R.E.M.

R.E.M., American rock group, the quintessential college rock band of the 1980s. The members were lead singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and drummer Bill Berry.

R.E.M., named for a dream-state condition (rapid eye movement), formed in 1980 in Athens, Georgia, a university town about 65 miles (105 km) northeast of Atlanta that was already internationally noted for its local pop scene by the time R.E.M. released Chronic Town, its 1982 debut extended-play recording. Stipe, obsessed with his own passions and hatreds, was a rounded tenor who draped vague words in sonically reassuring cadences, and Buck, with a wider-ranging view of rock, was a guitarist drawn to fun and ideas; they met at the record store where Buck worked and Stipe shopped. Their band was more melodic than earlier groups in Athens, such as Pylon, yet never as lighthearted as the B-52’s. The members of R.E.M. answered only to themselves.

This quality explains the unmatched regard that would accrue to this romantic band—the American equivalent of Irish rockers U2 and British alternative rock groups such as the Smiths, bands also interested in stretching the rock-band guitar tradition into something newly personal. Beginning with the shifting sonic tapestry of “Radio Free Europe” (first released in 1981), R.E.M. drew on influences as various as the Byrds, the Velvet Underground, Big Star, Patti Smith, the Rolling Stones, and the New York Dolls to regale fans with albums fashioned from unpredictable blends of nonmetal rock and impressionistic folk.

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Especially ambitious was the band’s 1985 release, Fables of the Reconstruction, a tense blend of R.E.M.’s ideas about folk rock and those of Joe Boyd, an American expatriate who worked in the 1960s with British artists such as Nick Drake and Fairport Convention. R.E.M. also offered singles such as “Fall on Me” and “The One I Love,” which broadened its audience. The tack was completed in 1991 when the Grammy Award-winning Out of Time reached number one on the British and American album charts and the single “Losing My Religion” became an enormous hit and also earned a Grammy.

R.E.M. taught successive generations of American rockers how to be vague and specific at the same time; by juxtaposing evocative phrases to create poetic collages, the band involved listeners in the creation of the meaning of its songs. The group spent the 1990s making balladic albums such as Automatic for the People (1992) and rowdier, noisier collections such as Monster (1994).

Soon after the release of New Adventures in Hi-Fi in 1996, drummer Berry, who had suffered health problems, left the band. With his departure R.E.M. again reinvented its sound with Up (1998), an adventurous album of sonic experimentation. The band continued to perform and record together into the 2000s—releasing Reveal (2001) and Around the Sun (2004)—but also branched out individually to work with other performers. In 2007 R.E.M. was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and released the group’s first live album, titled R.E.M. Live, later that year. Accelerate (2008), which followed and received great notices, emphasized electric guitars and Stipe’s lustrous baritone while aiming allusive broadsides at the administration of U.S. Pres. George W. Bush. R.E.M. seemed unpleased with the course U.S. politics had taken in the four years since the band had last recorded a studio album; however, the group must have taken solace in its old revved-up folk-rock sound because the new music emerged iconic.

Accelerate was R.E.M.’s highest-charting album since New Adventures in Hi-Fi, and the group supported it with an extensive world tour. The band returned to the studio for Collapse into Now (2011), an album that combined power pop, straightforward rock, and acoustic ballads into a single audio palette, unified by Buck’s masterful guitar work. In September 2011, after more than three decades at the forefront of rock music, the members of R.E.M. announced the dissolution of the band.

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R.E.M. was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2024 in recognition of its “enigmatic lyricism and collaborative songwriting process.” At the ceremony, the band performed an acoustic version of “Losing My Religion,” marking the first time the four original members had performed live since 2008.