative music.

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Conclusions and Legacy

Lori and Scott conclude by reflecting on R.E.M.'s legacy, suggesting that while Out of Time remains a high point, the band's subsequent releases may not have sustained their early momentum. They commend R.E.M. for maintaining artistic integrity and navigating the music industry's challenges on their own terms.

Scott Free notes:

"R.E.M. was among the biggest bands on the planet at the time, and they had earned the right to do whatever they wanted." (105:00)

They also touch upon Michael Stipe's solo endeavors, hinting at future discussions in upcoming episodes.

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Notable Quotes

• Scott Free (00:03): "Welcome to the Accelerated Culture podcast... a walk through an often-ignored bit of music history."

• Lori (04:50): "I would have said R.E.M.'s controversial 1991 album Out of Time, but it made a lot more R.E.M. fans..."

• Scott Free (15:21): "Document was 1987. That was where I came across R.E.M."

• Rob Sheffield (24:26): "R.E.M. reinvented themselves as space folk voyagers..."

• Scott Free (38:24): "Losing My Religion is just... epic."

• Lori (95:38): "It is so very Out of Time era R.E.M. but not in a poppy happy way..."

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Looking Ahead

The episode wraps up with a teaser for the next installment, which will explore the 1991 Trip Hop Classic, Blue Lines by Massive Attack. Listeners are encouraged to tune in in two weeks for another deep dive into alternative music history.

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Tune in to the next episode of Accelerated Culture as Lori and Scott continue their exploration of alternative music's rich tapestry, ensuring you stay connected with the sounds that shaped a generation.

Transcript

[Lori]

Foreign.

[Scott Free]

Welcome to the Accelerated Culture podcast. A sonic journey through the vibrant and revolutionary sounds of the 1980s and 1990s. And now 2024 Webby Honoree for best indie podcast. I'm Lori, along with my co host, Scott Free. And in this podcast we explore how new waves stormed the airwaves in the early 80s and and gave way for the rise of alternative music in the 90s. Find us on the [e-mail] hello, and welcome to another episode of the Accelerated Culture podcast.

[Lori]

I'm Lori and I am Scott Free.

[Scott Free]

We've got a really good episode planned for you today.

[Lori]

We do, we do.

[Scott Free]

How you been, Scott? That's fair, that's fair.

[Lori]

How have you been?

[Scott Free]

Have I been? Well, first week back at classes this week and, you know, it was a little chaotic, but chaotic in a good way. Got a good bunch of students, so I can't complain.

[Lori]

You thrive in chaos and you do love the teaching, so at all. Sounds like a good week for you.

[Scott Free]

Well, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I think it was. All right, so before we get started on the album that we're going to discuss today, Scott, I want to give a couple shouts out.

[Lori]

I like that better than shout outs.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, well, you know, it's grammatical right.

[Lori]

We are, if nothing else, grammatical.

[Scott Free]

Okay. All right, all right, so the first shout out goes to Paul Mackey, who writes, I started listening to your show quite recently, so I'm just in the late 80s, but I'm loving what I'm hearing. So welcome aboard.

[Lori]

Get ready, Paul Mackey. It gets way better once you hit 1990.

[Scott Free]

That's when I come on, Paul, thanks for reaching out. Thanks for listening and we hope you continue to enjoy the show.

[Lori]

Oh, wow. Paul won't even hear that until I've already done like 20 episodes, so whatever. Hey, Paul, thanks for royal. Thanks for catching up.

[Scott Free]

All right, the next person is someone we've mentioned on the show before, Joe Hedgepith. He commented on episode 56, which was the White Room by KLF. I love this.

[Lori]

Getting some good feedback on that one from my own friends, but what do you got?

[Scott Free]

Good. Well, Joe says, holy shmoly. I knew so very little of any of that. I loved the episode. I love how you both put forth so much time into your research. I have recommended this one to so many of my clients. You two are brilliant in all that gobbledygook.

[Lori]

Oh, wow. Yeah, brilliant.

[Scott Free]

Yeah.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Scott Free]

Well, yeah, thanks, Joe. And then one last shout out to Hadiya Biglow, who is our newest patreon subscriber. Thanks for your support and Hadiya, I've been trying to reach you to get your address so I can send you some swag. So if you get this, please message me back on Patreon. And speaking of Patreon, besides some cool swag that we have going out, we also have some some bonus content that is only available to our Patreon subscribers. And for this episode, we're going to have at least two little bonus bits exclusively for our subscribers. So check us out patreon.com acceleratedculturepodcast and for as little as five bucks a month, you can become a Patreon supporter.

[Lori]

Do it. Do it. All right, so what are we doing?

[Scott Free]

Well, so I chose the album this week.

[Lori]

You did?

[Scott Free]

I did. And we are reviewing REM's 1991 album, out of Time.

[Lori]

I would have said REM's controversial 1991 album out of Time, but it turns out it was pretty much only controversial amongst a very small subset of REM fans and in fact made a lot more REM fans out of people who didn't know them than it. Lost amongst old stodgy diehards.

[Scott Free]

Are you an old stodgy Die Hard?

[Lori]

I. You know, I. Before this week, I would have said I was. Okay, we'll talk about my own personal arc later.

[Scott Free]

All right, well, you know, I'm thinking about this time period, 1990, 1991, and I was in my goth phase. Well, I guess I'm still kind of in my goth phase, but I was in a pool hall in Plano, Illinois, which back then was basically farm country. Now it started to build up a little bit, but I was wearing a Cure Disintegration shirt, and a woman came up to me and said, oh, the Cure. What's that? And I said, oh, it's New Wave. And she goes, oh, like rem.

[Lori]

So, like, here's the thing. REM was always its own weird thing. Like they were this southern fried, jangly, but Southern gothic tinged power pop college rock band. And as such, there was no place for them to get played except for the New wave stations. And so they kind of got lumped in with that. Despite the complete lack of synthesizers or electronic anything but they were their own thing that got embraced by the New wave crowd in no small part also because, as we'll talk about shortly, they were signed to IRS Records, and so that put them in good company for that crowd. So they weren't New Wave, but they weren't not New wave. Right.

[Scott Free]

All right, that's fair. That's Fair. So our story begins in 1980 at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. An art student named Michael Stipe was a lead singer of a band called Gangster. It was a, like, 60s 70s covers band to go along with the gangster idea. He was Michael Valentine and used to wear, like, the fedora and stuff. And it was just really weird for me trying to picture Michael Stipe in that kind of a gangster mode. But he was hanging out at a record store where a guy named Peter Buck worked, and they realized that they had very similar eclectic tastes in music because Michael was buying all of the albums that Peter had put on hold for himself. Bands like Television, the New York Dolls, the Heartbreakers, Richard Helen, the Voidoids. And so Peter and Michael bonded. When Peter wasn't busy with customers or reading comic books behind the counter, he'd sometimes sit there strumming an acoustic guitar. So one day Michael asked him, are you in a band? And Peter responded, guys in bands are usually assholes, and I don't want to become an asshole. And of course, that made Michael laugh because, you know, he's the lead singer of this band. Peter suggested that he and Michael should hang out, have a few beers, write some songs together, and see how it worked out.

[Lori]

So they were how old at this point?

[Scott Free]

Michael was 20 and Peter would have been 24.

[Lori]

Okay. All right. So the old guy working in the record store joins college band or forms a college band.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, yeah, in a manner of speaking. So Peter had just moved into a deconsecrated church that had been converted into apartments. The apartments were used mostly for the college students. The sanctuary area was walled off. It was vacant, and the only way you could access it was through a crawl space.

[Lori]

Oh, wow.

[Scott Free]

And of course, you know the acoustics in a church are meant for music, right?

[Lori]

Sure. But, like, huge reverb and muffled everything, which makes their early demos make so much more sense now.

[Scott Free]

Okay, Well, I mean, it definitely turned out to be a great place for a band to rehearse. Right. Another person that lived in this same deconsecrated church was a woman named Kathleen O'Brien. And she had heard Peter playing his guitar through the walls because the walls were pretty thin. She knew another University of Georgia student named Bill Barry, who played drums. Bill had worked for a concert booking agency for a few months, and he planned to study law as a way to get into the music business. So Kathleen introduced Bill to Peter, and they hit it off. According to author Peter Ames Carlin, in the book, the name of this band is R.E.M. they talked about Bands, of course. And if Peter's knowledge of the British punk scene was hard to beat, Bill knew who managed them, when and where they had toured in America, and in some cases, how well they had drawn.

[Lori]

Whoa.

[Scott Free]

Right. So, I mean, we definitely had two like minds here. So Catherine was instrumental in getting Bill and Peter together, and she was also present when Peter introduced Bill to Michael Stipe. Now, a few nights later, the guys were at a nightclub and Bill introduced Michael and Peter to his bass player friend, Mike Mills. Michael Stipes reaction upon first seeing Michael Mills was quote, no fucking way.

[Lori]

How's that?

[Scott Free]

Well, I guess Mike Mills was wearing bell bottoms, thick glasses, he had like a nerdy haircut. He was also falling over drunk, slurring his words. Apparently he belched in Michael's face. Yeah, he was kind of a mess that first night that they met him. But Bill and Mike had been best friends for a long time. So Bill reassured Michael and Peter that Mike was a fantastic bassist. He said, he'll sober up, then you'll like him. So Michael and Peter decided to give Mike Mills a chance. They used that church sanctuary as a practice space. And they realized that together they really did seem to have something very special. So on April 5, 1980, at Kathy O'Brien's birthday party at the same church, they had their first live performance.

[Lori]

Right on. Yeah, yeah. And the rest is history. That's 1980, of course.

[Scott Free]

I'm sure you know the story of how REM Came up with the band name, right?

[Lori]

You would be surprised. I do not.

[Scott Free]

Well, apparently Michael Stipe just randomly put his finger on a page in the dictionary.

[Lori]

Ah, the classics.

[Scott Free]

Yes. Now I remember, Scott, when you were my typography teacher long ago, in a galaxy far, far away. And I remember you were teaching us about Dada, the Dada movement, and you said that that's how they chose the name, that they just randomly put a finger on a dictionary word and they got Dada. And I don't know if you remember, because I think this was like one of the first times I met you. I blurted out, I thought that was how the Pixies came up with their name.

[Lori]

It is a tried and true method for coming up with rando band names or movement names, as it were.

[Scott Free]

Yes. So, okay, so what you got?

[Lori]

Right, well, the first show, as you mentioned, was April 5, 1980, 1981. They released their first single, Radio Free Europe, on Hibtone Records and are quickly signed by classic 80s indie record label IRS Records. They released their debut EP, Chronic Town, on IRS Records in 1982 and their debut album Murmur in 1983. They release a string of albums in the 80s, pretty much every year of the 80s that our stone Cold Classics, as we mentioned earlier, develops a following on college radio, and they tour relentlessly in support of those albums. For the 80s. This is a hardworking band. Those albums create one of the most consistent soundtracks of my own teenage years. Just a string of solid records, each one generally better than the one before it. Reckoning, which featured Southern Central Rain, which started to get a little bit of play on mtv. Fables of the Reconstruction, which had Can't Get There From Here, which was regularly featured on IRS's the Cutting Edge, a show on MTV. I want to say Sunday nights, sort of the precursor to 120 minutes, but it was IRS specific. Life's rich pageant. This one was hugely important. Amongst my gang of guys in high school, driving around, drinking. I'm sorry, we can admit this now. The statute of limitations has long since passed. Driving around, drinking and singing Life's rich Pageant at the top of our lungs. Amazing stuff. Dead Letter Office, a B Sides and Rarities compilation and Document, which contains two pretty big singles for them that started to cross over, break through and make people take notice of them. Those singles being the One I Love and it's the End of the World as We Know it and I Feel Fine, both of which were getting quite a bit of play on MTV.

[Scott Free]

Document, that was 1987. That was where I came across REM. My mother had the CD and I. I stole it from her. Sorry, mom, if you're listening, but that's kind of where I came in. So I was a little bit later to the party than you, so.

[Lori]

Well, I mean, that was a good place to come on. That album was odd and great and sing alongable. I can again tell you from driving around with my friends. Thanks for all the rides, Jim and Joe. Hopefully you're listening. Okay, so I just recently came out about this podcast that is to my high school friends. We have an ongoing perpetual Facebook messenger group chat and one of the friends in that had been pointing out to me in our own personal text messages that I had never told them that I have a podcast. And what's up with that? That it's pretty good. And I'm like, oh, well, I. I suppose I. I suppose I should mention it to the guys because they're the guys who I grew up listening to this music with. They have all started listening now. And so, yeah, Jim and Joe, thanks for all the times driving around in Your car listening to Life's Rich Pageant and Document, in particular, Jim and Joe.

[Scott Free]

And and Scott's high school friends. Feel free to write in and tell me some stories about what he used to do.

[Lori]

Oh, most of the stories are about them. I was the client.

[Scott Free]

Okay. All right.

[Lori]

Right. Document. Great album. Getting quite a bit of play on mtv, if not on radio, but college radio still loved them. And as alternative stations were now starting to pop up, that's where they were getting their airplay. What they weren't getting was a lot of support from IRS Records, parent company mca. And the band was starting to get frustrated. They were doing okay sales wise in the US but getting very little support outside the US So the record sales really weren't what they could be. And so having fulfilled the terms of their contract with Document, they started shopping themselves around to other record companies, basically anyone who would listen. And they started getting offers, and those offers started getting pretty big. And they took an offer that was not the biggest in terms of money, but that did assure them complete creative control over their output. And that was with Warner Brothers Records. So they sign with Warner Brothers Records. As I said, not the most lucrative deal that they could have signed, not the biggest money offer that they signed were given. Reports vary, but it's somewhere between 6 million and $12 million record deal. But the money was not the point, although it's a pretty nice point. The point was the complete creative control over their output. Complete creative freedom, which, you know, they immediately took advantage of in the form of their first Warner Brothers release, 1988's Green. Green was a remarkable album for R.E.M. for a couple of reasons. They went significantly harder on political content and particularly a message of environmentalism. To some people's minds, this was preachy, but this was also a time where that intersection between rock and politics was really starting to ramp up. And REM Was actually instrumental in the Rock the Vote movement, which was so big at the time, using records to get young people to register to vote. The other reason Green was notable was for it being such a departure from their earlier work. Musically, Green featured a lot more, and this is a quote just from the Wikipedias, major key rock songs. As well as experimenting with instrumentation beyond their traditional guitar based drums, vocals thing, they had rootier acoustic stuff, especially featuring mandolin and accordion, as well as the occasional cello or steel guitar. Michael Stipe actually told Rolling Stone magazine's David Fricke at the time of Green's release, it's not a rock album. After the Green tour, the other guys just got really tired of playing their own instruments, so they all jumped on each other's instruments. Green was also notable for producing two big hits, Orange Crush and Stand. For a lot of people, Green was disjointed. They didn't necessarily love the experimentation that the band did, being so used to the jangly guitar, college rock, radio friendly stuff the band had been producing for almost a decade at this point. And for others, the singles particularly, particularly Stand stood out Pardon the Pawn as being incongruous with the band. The rest of the band's catalog and even Michael Stipe recognized this. I saw the band on the Green tour in Detroit and Michael Stipe introduced the song by saying, this is the dumbest song of this decade and then launched into standard. And he wasn't wrong. I love Green. I think it is an amazing album except for a couple duds on it. But the acoustic work, especially bringing in the mandolin. They had originally planned to have two distinct sides to the album. The first side being electric rock work and the second side being acoustic rootsy stuff. They ended up not having enough of the acoustic stuff to be able to pull that off. But still, it is a thread and a significant portion of the album. And I really loved that stuff when it came out. So both of those things set the stage. That is to say both the mercilessly poppy and arguably dumb big singles, as well as the rootsier acoustic experimental, at least for REM stuff, sets the stage then for this today's episode. Out of time.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, what you had mentioned, Scott, about how they were kind of mixing things up and switching instruments. We're going to encounter a lot of that on this album. I guess it's a way to keep things fresh, you know. But I think it also speaks to the talent, the musical talent of these guys because I don't know many people that can go comfortably from drums to organ or from bass to. These are four very, very talented musicians that they can manage to do that.

[Lori]

Oh yeah. They're so comfortable playing together with each other by this point that, yeah, they could fill in the gaps. If one of them was playing not their primary instrument, but a new one, the rest of the band definitely had the ability to fill it in, flesh it out as well. As, as I mentioned, the unlimited creative control and big budget they now had being on Warner Brothers Records where they could fill in those gaps with other players, one of whom was an on and off touring guitar player for them on the Green tour. And that was of course Peter Hulls, apple of the dbs, legendary indie rock Band, the dbs, who was playing guitar and sometimes keyboard, making the band able to make a deeper sound, full of lush textures as well as, as we'll talk about, particularly on out of Time, a penchant for strings. They do not skimp on the string sections on this album.

[Scott Free]

No, that's definitely true. I counted eight tracks total that have an orchestra, four violinists, two cellists, two viola players, string arrangements by Mark Bingham, and an orchestral liaison.

[Lori]

Yeah, and one of the songs, a song that absolutely everybody on earth knows at this point, the biggest R.E.M single to date when it came out, has the Atlanta Symphonic Orchestra on it. So budget not a problem for REM at this point. Yes. And yeah, they really. They really go to town with it. I will be quoting several different articles as we talk about out of Time, but one of them that I will keep going back to is an article by Rob Sheffield in Rolling stone magazine, How R.E.M. invented the 90s without of Time. Oh, so good quote from that one right here. RM Reinvented themselves as space folk voyagers, with Peter Buck playing mandolin and Michael Stipe brooding. The music crashed into new musical territory with Stipe's most passionate vocals. He called it an album of love songs. As he told Rolling Stone, love songs are one thing I've never tackled, at least upfront love songs. It was a big step thematically.

[Scott Free]

You know, you mentioned, like, kind of political undertones and leanings of some of the previous albums. That's not true.

[Lori]

Particularly Green and Document. Yeah, yeah. Or that it was just Southern strange. A lot of carnivals and traveling salesmen pedaling weird wares and trains and fields and hunting and fishing. Like it was Southern odd. And this became an album of heartfelt love songs, among other things.

[Scott Free]

Absolutely. So out of Time was the seventh studio album that the band released on March 12, 1991, as you mentioned on Warner Brothers Records. It spent 109 weeks on the US album charts with two separate spells at number one. The album has sold more than four and a half million copies in the United States, 18 million copies worldwide. It won three Grammy Awards in 1992. One is Best Alternative Music Album, and two for its first single, which we're going to talk about shortly.

[Lori]

Also, and this is notable for their music videos, which they made a lot of. I believe nine out of the 11 tracks on this album had music videos, and some of them are absolutely astounding, including one for the huge single.

[Scott Free]

Yes, I remember, Scott, when this came out, there was a rumor that the reason they called the album out of Time was because they were under pressure from the record label to get this album released and they didn't have a name for it. I could not find anything to back that up. So I have absolutely no way of knowing whether that's true or not. But I distinctly remember hearing that from a couple sources when this album came out.

[Lori]

So an old boss of mine used to say, don't let the truth get in the way of a good story.

[Scott Free]

Mark Twain. It was Mark Twain.

[Lori]

Yeah, Carl, you ripped off Mark Twain.

[Scott Free]

Oh.

[Lori]

That actually tracks. Anyway, there's actually a lot to talk about in this album worth noting. That it was recorded at Bearsville Studio in Woodstock, upstate New York, and that it was mixed at Paisley Park Studios in Minneapolis, which you devoted listeners, of course know, being music nerds that you are, was Prince's recording studio. And the band, as I read on the Wikipedias, would hang out with Prince and during breaks between songs, watch Prince playing basketball, which I love, and spare no expense.

[Scott Free]

Right, yeah, right, Right again.

[Lori]

Must be nice having that complete creative control and the budget that lets you be like, yeah, let's let Prince mix it. Or Prince's people at the very least.

[Scott Free]

Yeah.

[Lori]

Another quote that I think speaks to the ambition that they had in the experimentation of this album, how confident they were with the final product. Michael Stipe predicted it's probably going to redefine pop history. So that seems like as good a point as any to get into the track by track. And where better to start than track one Radio Song.

I can't hear it. When I got to the house and I called you out I could tell she had been crying Crying it's that same sing song on the radio. Makes me sad. I met to turn it off to say goodbye to leaving Quiet Radio Song.

Okay, so imagine you are an RM Die Hard fan and have loved them from the beginning and you followed their arc as jangly college rock band to kind of experimental, sometimes rootsy, but sometimes pop friendly rock band on green. And you buy the album as I did on CD in the special edition odd package with all kinds of amazing graphic design that tied together with black ribbons. And it was a whole incredible package. And you pull out the CD and it has no print on it. It is just simulated wood grain printed on the cd and you put it in and out comes track one Radio Song. And your reaction is, what the fuck is this? I mean, here's the thing. I also, throughout the 80s and here now in the early 90s, was a huge hip hop fan. While Boogie Down Productions wasn't necessarily My favorite hip hop outfit of the time. You had to have respect for KRS1. He's an amazing emcee. He's a smart guy. And he was just known for his artistic integrity and cred.

[Scott Free]

And then Peter Buck explained to guitar school in 1991. When we got to the studio, we added drums and I put down some funk guitars. So there's that Paisley park influence again. Right. And we thought, well, gee, now it's kind of a funk song. And Michael suggested bringing in KRS since he'd worked with him before.

[Lori]

The song has a really solid groove, particularly that organ part.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. Mike Mills, the bassist, is playing the organ on this one. And they brought in Peter Holsapple, who you mentioned earlier, to play the bass guitar.

[Lori]

There we go. So solid. Let's see here. I have actually good quote from guitar.com about the guitars. Peter Buck's chiming arpeggio opening. A pretty typical REM sound is replaced by a surprisingly funky feel. Swirling organs and. And choppy rhythm playing. And then, you know, the vocals. It's Michael Stipes vocals. Cool, fine. It's an okay song in a pretty cool instrumental groove. And then there are these occasional interjections. Hey, hey, hey. And there's an occasional yeah or Huh.

[Scott Free]

KRS1 was originally only supposed to sing the hey hey hey on the song. But he was inspired to write a rap that summed up the message of the song. That feeling it, huh, man.

[Lori]

Well, here's the thing. The. The groove itself is very. Not REM but cool. Yeah. KRS was brought in for the hey hey heys. And that's fine. Like it's like what is. What is KRS1 doing on this album? But okay, sure, I guess we can just go with it. And then KRS at the tail end of the song gets one verse. Really more of a. Just a coda. And it's just like meh at best. A great point was made by Lou Thomas in a 2007 review of out of Time, a review on BBC Co UK radio. Song seems like a missed opportunity at this distance. Why get then massive rapper krs1 to join you in the studio and then barely use him until the tunes fade and the verse is. Sorry. The verse that he's spitting is just eh. I don't know. I. It was just. It. It was such a jarring opening to the album and it just totally underutilized KRS1. And it was just. In a lot of ways. You know what it reminds me of?

[Scott Free]

What's that?

[Lori]

It reminds me of another crazy Bananas hip hop rock collaboration that we talked about on this very show, Sonic Youth and Chuck D. Cool Thing, I believe.

[Scott Free]

Oh, I don't know. You're the Chuck D guy.

[Lori]

I mean, we talked about it on Sonic Hughes.

[Scott Free]

I'm supposed to remember this?

[Lori]

Yes, you're supposed to remember Sonic Youth, Chuck D on Cool Thing where once again, he's just kind of there, occasionally interjecting, not even quite commenting on the actual song. And it just feels a little tacked on. I guess that's my issue is it feels tacked on throughout the song and then the one meh verse that he does is just kinda there and fades out where they're like, yeah, we're not even gonna bother with this. And then it's done. So as an album opener, it was jarring. And if you read reviews, to this day, it is generally panned. As an album opener, this album is lauded as a turning point in REM's career, as a massive, if not game changing, incredibly notable album of the time. But this track, not the highlight.

[Scott Free]

Okay. I didn't care for it back in 91, but it has grown on me and it is a fun song. It is fun to listen to. Scott Litt, who was the producer of the album, told Mojo magazine that they had originally taken a James Brown beat and used that as the backing track and had the band play over it. But then when they went to release it, they took out the James Brown sample and Scott Litt said, I'm kind of down on myself for that. Looking back, I wish we kept it on.

[Lori]

Honestly. I think having an actual sampled, looped hip hop beat or funk beat turned into a hip hop beat might actually improve it for me.

[Scott Free]

Oh, okay.

[Lori]

At least make it feel like the hip hop thing is trying to do. It would still be jarring, but it wouldn't make KRS1 feel so tacked on.

[Scott Free]

I gotcha. Then some other things that I noticed that are a little bit unusual for REM songs. Saxophone. REM is not exactly known for saxophones.

[Lori]

They're not a sax band.

[Scott Free]

No, no. So this is a player named Kid Jordan and he's actually playing three different saxes. The alto sax, the tenor sax, and the baritone sax. You got all three on this song, Right.

[Lori]

On one man horn section. I can respect that. Tough to pull up in concert.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. And then also they brought in Ralph Jones on the double bass. So not only do we have the bass guitar, but we have the double bass.

[Lori]

Worth noting that this song is one of the nine that did have a video and the video is actually pretty good. I had forgotten about it. And while the song itself, I've already made my feelings clear about it, watching the video, it's actually pretty cool. There's a lot of projected film or video and the band holding pieces of paper up so that the projections of them are on the paper in front of them. KRS1 does appear in the video and you know, he's. He's cool. Video worth watching. If you have not seen it before, check it out.

[Scott Free]

All right. This was the fourth single released off of the album. It was released on November 4, 1991, five days before my 18th birthday.

[Lori]

Nice.

[Scott Free]

If you're keeping track. And you know what we neglected to mention, Scott, when we started the track by track?

[Lori]

What?

[Scott Free]

The first side was called the time side.

[Lori]

Ah, yes. So again, much like with many of REM's early releases, they did not do a side B side or side one, side two, they would have a side or another side or left side or right side, that sort of thing. So this was the beginning of the time side.

[Scott Free]

Correct.

[Lori]

And later in the album we'll get to a different side.

[Scott Free]

Anything else?

[Lori]

I feel like I've already said too much.

[Scott Free]

I get what you were doing, but now I'm trying to think of a witty, witty retort and I got nothing. So, as usual, well, thank you. Thank you.

[Lori]

Your response? I think I've said too much. And you would say something along the lines of, so nothing has changed, but whatever.

[Scott Free]

But I was trying to come up with something for Losing my religion because, oh no, I've said too much. Isn't that what you were getting at? I thought that's what you were getting at.

[Lori]

Oh, that just happens by accident.

[Scott Free]

Okay. All right, well, let's listen to track two. Losing my Religion.

[Lori]

Oh no, I've said too much. I set it up. That's me in the corner. That's me in the spot. Like loose in my religion trying to keep. And I don't know if I can do it oh no, I said too much I haven't said enough I thought that I heard you laughing I thought that I heard you sing I think I thought I saw you try.

[Scott Free]

See here, I thought you were being clever, Scott.

[Lori]

Oh, no, I'm not that clever. So I. I know I talk about tonal whiplash a fair amount, but God damn. Going from radio song to losing my religion. Yeah, that is a hard left turn.

[Scott Free]

Yes. So this was the first single off of the album. It actually predated the album released on February 19, 1991. So much we can say about this one. I mean, I've got like a page of notes just on this song.

[Lori]

You know, I wasn't even going to write anything about this song because this is one of those for me and I think for everybody.

[Scott Free]

You.

[Lori]

You have heard this song so many times, and you have probably seen the video so many times that you can just hit play in your head and hear the song note for note, front to back.

[Scott Free]

Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

[Lori]

It has never left rotation on a lot of radio stations in this country.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. And I mean, I still remember the first time I heard it. I was at my grandmother's. It was early morning, I was getting ready for school. And I remember this video came on. I was just completely transfixed. The video, directed by Tarsem Singh, it features a lot of religious imagery. And I remember my grandmother, who was a devout Catholic, being very upset by some of the imagery in the video.

[Lori]

Which is weird because a lot of that imagery is taken from classical religious painting. Like, there are direct homages to Italian painter Caravaggio in there.

[Scott Free]

Yes.

[Lori]

But then also some Indian religious imagery. Also a little bit of Russian constructivism in there with the Russian workers with the black hats and like, it's a really, really beautiful video.

[Scott Free]

Oh, it's gorgeous.

[Lori]

Sorry, Grandma.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, yeah, sorry. So according to the director, Tarsem Singh, the video was modeled after a Gabriel Garcia Marquez short story called A Very Old man with Enormous Wings, in which an angel crashes into a town. And the villagers have varied reactions to him.

[Lori]

Oh, yeah. And some. I mean, yeah. Some of the specific images from the video are so memorable. The old man angel with white hair, and the angels are grappling with him and the wig comes off and he is now an even older looking old man angel. At one point, he has a huge wound in his abdomen and another one of the men puts his finger into it and it's just like, oh, gnarly, but also so striking.

[Scott Free]

And consider this. I mean, that was the line. Consider this. And he points to the angel in the wound and. Yeah, right.

[Lori]

As well as Michael Stipes. Just very distinctive style of dancing.

[Scott Free]

Well, okay, so the interesting thing about this is originally the idea was he wasn't supposed to move at all. And as a matter of fact, I think he had wanted to do something closer to Sinead O'Connor. Nothing compares to you where you're just singing to the camera.

[Lori]

Right.

[Scott Free]

But that wasn't working, so there was no, like, actual choreography. Michael Stone.

[Lori]

Oh, clearly.

[Scott Free]

Well, he just let the spirit move him and he says, that his dancing in that video is a mashup of Sinead O'Connor's Emperor's New Clothes video and David Burns dancing in the Once in a Lifetime video. And I can see similarities to both.

[Lori]

Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

[Scott Free]

Yes.

[Lori]

You know, musically and lyrically, there's so much to dig into in this song. There's a great quote from Michael Stipe in the Guardian. I had a pretty clear idea of what I was good at and how I could manifest that, but also the power of the word. Losing my religion was instinct.

[Scott Free]

Peter Buck, he wrote, the music was written in five minutes. The first time the band played it, it fell into place perfectly. Michael had the lyrics within the hour. And while playing the song for the third or fourth time, I found myself incredibly moved to hear the vocals in conjunction with the music. To me, losing My religion feels like some kind of archetype that was floating around in space that we managed to lasso. If only all songwriting was this easy.

[Lori]

One of the lines that sticks out like a hurt, lost and blinded fool. Fool. You hear it and you're like, that is just such a weird Michael Stipian mumble pronunciation of foolish fool. But it is actually full. It doesn't just sound like foal, it's full. A hurt, lost and blinded foal. Like a young horse. I've read this as do not believe the transliterations. That that is the actual lyric. I can either confirm or deny. I haven't talked to Michael Stipe personally about it yet, but that is what I have read.

[Scott Free]

So, Michael, if you're listening, let us interview you about this.

[Lori]

Please, please have your people contact our people. Lori, contact Laurie. She's our people. Other things about the lyrics I remember distinctly from MTV at the time, as the video was getting absolutely huge and they were interviewing the band. A clip where they were interviewing Michael Stipe about it. And the question posed was, we look at these lyrics about losing my religion, and that's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight. Are you talking about disillusionment with fame and that you don't want to be in the spotlight anymore? And Michael Stipe in this interview, says, honestly, they're just lyrics. They're just words. I'm not talking about my life. It fit in the meter. And so I went with it. It could just as easily have been, that's me in the driveway.

[Scott Free]

Interestingly enough, about that particular part I had read, and I wish I had saved this in my notes, but I had read that the initial lyrics were, that's me in the corner. That's me in the kitchen. And that he was saying something about it was about being really shy and not being able to approach somebody that you like.

[Lori]

Right. So, yeah, people made it into this song about fame, and it could have been any phrase that fit in there, but Losing My Religion, the title is actually a Southern phrase that was used in terms of anger or frustration. Michael Stipe told Bearsville studio manager Ian Kimmet in Pitchfork. He said for him, the song was an overture for unrequited love.

[Scott Free]

There you go. There you go. The equivalent for us Midwesterners, or at least urban Midwesterners, is losing your shit.

[Lori]

Yeah, there you go. Yeah.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. Obviously, we've talked about the mandolin. That's guitarist Peter Buck. They brought in the touring guitarist again, Peter Holsapple, for acoustic guitar, because they realized it was still missing something with the mandolin. So they have that acoustic guitar. Mike Mills, the bassist now, he wrote a bass line for this song that was supposedly Inspired by John McVie of Fleetwood Mac. And Mike Mills is actually playing string synthesizer on this song.

[Lori]

And it's that changing of instrumentation that actually made the song possible. You talked a little bit about Peter Buck and how quickly the song was written. Buck said of the composition. I'm a decent guitar player. So this from guitar.com a review by Gary Walker on March 31st of 2021. The Genius of Out of Time by R.E.M. i'm a decent guitar player, he said with remarkable understatement. But when I switched to mandolin, everything's different. I probably wouldn't have written the chords for Losing My Religion the Way They Were had I not played it on a mandolin. So, you know, this whole. The whole experimenting and getting out of their comfort zones actually made this music, particularly this song that has become ubiquitous and kind of universally loved, unless you're sick of it, in which case. But it was a direct result of that experimentation with different instruments. In composing the actual chord progressions, he talked about the verses. The verses are the kind of thing that REM uses a lot, going from one minor key to another, explained Buck. You can't really say anything bad about E minor, A minor, D and G. They're just good chords. Freaking love that.

[Scott Free]

This is really an unusual song, especially for it getting as much radio airplay as it did, because it doesn't follow a traditional structure. There's really no chorus.

[Lori]

Yeah, I mean, the chorus is the beginning of the verse, really. That's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight that's the part that People think of as the chorus that. That was just a dream is more of a bridge to then the chorus. That's me in the corner. That's me in the spotlight. Yeah. Interesting. I hadn't really thought of it that way, but it is mostly versey.

[Scott Free]

Yeah.

[Lori]

Versus.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. Also, Scott, you had mentioned earlier the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and this is the track that they're featured on. The strings were arranged by Mark Bingham and this was their highest charting hit in the United States. It reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100 and really just kind of shot them into the stratosphere.

[Lori]

I think we've said what we can say about that one. Which brings us to track three. Low.

Morning suits me fine I've been so happy happy Way up high high in, in between down below Low low low low low low I sk. It seems so silly.

Okay, so low. This is another one with Mike Mills on organ. This time we have Peter Halse Apple on bass and Bill Barry on congas. So drummond, just a different kind of drum. The bass and congas open with this mid tempo groove. Mike Mill's organ. All of this hanging together as a sort of minimal background for Michael Stipe's vocals that are mic'd really close. And right up front, Peter Buck's guitars are just barely there and usually picked in time with the bass kind of in unison. But then they really come out at the chorus a lot bigger and crunchier.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, this one's a good one. I think this is a really underrated song. Besides the instrumentation that you've already mentioned, we also have Ralph Jones again on double bass, and Kid Jordan, our saxophonist, is on bass clarinet. So we have all of these bass instruments, these instruments in the lower range. And Michael's voice is also a lot lower. I mean, he's like literally singing low in a low voice.

[Lori]

Right. A lot of bass things happening in that groove. But that really lets Mike Mills organ shine. The lyrics, I think they do play with this idea of low. One passage that I really dig. Night suits me fine and morning suits me fine I've been so happy Way up high high but it's sung in a song that's practically a dirge and it's sung low. You just kind of got to like that irony.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. So, I mean, this is, I think one of the longer songs on the album is. All right, yeah, four, four minutes, 55 seconds.

[Lori]

Not terribly long as far as they go, but you know, a solid five minute pop song.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. And REM's not really known for epic long songs. Not like The Cure.

[Lori]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it is an unusual song for them, but, you know, this is one that wouldn't have been too out of place on Green, but very unlike anything that happened during the IRS years.

[Scott Free]

That's all we got on that one.

[Lori]

I feel like that'll do it.

[Scott Free]

Okay, so the next song is Near Wild Heaven.

[Lori]

Whenever we hold each other we hold each each other There's a feeling that's gone Something has gone wrong and I don't know how much longer I can take it House made of heartbreaking Take my head in your hands and shake it in this year Wild heaven not there and I.

Right Near Wild Heaven is unusual but not unheard of in REM's catalog as it features Mike Mills as the lead vocalist. He also co wrote this song and this was the first REM single that was co written by Mike Mills.

[Scott Free]

Right. Now, he had sung previously on I Am Superman, but that was a cover that wasn't an original. And you know, it's interesting because Michael Stipe and Mike Mills have very similar sounding voices, at least in this range. So, like, I didn't realize that this was Mike Mills initially. When I heard it, I just thought it was Michael Stipe. Oh, and also on vocals, backing vocals by Kate Pearson of the B52s, another Athens, Georgia band.

[Lori]

It's subtle. Like you wouldn't necessarily know unless you were listening for it. Unlike a couple songs later in the album where you definitely know where she is. Right out there singing her heart out.

[Scott Free]

Yes. And I wouldn't have known if I hadn't read it in the liner notes, to be honest. Yeah.

[Lori]

Also features Barry Sacks, once again by Kid Jordan. And again, I had to listen pretty hard to hear that, but okay.

[Scott Free]

Bill Barry, the drummer, is actually playing piano on this one. Unusual it is. And we have Ralph Jones on double bass again. Shout out to Ralph.

[Lori]

There you go. This song once again, if you were on the REM train throughout the 80s up until this point, this is one that probably threw you kind of like it threw me. It is just so damn cheery. Like, this band had some jangly, poppy stuff in the style of the Birds, but as I mentioned earlier, there was always this Southern, weird kind of dark edge to it. Maybe not always, but most of the time. But this song is just mercilessly cheery.

[Scott Free]

Well, yes and no.

[Lori]

Well, I mean, tonally, yes.

[Scott Free]

It's bouncy, especially that. You know what?

[Lori]

Yeah, but how not please.

[Scott Free]

Well, okay. Like the lyrics. Whenever we hold each other, we hold each other. There's a feeling that's going Something has gone wrong and I don't know how much longer I can take it House made of heart Break it take my head in your hands and shake it in this near wild heaven not near enough so it's it's bittersweet. On its surface, it seems like a really catchy love song, but when you dig into the lyrics, you know, it seems like it's a relationship that's going wrong.

[Lori]

All right, I I like it a little better now okay musically, from the guitar.com article that I cited earlier, Near Wild Heaven is less celebrated, but masterful nonetheless. Filled with joyous west coast harmonies and the unmistakable sound of Peter Buck's Rickenbacher, it brings an element of levity to a record that elsewhere broods and simmers. Except for where it definitely doesn't. We'll talk about that soon. There are those who love it. That guitar.com review is pretty glowing. Similarly, effusively praiseful for this One was a 2007 BBC review by Lou Thomas Near Wild Heaven is a glorious good time blast of sunshine that recalls both the Cure in a light mood although from the 2007 context we can talk about the Cure in a light mood because they were pretty dark up until the 90s. And the birds. It's like looking out your window and seeing a perfect sunflower nodding at you in the summer breeze. And you know, musically it does feel that cheery. As you said. Lyrically, there's other stuff going on. There are others, including myself, who found that level of cheer on an RM album not entirely welcome.

[Scott Free]

Well, just wait. Two tracks. Just all right, just you wait.

[Lori]

Perry Gettleman from the Orlando Sentinel in a review when the album came out, said Near Wild Heaven already overdoes the contrast, but between dark edged lyrics and a light hearted melody by folding Mike Mills's lead vocal into a sugary arrangement, adding strings to the recipe like putting frosting on a cherry pie. Those Ba Ba Ba bahs in particular, I think are what puts it over the top in just too damn cheery and saccharine for some people's tastes, and I probably include myself among them earlier. The guitar.com review that I cited talks about joyous west coast harmonies, and I think we're talking about the Beach Boys there. And that Ba Ba ba ba would not be out of place in a 60s or 70s Beach Boys song, but it's just so much.

[Scott Free]

See, I really like it.

[Lori]

That's fair. That is fair. I had a bit of a revelation on a later incredibly happy Track, but I'll save it for then.

[Scott Free]

Okay. So Near Wild Heaven was the third single off the album. It was released on August 5, 1991.

[Lori]

It went to number 27 in the UK. It was not released as a single in the US however. So that whole first single, co written by Mike Mills, has a bit of an asterisk. Technically true, but not in the U.S. ah, poor Mike. Yeah, he got his due as the REM train rolled on through the 90s in the Warner Brothers era.

[Scott Free]

Okay, all right, all right. So what's next, Scott?

[Lori]

Next up, track five, End game.

Dude, you're a bigger REM fan than I am.

[Scott Free]

Scott, have they done other instrumental tracks before? Because this took me by surprise.

[Lori]

I'm going to say. Not none. I can't cite them offhand, but a rarity for sure.

[Scott Free]

Okay, okay. Yeah, so very unusual in that respect. We've got Michael Stipe on the melodica.

[Lori]

Yeah, that earlier BBC Lou Thomas review from 2007 I think, does do a good job characterizing this one through some poetic imagery. An almost instrumental stroll down an old English bridle path, assisted by mandolin and flugelhorn. What does this make the band? Court Jesters?

[Scott Free]

Cecil Welch, by the way, on the flugelhorn.

[Lori]

Yeah. So weird to hear a flugelhorn on an R E M track. I would think that in their 80s time during the IRS era, they would have probably taken the same line that Dire Straits did on the Sultans of Swing. We don't give a damn about any trumpet playing band and flew the horns close enough. But you know, it's a real sweet track. All major chords and some old school Peterbuck arpeggios, if on acoustic guitar, unlike his earlier electric stuff and the pizzicato plucked violins and the like. But the flugelhorn is the part that continues to just blow my mind. This is not an IR Records REM Track for certain. This track made a really easy jump to the MTV REM Unplugged set. REM did not tour to support out of Time, so the REM Unplugged was a huge deal. It was one of the only times you were going to get to see REM Live or live ish. And this track was pretty much ready made for that.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, I mean, I've never seen the REM Unplugged. I'll have to see if I can find it somewhere online. But yeah, I could see how this song would lend itself very well to that format.

[Lori]

Yep.

[Scott Free]

Okay, so that brings us to the end of the time side. We are going to flip the album over to the memory side. And the first track on the memory side is your favorite, Scott. Shiny happy people Gold, silver.

[Lori]

Shiny happy people holding shiny happy people Shiny happy people Everyone around Love them, love them. Put it in your hands. Hands. Take it, take it. There's no time to cry.

Oh, man. So I have had a lot of feelings about this song for a long time.

[Scott Free]

Okay.

[Lori]

The first time I heard it, and then those feelings got a lot stronger the first time I saw that video. Why don't you talk about your experience of shiny happy people?

[Scott Free]

Well, you know, at first I didn't like it. You know, it was like, what are they doing? I don't. I don't know this for a fact, but I kind of wonder if this wasn't like, in reaction to, you know, something the record label was telling him to do or something. One of the reasons I really like this one is Kate Pearson. Kate's vocals with Michael's vocals. I think they pair very nicely together.

[Lori]

Okay. Yeah. You cannot talk. I mean, you cannot talk about shiny happy people and not talk about Kate Pearson and the B52s. Right?

[Scott Free]

Right.

[Lori]

And it's not just Michael Stipe and Kate. It's Michael Stipe, Kate and Mike Mills, all three of them singing. And they do work together really well. Their voices go beautifully. She is an out of left field addition. It felt like to REM to the point where this song kind of felt as much a B52 song as it did an REM song. And here's the thing. I also always loved the B52s from when I got Planet Claire on 45 on or was listening to Rock Lobster on a jukebox. And there's that Georgia connection. They're both Athens, Georgia bands, right?

[Scott Free]

Yeah, that's correct. Interestingly, when Kate Pearson first heard the song, she actually said it sounds like they wrote a B52 song.

[Lori]

Right?

[Scott Free]

Yeah.

[Lori]

And again, love the B52s, but they're very different from R.E.M. quirkier, peppier, poppier, happier. So this was jarring, let's say.

[Scott Free]

Okay.

[Lori]

Yeah, it works, but it just doesn't feel like the REM That I knew. Does that make it bad? No. At the time, did I think it did? Absolutely, yes. I have a quote from the Rolling stone article, How R.E.M. invented the 90s that I think addresses it better than I can. Okay, time to talk about the elephant in the room. The shiny happy elephant. Controversial, but correct take. Shiny Happy People is a great song. It made a clever change of pace. Album track and nobody was mad until it got played to death on the radio. I think that part, actually, this is Scott talking is not entirely true. It was fun to hear on American Top 40 with Casey Kasem gushing. It's a tribute to the kind of people who can brighten your day. And the video is comedy gold just for how miserable Peter Buck looks. Tough to think of another rock star so existentially defeated in his own video. But that just enhances the song. That's the whole point of Shiny Happy People. It's really about surly, petty bastards trying to take a chance and step outside their negative creep comfort zone.

[Scott Free]

I love Rob Sheffield as a writer, so that's perfect.

[Lori]

He's very good.

[Scott Free]

That's perfect. That's perfect.

[Lori]

So, like, I spent a lot of time, basically from the day I bought this album until a few days ago decrying this song is so out of character for this band that it was the point at which I stopped recognizing them as one of my maybe five favorite bands of my teen years. But here's the thing. So much of this song actually is classic R.E.M. the jangly guitars, the Mike Mills doot doot, doot, doots. That all could have happened on document. It's just the phrase shiny happy people that kills it for me, that in the video, like so many people, they're so happy, so many bright colors. That scrolling kid friendly painted sunny town background. And I'm looking at all this and from this perspective now as a much older man going, do. Do I hate happiness? Probably. Probably I do. I gotta get back into therapy.

[Scott Free]

Oh, God. So where to. Where to even start with all of that?

[Lori]

Right.

[Scott Free]

I can relate to where you're coming from because that's exactly how I felt when the Cure released Friday. I'm in love.

[Lori]

I still feel that way about that song.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. Yeah. So apparently. Okay, so you mentioned the music video. The music video was directed by Katharine Diekman, who I believe is the same person that directed the video for Stand from Green.

[Lori]

Bad check.

[Scott Free]

Okay. It was inspired by a 1948 movie called Letter from an Unknown Woman. One of the scenes, apparently in the movie. I haven't seen it, but I was reading about this. Is they're on a bus or some kind of vehicle. And then you can kind of see the scrolling background behind them. And so Michael Stipe suggested to the director to contact a friend of his who was a schoolteacher, fifth grade school teacher. And they had the kids create the backdrop. Whenever I think of the video, all I can think of Is Michael wearing a dumb baseball cap?

[Lori]

Oh, the beanie. Yellow beanie.

[Scott Free]

Oh, is that what it is?

[Lori]

So here's the thing, also from the Rolling Stone article. Kate Pearson didn't just add her vocals. She seemed like a guiding spirit, radiating all the B52's benign dayglone warmth, with Stipe going into Fred Schneider mode. As Stipe told Flux Blog, I really wanted it to be happy, but like the Monkeys or the Banana Splits happy. Fruity happy. Like fruit striped gum. When we did the video, Kate showed up really dolled up, and she looked super great, but we had to amp it all up to kind of match her. I went home and I got all my yellow green clothes, and the dance got a little sillier.

[Scott Free]

Okay. Right, yeah. So when Kate Pearson arrived in the studio to do her parts, the band had already recorded the song, and they didn't give her any direction. They just told her, do whatever you want.

[Lori]

Do your Kate Pearson thing.

[Scott Free]

Exactly. So most of her parts were improvised. There's some really nice harmony, though. The other really interesting thing I'm surprised you haven't talked about yet, Scott, is.

[Lori]

The intro and the bridge.

[Scott Free]

Yes. The midway into the song, it switches to Walt's.

[Lori]

It opens with that. It's so strange, right?

[Scott Free]

Yeah. So apparently Peter Buck had the idea to do that, and he explained why in a 1991 interview with guitar School. He said, the song is so relentlessly upbeat, there was nowhere you could really go with the bridge. We tried it a few ways, and then I suggested 3, 4. They said, that's kind of fruity, Peter, but I thought it was cool. It makes you think, well, what would we not put here? It gives the song a Saturday in the park feel. And I am a big fan of, like, Old School Chicago, so I. I appreciate that reference there.

[Lori]

Right. I'll buy that. Worth noting that the band rarely played this song live. And you can imagine that it's in no small part because they did not have Kate Pearson on their tour with them. Sure. But also because it's just so out of character for this band. And yet it became one of the biggest songs they had released to date.

[Scott Free]

It reached number 10 on the US Billboard Hot 100, the fourth and last REM single to reach the top 10 ever. Yeah.

[Lori]

Huh?

[Scott Free]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Lori]

Fair enough.

[Scott Free]

And then I have another quote from Bill Barry, the drummer. So this is on the liner notes for Part lies, part heart, part truth, part garbage. Think what you will about this powerful God rock anthem of yore. It gets better. But at least we managed to Conceive a song that starts out as a waltz and closes with the lyrics D d more than 140 times in succession.

[Lori]

Right.

[Scott Free]

I challenge any mortal to locate another tune that features both of these visionary elements. There was a rumor going around that the phrase shiny happy people was taken from a Chinese propaganda poster after the Tiananmen Square protests. But the band has never made any statements to that effect. I think we can chalk that one up to an urban legend.

[Lori]

And yet so believable as the best urban legends are.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. You know what surprised me that I didn't know what this was originally the theme song for the sitcom Friends.

[Lori]

That I didn't know.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. So they used it for the pilot episode, which never aired. But then when they went to air, then they used the Rembrandts. I'll be there for you. I didn't know that. Isn't that wild?

[Lori]

Yeah, yeah. No, I think everybody dodged a bullet there.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is another one that has grown on me over the years.

[Lori]

I mean, I. As I said from the first listen when I got the album, and more so with every subsequent radio play and MTV video play, hated the song and hated it more and more now, listening to it intentionally for the first time in a long time. There's a lot to like in that song. And I only wish it had been a that's me in the driveway situation and he had chosen any phrase other than shiny happy people. And I think I would have liked it a lot more.

[Scott Free]

That's fair. That's fair. I think a lot of people would agree with you on that.

[Lori]

I think that's right.

[Scott Free]

Yeah.

[Lori]

Okay, enough of this shiny happiness. Let's move on to something a little darker. Track seven, Belong.

Her world collapsed early Sunday morning. She got up from the kitchen table, folded the newspaper and silenced the radio. Those creatures jumped the barricades and headed to the sea.

As much as I, from my first listen, did not like shiny happy people, that's how much I loved Belong.

[Scott Free]

It's a good one. It's a good one. We've got Mike Mills on piano.

[Lori]

Yep.

[Scott Free]

Peter Hols, Apple on electric guitar. And Michael doing this kind of spoken word thing.

[Lori]

Oh, man. So before we even get there, just that beginning, just that intro, the kick drum and the hi hat. A surprisingly lively hi hat line for an otherwise kind of laid back groove. And the bass groove. It's one note that is it. That like, that's it. It's so simple. And that's why the track works. Or rather why it works right out of the Gate is that backbone groove with the claps.

[Scott Free]

The hand claps and finger snaps were inspired by Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie.

[Lori]

I can absolutely see that.

[Scott Free]

Yes.

[Lori]

And then Michael Stipe comes in and is not doing his usual singing, but just this spoken word bit. And his voice is distant and reverby, as if it's in, like, a cave.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. So according to producer Scott Litt, Michael said he wanted to sound completely detached, like, in another place. So we rigged up a Sony Walkman that would record directly to tape so you get that weird compressed sound. And Michael actually recorded it in a garage at Princess Paisley park studio in Minneapolis.

[Lori]

That is so rad.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. Do you know anything about what the song's about?

[Lori]

Well, yeah, and I know that it was misinterpreted by a lot of people.

[Scott Free]

It was.

[Lori]

It's talking about a mother and her child and her world collapsed on a Sunday morning. And talks about how she goes to the window and says, belong. And a lot of people took this to think that this despairing mother was taking this child to a window and throwing themselves both out of it. But Michael Stipe made very clear that this song is not about defenestration.

[Scott Free]

Yes. Correct. Yeah.

[Lori]

What do you got? Regale us, please.

[Scott Free]

That's exactly what you just said. Okay. So what Michael said in the October 1992 issue of Q magazine, it's about a mother and child, especially the strong bond that exists between them. The voice is neither hers nor the child's. However, it's someone else commenting on the sense that the bond between a mother and child is the most powerful love of all.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Scott Free]

And then he goes on to say what you just said about. I think it's significant to state that it's not a song about defenestration.

[Lori]

Yeah. He goes on, I saw this on songfacts.com about this particular song. Stipe said, I took great pains to clarify that in a vocal, there's an event that occurred somewhere far away that has come to the attention of the woman who's the protagonist of the song, and she realizes how significant that thing is to her child and herself, and then goes to the window to take a breath. I think that when I first wrote the song, it did seem like the woman hurled herself and her child out of the window. But that's not what occurs. Oh, yeah. And so, like, for me, the one, like, there's two parts lyrically that always stuck out to me, and that was the creatures jumped the barricades and headed for the sea. Sea like the imagery is so vivid, I'm actually getting, you know, goosebumps as I speak. And then she began to breathe to breathe at the thought of such freedom Stood and whispered to her child belong it's so unlike anything they did before in terms of music and in terms of Stipes presentation, it's so unlike anything they did before. But in terms of the tone and the imagery, this is something that could fit in an earlier work, Liceric Pageant or document or Green. This groove that I talked about. And Michael Stipes calm, quiet and somewhat distant reverby vocals. But then at the chorus, the bass gets way more active along with the guitars and the piano. And the chorus is just Michael Stipe and Mike Mills singing these long extended O's with these beautiful harmonies. So good. Oh, man.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. Yeah, this is a good one. All right, so next up, we have Half a World away.

[Lori]

This could be the saddest dust I've ever seen Turn to a miracle I lied My mind is racing it all is well My hand's tired My heart aches I'm half awoke here in my head Sworn to go it alone and hold it alone.

[Scott Free]

Hold alone hold it now this is the one, Scott, that has Bill Barry on the bass and Mike Mills on.

[Lori]

Harpsichord, of all things.

[Scott Free]

Yes. And organ and percussion.

[Lori]

Yep. This song would be totally at home on Green. The mandolin. This is Peter Buck, usually a guitar player, now on mandolin. Mike Mills on the harpsichord. Sure, why not? So presumably that makes the organ also Mike Mills, as it turns out, and a whole lot of strings, like musically, and particularly that mandolin. All the rest of it, though, it really does feel like earlier era R.E.M. but lyrically it's so much more personal and emotional rather than their earlier stuff that was just kind of like, oftentimes cryptically folksy in an old timey, weird Southern Gothic sort of way.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, just the lyrics. Oh, the lonely deep sit hollow I'm half a world half a world away My shoes are gone My life spent I had too much to drink I didn't think and I didn't think of you I guess that's all I needed. So it's implied that something happened while he was drinking. You know, perhaps he cheated or perhaps he, you know, broke up with the person. And then it ends. Oh, this could be the saddest dusk I've ever seen I turn to a miracle High, alive My mind is racing as it always will My hands tired My heart aches I'm half a world away Go.

[Lori]

It's a beautiful song. And that I want to say 12, 8 time signature for it. That 6, 8 or 12, 8 time signature. It has a very rootsy feel to it. I love this song as well.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, it's a good one.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Scott Free]

The next one, we have another Mike Mills vocal on this one. It's called Texarkana.

[Lori]

20,000 chances I was waiting for the moment to turn I would give my life to find it I would give it all Catch me in my fall.

[Scott Free]

Unusual. We got the pedal steel guitar here. It's a guy named John Keane.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Scott Free]

Peter Hols Apple again. Acoustic guitar. Ralph Jones on double bass again. But, yeah, really, I think notable because of the Mike Mills again with the vocal. I mean, it's both. Both mics. Mike. Mike Mills and Michael Stipe, but.

[Lori]

But Mike Mills on lead.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Lori]

Once again. And I think this is the third track in a row I've said this about. This is another track that feels like it could fit in on Green, their first Warner Brothers release. People talk about this album like it's a radical departure, and at times it is. I'm looking in your direction. Near Wild Heaven or the chorus of Shiny Happy People. But this is a track that makes a lot of sense and really fits into the context of REM's earlier Warner Brothers direction. And that bass work. Right. When people talk about rem, they talk about Michael Stipes vocals and Peter Buck's guitar work. But you don't want to sleep on Mike Mills on the bass.

[Scott Free]

Absolutely. He's fantastic.

[Lori]

Ooving all over the place and. Yeah, really strong.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. Um, lyrically, I have you and I talked about counting songs before. I don't remember if that was you or if that was one of your.

[Lori]

I don't know if we have. But I do know that my girlfriend Kate has an entire Spotify playlist of songs with counting and spelling. And this would be a good one to add to the counting.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if it technically counts, but. Right. It starts off 20,000 miles to an oasis 20,000 years I will burn 20,000 chances I've wasted and then later on 30,000 thoughts have been wasted and then 40,000 stars in the evening so there's that progression. 20,000, 30,000, 40,000. I don't know if that counts or not. You'll have to ask.

[Lori]

I don't think it would fit into her playlist, but I'm going to count it.

[Scott Free]

Okay.

[Lori]

Number songs at the very least.

[Scott Free]

Okay. The judges have spoken, but I really. I like this one. Lyrically. Yeah. 40,000 stars in the evening. Look at them fall from the sky. 40,000 reasons for living. 40,000 tears in your eyes. And then it ends. Catch me if I fall. Repeat it over and over. Catch me if I fall. It's a beautiful song.

[Lori]

Yeah. And, you know, kind of a ripper. It's a fast paced, fast paced song. A lot going on in it. Why texarkana, I wonder. 20,000 miles to an oasis. I don't know if you've ever driven through Texarkana. It is one of the places in the country where you are really likely to run out of gas because there ain't nothing.

[Scott Free]

Okay, well, maybe that's what they're getting at. Oh, here we go. The title is a reference to the city of Texarkana, located on the border of Texas and Arkansas. Originally mentioned in the chorus before it was changed.

[Lori]

Oh, that makes some sense.

[Scott Free]

Stipe's original chorus was, when I'm out in Texarkana. Where's that county line? Another county line.

[Lori]

All right.

[Scott Free]

The song was written primarily by Mike Mills, both the music and the lyrics. Reportedly, Michael Stipe had tried for weeks to come up with some lyrics to go with the music, and he couldn't. And I think that's why we have Mike Mills on the lead vocals. Even though this wasn't like an official single, it managed to chart at number four on the Modern Rock Tracks chart. And I don't know if it's because of the tempo or because of Mike Mills vocal, but yeah, this one reminds me very much of like the I AM Superman era, R.E.M. you know?

[Lori]

How about that? I'm not mad about it either.

[Scott Free]

All right. Anything else on Texarkana?

[Lori]

I think that'll do it.

[Scott Free]

Okay, so next we come to country feedback. Sensing a theme here. Let's listen.

[Lori]

You come to me with excuses Ducked out in a row? You wear me out, you wear me out. We've been through fake breakdown, self hurt, plastics collections, self help, self pain s psychics, all I was central, I had control, I lost my head I need this, I need this paperweight junk garage winter rain, a honey pot crazy all the lovers have been tagged.

Yeah, we can just get into the instrumentation. You got John Keane once again on steel pedal guitar. And of course, giving the song its title. Peter Buck doing sustained feedback. Some amazing noisy guitar work. Noisier than you usually get in REM Less arpeggios, more just noise.

[Scott Free]

Okay.

[Lori]

But melodic noise.

[Scott Free]

And we've got Bill Barry on bass again, you know, again, typically the drummer. And then Mike Mills instead of playing Bass, he's on organ and string synths.

[Lori]

Well, all right, then.

[Scott Free]

Yeah.

[Lori]

All right. So I've referenced a guitar.com article, particularly talking about Peter Buck. And from that article, the introspective tone comes from a three chord progression Peter Buck had been toying with, featuring Keen on steel pedal guitar and usually drummer Bill Barry on bass. Stipe worked in partway through an early jam and just left quickly to write the lyrics, and within days it was complete. I didn't think we recorded it more than once, said Mike Mills.

[Scott Free]

That's consistent with what I have. In a Rolling stone interview in 2008, Peter Buck said Michael sang it just once. It was a letter he wrote to someone but didn't see send. He just sang it. Michael himself said in 1992 in Q magazine, it's a love song, but it's certainly from the uglier side. It's pretty much about having given up on a relationship.

[Lori]

I have another great one line quote from Stipe on this. Okay, the final sentence at the end of a particularly bad relationship.

[Scott Free]

I like it. Now, here's the one that blew my mind.

[Lori]

What do you got?

[Scott Free]

Courtney Love has said that the song is about her.

[Lori]

Fascinating.

[Scott Free]

The lyrics we've been through. Fake, a breakdown, self hurt, plastics, collections, self help, self pain, est, psychics, fuck all, she said, Michael talked me through that.

[Lori]

Whoa.

[Scott Free]

So that's why she thinks that's about her.

[Lori]

So now, like, those particular lyrics are ones that really stood out to me as being somewhat consistent with some stuff that we saw earlier in their career. That sort of listing of oddities that you often see. The one that comes to mind in particular is Swan, Swan, Hummingbird, which I believe was about life's rich pageant, where it's this listing of weird things. But it's updated now to REM in the out of Time era, where it's not a listing of weird Southern oddities, it's personal now, and it's a listing of crises and emotions. I think it's.

[Scott Free]

Well, that does sound like Courtney love.

[Lori]

There.

[Scott Free]

In 2001, in a Perfect Square concert DVD, Michael Stipe introduces the song by saying, this is my favorite song of all time.

[Lori]

Whoa.

[Scott Free]

And Bill Barry also calls this one one of his favorite R.E.M. songs, saying, I think it wonderfully peculiar that this somewhat gloomy dirge surfaced in a body of work that also included shiny, happy people.

[Lori]

Right.

[Scott Free]

That said, this is my least favorite song on the album. I do not like it.

[Lori]

Really?

[Scott Free]

Oh, I don't like it. No.

[Lori]

Okay. Why? Why is this your least favorite Song. Can you put a finger on it?

[Scott Free]

It drags. It's just. Yeah.

[Lori]

Now it may just be, as I discovered in doing research for this and had that revelation that maybe I just hate happiness. I really love this song. The dirge, the sad. And you know, it's right there in the title. It's a country song. R.E.M. was always Southern fried, maybe country tinged, college rock, but never just straight up country. And this is an experiment that I think they knock it out of the place. Arc on. I'm not the biggest country fan on Earth, although I like me some old country. And this is not 1991 country. This is an alternative band in 1991 making late 60s, early 70s country. And I think it just really works.

[Scott Free]

See, I think that's probably why I don't like it.

[Lori]

That's possible. What kind of music do you usually have here? Oh, we got both kinds.

[Scott Free]

We got country and western. Yeah.

[Lori]

You don't have to love them all.

[Scott Free]

Michael's favorite, Bill's favorite. My least favorite.

[Lori]

Fair enough. That brings us to the album closer, track 11, Me in Honey.

I sat there looking ugly. Looking ugly. Knew what you were saying. You were saying to me Baby's got some new rules Baby said she's had it with me Seems the same. To waste your time on me seems a lot. Waste your time for me Let me know what it's true and.

Or you could have just called it Shiny Happy People, Part 2.

[Scott Free]

Oh, really?

[Lori]

Well, yes and no. You will recall in my eventual analysis of my own feelings about Shiny Happy People that I, when I finally looked back at it from this much later perspective, I like almost everything about Shiny Happy People, except for the phrase shiny happy people. That phrase does not appear in Me and Honey. Happily, what does appear, or rather who does appear, is Kate Pearson. Kate Pearson back and in fine form.

[Scott Free]

Oh, I love this one. I love this one.

[Lori]

It starts out like a pretty solid document era R.E.M. rock tune. And yeah, there's some Kate Pearson woo or woeing. And that's cool. I still love Kate Pearson despite Shiny Happy People. But, you know, in this one, she's doing backing vocals in very much the same way that Mike Mills would have in an earlier era, just more Kate Pearson. But, you know, it is a fitting album Closer in a traditional RM sort of way.

[Scott Free]

Now, interestingly, they actually list this as a duet on the liner notes. Yeah. As opposed to relegating her to, like, backup vocals. But I get what you're saying, where Michael's kind of doing most of the most of the heavy lifting there.

[Lori]

He's definitely front and center, and she's backing him up as opposed to singing whole verses like she did on Shiny Happy People.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, this song has just always really resonated with me. Even before I knew what it was about, you know, the way it starts off, I sat there looking ugly. Looking ugly and mean. Knew what you were saying. You were saying to me, baby's got some new rules. Baby says she's had it with me. I lyrically, I really like what he's doing there.

[Lori]

From the Rolling Stone article that I keep quoting, just one more. Stipe's in love with one of those shiny, happy types, but he feels too, quote, ugly and mean, and he fears he can't live up to this shiny, happy person's love, so he tries to warn his lover away, afraid they'll get corrupted by his doom and gloom. It seems a shame to waste your time on me, but this shiny happy person's sweetness rubs off on him until he realizes he's got some honey of his own in his soul.

[Scott Free]

I didn't even realize, although I suspected, you know, especially there's that one verse where he says, baby's got a baby with me. So I suspected that there was something about pregnancy with this. But Michael Stipe actually said he was inspired by the 10,000 Maniacs song Eat for Two. And both songs are about pregnancy. There's a book called It Crawled from the south by Marcus Gray. And in that book, Michael explains it's a male perspective on pregnancy, which I don't think has been dealt with. There's a real push me, pull me issue, saying I had nothing to do with it. Yet on the other hand, saying, wait, I have feelings about this. And there's a really kind of tender intimacy, I think, in the lyrics, in the interplay between Kate and Michael in this one. God, there's so many, like, lines of this song that I love, but that. Say your piece. Say you're sweet for me. That line just makes me melt. You know, it's just. Oh, such as. And, you know, all your hard exterior.

[Lori]

Turns out you're a bit of a softie.

[Scott Free]

Who, me?

[Lori]

Don't worry, I won't tell anyone, except for our hundreds or thousands of listeners.

[Scott Free]

Well, you know, Scott, you don't have any children. Everything about the experience, the. The kind of. The mo. The emotional roller coaster that you're on, you know, it's just this kind of contradiction where it's like you're scared and yet left me to love what it's doing to Me, you know, you recognize that. Yeah, this is, this is something good. This is a positive change. I don't know. I, I, yeah, this, this song just gets to me, this is, it's. I really like this song a lot.

[Lori]

Yeah. I think it, as I said earlier, it's a fitting album Closer in that in a lot of ways it feels like earlier REM but throwing that unmistakable Kate Pearson voice on there tells you that this is not old REM this is REM In a new era who can do anything they want, who can work with anyone they want. And yeah, I think they do it amazingly on this track. It is Closer.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. So you know what? I'm going to ask you next.

[Lori]

I know you are, and I think you already know my answer.

[Scott Free]

Well, tell me anyway. What's your favorite song on the album?

[Lori]

Belong. Hands down. And again, it's so weird.

[Scott Free]

That's a good one.

[Lori]

In the context of their career up to this point, but it is so very out of time era REM but not in a poppy happy way, in a dark and melancholy way, but with just such a rock solid groove and those harmonies and everything about it really, really does it for me.

[Scott Free]

Nice.

[Lori]

And yours.

[Scott Free]

Well, two of the songs on this album would rank in my top five REM Songs of all time. Yes. I definitely think that Losing My Religion is just, it's, it's epic.

[Lori]

I mean, there is a reason it is perhaps the most popular REM Song ever. Yes.

[Scott Free]

Yes.

[Lori]

Because it's perfect.

[Scott Free]

Yes. But me and Honey, I just, I, I love that song so much.

[Lori]

So I guess everyone on earth has a personal relationship with Losing My Religion, but you have your own very personal, very distinct personal relationship with me and Honey, and I can respect a lot of that.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. Yeah. So both very excellent songs. And actually there's a couple duds on this album, but not too many. And that's why when I mentioned this album, Scott, and you kind of made the face that you make that like, I know you were displeased, and I'm like, wow, really?

[Lori]

I wasn't displeased. I'm happy to talk about it. It was, as I said at the time, a turning point in my relationship with REM I have reassessed the album now that I went back and gave it a really hard listen. And I will agree there are some duds that are hard for me to overlook, but that is why the skip button exists. So we've already talked about how this album was absolutely massive. It was by far the biggest album they had had up to this point and would lead to another huge album just a couple years later. Of out of Time. Stipe told the Guardian, we did a remarkable job of maintaining integrity throughout a very difficult period and in a difficult industry. We created a new way for people to look and approach this and not become an empty puppet or a dog and pony show. You know, they did exactly what they wanted to do. And even if I wouldn't have made a couple of those choices, who the hell AM I? They're R.E.M. they, along with U2, were among the biggest bands on the planet at the time, and they had earned the right to do whatever they wanted. I have friends who. This was the point. They absolutely gave up on the band because of this album. I have others who love it, and, you know, I can certainly find plenty to love on this album. I don't have to love absolutely every single track, but I do respect what they were going for, except maybe for Radio Song.

[Scott Free]

Okay, all right. All right, we'll give you that one.

[Lori]

All right. So their next album, which would come just 18 months later, automatic for the People, was also huge. And it gave us some really big and memorable alternative radio and crossover singles. Then there were a lot of records that worked for some people. And then I think the general consensus amongst at least critics is that REM Lasted longer than they needed to. Had they cut off maybe around Monster, they would be remembered as an absolutely legendary band that defined an era. Some of their late 90s and 2000s output is inessential in a lot of people's minds. You probably can't name a ton of tracks from some of that, but there is still enough to recommend on out of Time, Automatic for the People, and a few of the albums that followed that. They still remain one of the biggest American rock bands of all time, and a band that did it entirely on their own terms and made the music they wanted to make.

[Scott Free]

Yes.

[Lori]

Like music, don't like the music, Respect it. You kind of got it.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. So after out of time, they did eight additional albums, studio albums. Their last album was in 2011.

[Lori]

There we go.

[Scott Free]

And we really haven't heard much from them, although I think you mentioned Michael Stipe might have had a solo album.

[Lori]

Michael Stipe had a solo album recently. Let's. But again, let's talk with some knowledge of what we're doing. Michael Stipe's solo album. Yeah, I'm seeing a review from March 4, 2024. 4.

[Scott Free]

Hmm. OK. Stipe began recording his first solo album at Electric Lady Studios in New York City in 2023, writing and producing synth infused poppy songs with longtime collaborator Andy lemaster. So I don't know that that was ever released.

[Lori]

I heard a single.

[Scott Free]

Okay. The title of the article in the New York Times was, michael Stipe is writing his next act Slowly.

[Lori]

Our next episode is going to be about the 1991 Trip Hop Classic Blue Lines by Massive Attack.

[Scott Free]

All right, so we're going to hang out in 1991 for a little while longer. So tune in again in two weeks for our next episode. It's a goodbye from me and from me.