REM POV

yes it's absurd and we've done these

REM POX
R.E.M. POX

but they were a while ago and we did not have the benefit of patton oswalt's wisdom at that time (The Greatest American Rock Band), so:

what are the top 5 R.E.M. songs ever

I have the definitive answer to this, for today. It’s coming soon

I may have posted a similar selection on at least one of those other threads thousands of years ago but I'll not compare beforehand.

Alphabetical. Minimal deliberation except the final selection (the first alphabetically) and I'll surely think it insane to have favoured that over "Driver 8" or something the instant I post, but...

Daysleeper
Gardening at Night
Harborcoat
I Believe
Kohoutek

i am not a music writer and also i am drunk, but:

- belong
- begin the begin
- catapult
- kohoutek
- country feedback

this is ridiculous and they obviously have better songs than these, but growing up in pittsburgh outside of the like one-kilometer range of WCRT, i first heard r.e.m. doing 'the one i love' on a classic rock station. i liked the song but i fucking hated that dude's voice. i can't say hearing 'stand' inclined me any more towards them.

then i went to university in the south and encountered people whose Big High School Album was either the joshua tree or . . . green? i was mostly like, whatever, but i did like the connells, who did not feature that dude's voice.

my roommate bought 'out of time' when it came out in the spring of 91, and somehow i got snagged on 'belong'. it's barely even a song, but those creatures jumped the barricades and headed for the sea, and they did so with mike mills soaring above them.

that summer i went to a french immersion program in trois-rivieres, quebec. this was mostly for anglo canadians but i was one of about six americans there. also i knew basically no french that wasn't related to hockey.

the first two weeks were hard -- we weren't 'allowed' to speak non-french, and i didn't really know any french. (kinda weird how my mind kept trying to come up with german phrases i'd last heard in grade six in lieu of anything else to say.) but after that i could get by -- still cherish the moment when i successfully ordered a lait frappé from the cute girl at the ice cream place -- and also everyone relaxed.

amongst other things, the handful of americans and i basically listened to 'out of time' and 'de la soul is dead' every single day, with occasional interludes of 'murmur'.

also we played basketball, and there was this one young woman from edmonton in my class who was solid but also travelled a lot; we called her 'the voyagette'

also we went dancing, to a degree that i'd done neither before nor since. the two guaranteed tracks you'd hear were 'losing my religion' and jean leloup's '1990', which was honestly much more danceable.

i tend to think of 'murmur' as an inseparable monolith, but somehow 'catapult' was the first song that grabbed me from it.

only later did i try to fill in the gaps. 'fall on me' is an obvious standout and i love it, but i guess i was first struck by dudes wanting to begin again whilst actually rocking.

'reckoning' was an astonishingly good second album; similar but not a retread. but nothing in particular stood out to me? (time after time is perfectly fine. TIME AFTER TIME IS PERFECTLY FINE)

no one truly knows whether the name of the third album begins with 'fables' or 'reconstruction'. it's not a favorite but it's different. back in the day my first computer passwords were variants on wendellg. but kohoutek is so pretty.

hate to double-dip into 'out of time' but 'country feedback' has everything. it's beautiful, and eerie, and haunting, and segues so perfectly into 'me in honey', which also rules (the groove!)

"Wolves, Lower" – 4:10
"Gardening at Night" – 3:29
"Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars)" – 3:54
"1,000,000" – 3:06
"Stumble" – 5:40

sneaky

Lock thread while 'Kohoutek' remains ahead of the pack count-wise lol

near wild heaven
find the river
sweetness follows
let me in
i remember california

E-Bow the Letter
Belong
Nightswimming
Fall On Me
Find the River

Five is such a punishing number

Driver 8*
Pretty Persuasion
World Leader Pretend
Sad Professor
The One I Love*

*These are fixed, the other three may change depending on the day

The Wrong Child
New Test Leper
Sweetness Follows
7 Chinese Bros
Wolves, Lower

Sitting Still
Wolves Lower
Gardening At Night
Find The River
Cuyahoga

1. I Believe
2. Radio Free Europe
3. Wolves, Lower
4. Laughing
5. Half a World Away

Green Grow the Rushes
Near Wild Heaven
Sweetness Follows
Hope
Harborcoat

(top half of recent top ten)

“Punishing” is OTM but I’d probably choose

Laughing
Fall on Me
Half a World Away
Drive
Near Wild Heaven

Or just the B-side of Out of Time, my favourite side (yes including Shiny Happy People, which IMO remains a total banger)

Oh shit and You Are Teh Everything

These are default choices--haven't listened to any of them in a while:

"The Great Beyond"
"New Orleans Instrumental No. 1"
"Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars)"
"Driver 8"
"Radio Free Europe"

Impossible not to over-think this

Cuyahoga
Try Not to Breathe
Sitting Still
Texarkana
You Are the Everything

Carnival of Sorts
(Don't Go Back to) Rockville
Driver 8
These Days
You Are the Everything

Country Feedback
Shaking Through
Near Wild Heaven
Daysleeper
Electrolite

Man I haven't listened to this band in a minute

top of my head

orange crush
shaking through
so. central rain
cuyahoga
losing my religion

i was planning a catalog re-listen next week after seeing that luke o’neil survey going around twitter. gonna do that and report back

don’t remember much from green or even automatic, so looking forward to those

Lovely words upthread mookieproof. You're right, Belong is a vibe of its own

That second side of OOT, man.

For me, R.E.M. is so intrinsically tied to road trips through France with my family.
Me, a grumpy teenager who felt behooved to cram into the car with my parents and young siblings and make the yearly trip to see our grandparents in the south of the country; a journey that would usually take a claustrophobic two days with six people in the same few feet of space of each other.
But a CD Walkman and an arsenal of albums would get me through it somehow. I had all sorts, but there's something about R.E.M. that just sounds like travelling to me. Undulating fields of maize, of sunflowers - even their album covers seem to suggest this. No other band sounds like the feeling of travelling by road to me than R.E.M.

Star Me Kitten and Parakeet would both be in contention for my #1, beyond that I can't choose, too many potential candidates

I feel like the sound of Star Me Kitten evokes the feeling of drunkenness better than any other song I can think of, I don't know if that's just me though

Perfect Circle
Man On The Moon
You Are The Everything
Try Not To Breathe
Daysleeper

Drunkenness, yes, with a sense of expectation

REM POV 1980

Baby I
All the Right Friends
Mystery to Me
(Don't Go) Back to Rockville
Gardening at Night

REM POV 1980

Baby I
All the Right Friends
Mystery to Me
(Don't Go) Back to Rockville
Gardening at Night

sorry for the double posting, I must be shaking all over

bill berry
mike mills
michael stipe
peter holsapple
peter buck

cries in Scott McCaughey

Berry, Mills, Stipe, Buck, Zevon