At the time, did any English writers feel that R.E.M.'s early success signaled, in some way, the end of New Pop's currency?

By 1987, new pop was long since dead, killed by the DX7, the Fairlight CMI, hair metal and hip-hop.

Personally, even though those first couple of R.E.M. albums were good enough, I am still not too big on that genre. Production was way too low-fi and with way, way, way, way too much reverb.

I am talking about the English press, which was very much behind the New Pop.

Heh.

I don't know, I seem to think that in the early days R.E.M. were thought of as kind of quirky, and people didn't know what to make of them exactly. In Britain (and you'd need to ask a Brit to confirm) I'm guessing maybe Aztec Camera had a bigger impact of the sort you're suggesting, and in America it was the stuff like the Blasters and mid-period ("More Fun in the New Worl"-era) X that signaled that. I recently heard "Radio Free Europe" for the first time in ages, and it really sounded like dance music more than anything else. I'm not suggesting they were pegged that way at the time, but I don't think they were initially thought of as some sort of torch carriers for traditional rock or anything.

What are basing your assumption on? Some US critical raves and modest "college rock" (lol, remember that term) success doesn't necessarily translate into "huge" interest on the other side of the Atlantic - especially after one measly ep & album and with so much going on in British music in 82/83. I'd imagine the UK press scratching their heads a bit about them until Stipe started enunciating his lyrics, round about "The One I Love"

Vague recollections of this being the case, actually.

Some US critical raves and modest "college rock" (lol, remember that term) success doesn't necessarily translate into "huge" interest on the other side of the Atlantic

Yes, I know.

("Some US critical raves and modest 'college rock' success" is a total underscoring of R.E.M.'s early US impact, by the way.)

I just asked a question.

REM had way more superlatives than husker du or replacements ever did. From the VERY beginning (i.e. Tom Carson reviewing Hib-Tone single in Village Voice).

Why even phrase it as a question?

Regardless of whether I agree with it or not.

Murmur - which indeed only made #33 in the NME EOY list but did make Melody Maker's EOY top ten - was largely viewed as the record which saved American rock, opened up a new path for it, away from corporate stodge; other alt. rock US bands of the period whom the British music press loved included Black Flag and Tav Falco's Panther Burns - Husker Du and Sonic Youth were coming up on the outside lane but didn't really start getting large-scale Brit-crit approval until late '84/early '85 (i.e. with Zen Arcade/Bad Moon Rising).

For quite a lot of the time, however, REM were viewed here as precursors/godfathers of the Paisley Underground scene which the NME and MM loved - Long Ryders, Rain Parade, Dream Syndicate, Opal etc. etc.

Certainly in the early days there was also a minor tendency to trumpet REM as a kind of deliverance from the glutinous blandness into which New Pop had, by mid-1983, largely descended, but this was not a major factor, and since REM did not become commercially successful in Britain until 1991 (Green sold a fair amount here, but not hugely or across the board) there was nothing about their critical treatment here which would earmark them as the end of New Pop; especially since the latter still had a fair amount of eleventh-hour mileage in it as per ZTT, Scritti, PSBs et al.

It would be correct to say that the Smiths were "our REM" throughout that time. The Mary Chain were a slightly more complicated affair.

Yes, people liked REM but I don't remember them ever mattering that much to anyone

the Smash Hits braintrust regarded REM with beningn yet total indifference IIRC

And U2 almost at home, which was a more important act for the "guitar bands" scene to begin with.

Well, I dunno. They may have behind Human League and ABC (most critics were), but they weren't neccessarily behind Duran Duran and Culture Club and they surely weren't behind Kajagoogoo, Howard Jones or Thompson Twins.

MM (i.e. Sutherland) loved Duran, NME (i.e. Morley) hated them.

Which was deserved. "Murmur" holds up today way better than anything the two others did back then.

In the American press, they were definitely talked about (along with the Replacements, X, Dream Syndicate, Del Fuegos, Del Lords, Violent Femmes, etc) as a return to "guitars" and "American bands, made in America" after all that faggy Limey Boy George and A Flock of Seagulls hoo-ha. I have a Rolling Stone 1983 or 1984 "year in rock" book someplace that definitely discusses them in such terms. (But yeah, U.S. critics were talking about Brits like U2, Big Country, Smiths, the Alarm, etc, in similar terms at the time, at least as far as real guitars ending the silly synth era.)

Nah, I'd say they had more superlatives (thrown at them) at the beginning; i.e., Murmur Pazz&Jopped higher than the earliest Replacements or Husker albums did, sure. (Also, hadn't Chronic Town placed first earlier in the EP poll? Even if it didn't, it definitely did a lot better than Metal Circus or Stink.) But it didn't take long (like, by 1984) for Husker Du and Replacements to catch up, right? In the end, it kinda evened out.

Funny thing is, other than U2, the guitar bands didn't go mainstream until the early 90s. If New Pop was killed, it was killed by sampling, hip-hop, hair metal and ultimately house music. Plus the fact that most of the large acts took a sabattical in 1985 also proved to be fatal for New Pop. And I think FM synths and PCM synths also played a part - that kind of synths have proved to sound more outdated today than analog synths do.

Except Depeche Mode were among the original New Pop generation while The Cure had been around for even longer.

But I would say, in the USA, Depeche Mode and Cure succeeded Journey, Toto, Boston and Foreigner just as much as they succeeded Duran Duran, Wham! and Human League.

It was great, until they started playing.

OMG the wristwatch tie!

Whoa! Is this online anywhere?

God bless Murmur. We've been here before. You want to talk about a perfect album?

They did get some coverage in the music papers, but there was absolutely nothing to suggest they were going to go further than the Rain Parade or the Dream Syndicate at that point, and the idea they'd end up filling stadiums would have been hilarious.

I don't think REM got UK music press *covers* until 1985 and then it was Melody Maker I remember doing it first.

I would say R.E.M. were more traditionalists than Smiths, really. Both represented a "back to guitar"-approach. However, while R.E.M. were deeply rooted in a traditional classic songwriting school, The Smiths composed their songs in a more improvised way, built around Marr's guitar playing and Morrissey's lyrics, giving them a more personal style (although personally I would say R.E.M.'s way of writing songs proved more artistically successful, once again)

Not as good?

-- m coleman (writeco...), February 9th, 2007. (later)

Thank you for encapsulating a particular point of interest right now (more on that later and elsewhere).

Not as good?

"The Safety Dance" = majestic; "Radio Free Europe" = pretty cool.

R.E.M. followed the songwriting blueprint if there is one - i.e. verse, bridge, chorus, melodies you could sing along to. The Smiths' songwriting style was more improvised, "floating" and "cyclic" and based around the chords and riffs, and it is harder to find melodic and harmonic climax than in the music of R.E.M.

A couple years later, OK, but I think this was before "The One I Love" went top ten and, you know, Rolling Stone had to be convinced over five album span for rockist reasons before making the silly ASSERTION/PRONOUNCEMENT.

what year was this?

I had forgotten that they were once associated with that "Paisley Underground" thing...that really helps put it in perspective for me.