An R.E.M best of, obvs.
I first heard of R.E.M in secondary school (see previous playlist) where I had a couple of friends who were MASSIVELY into them, as in we would go to record fairs to hunt down Japanese imports of singles to listen to the B-sides - clearly a pre-internet / Napster / Spotify time. I liked them, but not that much.
The continuous promotion of all things R.E.M continued with the saturation of the song ‘Losing my Religion’ on MTV, radio and leading to more friends owning the huge selling albums Automatic for the People and Out of Time - both great albums.
R.E.M followed this with the album Monster which I got for Xmas after it was released and played a lot, it remains an interesting album. Reading some interviews from the time the band purposely moved away from writing ‘R.E.M’ type songs and embraced more alternative sounds and approaches to songwriting. How great would it be to have million selling records to be able to approach songwriting in this fashion? Also how damn hard would it be?! After listening to this album I started borrowing other R.E.M albums from friends and so sort of developed a pick and mix selection of favourites that I still have today and will now present to you..
Stanley Franc
Radio Free Europe
1981 debut single from their first album signed to a small independent record label and then later re-recorded for their 1983 debut album on not quite major label (IRS). I like the pace, the punk rock pace and the general odd and indecipherable lyrics, then goes jangly for choruses - works well on acoustic, great fun.
Talk About The Passion
1983 - second single from the IRS debut album Murmur. Apparently this is about hunger, I never picked that up from listening to it but the riff, slightly more intelligible lyrics and hook line appeal to me and stand the test of time.
Try Not To Breath
Album track from the massive selling Automatic for the People album. Listen out for the soaring chorus backing vocals by bass player Mike Mills, dark middle 8, the intro lyric ‘try not to breathe, I will hold my head still with my hands in my knees’ and ‘I need something to fly over my grave again’ are brilliantly evocative.
Belong
Album track from Out of Time album. As with ‘Try Not To Breathe’ brilliant backing vocals for the chorus but the spoken verse tells an interesting story about a mother and child - interviews with the band indicate they wanted this verse vocal to be ‘detached’ from the main song so they recorded it on a walkman away from the studio - I like this type of approach to recording.
Bang And Blame
Single from the album Monster. The bass line, damn the bass line - stupidly simple but brilliantly hypnotic. I heard this song before the album was released and was a drive to think I was going to like the album, I also bought the CD single. Interesting fade out type part at the end. Since growing up (I definitely don’t remember associating this when I was young) the lyrics appear very clearly linked to domestic abuse, difficult subject to cover but the tone of the music works really well for this, general sort of haunting feel.
Bad Day
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