Document (1987)

WHILE Document is acknowledged as the album that catapulted R.E.M. into the mainstream, they certainly weren't unknowns before its release. Their first four albums went top 40 on the US Billboard charts and top 100 in the UK (and all of them cracked the top 50 in New Zealand). Singles such as Radio Free Europe, Driver 8 and Fall On Me received airplay on the burgeoning US college and alternative radio scene. Their debut Murmur was named critic’s favourite in Rolling Stone’s end-of-year list, beating Michael Jackson’s Thriller and U2’s War. And they had built up a sizeable fanbase through incessant touring. Having said that, Document is the game-changer. It was their final album with the now-defunct indie label IRS Records before they went major with Warner Brothers and it was their first record to reach the top 10 in the US. A mostly straight-ahead rock album, Document yielded their first really big single – The One I Love, an oft-misinterpreted ode to “using people over and over again” (according to singer Michael Stipe) that the band had written while touring previous album Life’s Rich Pageant. Allmusic.com called the song an “overdue breakthrough”, but it wouldn’t have paved the way for their brilliant career if there weren’t great follow-ups on the record. Fortunately there were – Finest Worksong was a slickly produced opener but the real attention-grabber was It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine), a cryptic, stream-of-consciousness rant inspired by Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues that had a superhook chorus to go with Stipe’s peculiar imagery and high-brow name-dropping. Stipe said the album’s themes related to “the American work ethic (which) can be an ugly thing", but political uncertainty runs through the record, notably on Welcome To The Occupation, Exhuming McCarthy, the Animal Farm-inspired Disturbance At The Heron House, ITEOTWAWKI and the strange waltz of Fireplace.

Their first hit... and still great almost a quarter of a century later:

Green (1988)

THEIR major label debut picks up where Document left off - opener Pop Song 89 has the rock jangle of the previous record and asks "should we talk about the government", while Get Up stomps hard under its sweet melodies. It's when you get to You Are The Everything that you get to something different - the mandolin and accordion. This folksy element works its way throughout the record, such as on The Wrong Child and the lilting Hairshirt, providing a neat counterbalance to the rock that they were best known for at the time and setting the scene for the increasing experimentation that would follow on subsequent albums. The lead singles Stand and Orange Crush became signature tracks and cemented Stipe's reputation as a nonsensical lyricist - guitarist Peter Buck noted that he "must have played (Orange Crush) over 300 times, and I still don't know what the f*** it's about". Another highlight was Turn You Inside-Out, which highlights bassist Mike Mills' knack for backing vocals and a good groove. Green wasn't quite the breakthrough Warner was hoping for - it charted similarly to Document - but in Orange Crush and the vaguely ridiculous Stand they had some serious hits on their hands. Even if Buck did call Stand "the stupidest song we've ever written".

Here's Turn You Inside-Out:

Out Of Time (1991)

THEIR seventh album would prove to be their biggest to date, topping the American, Canadian and British charts. Part of the success was due to lead single Losing My Religion - a song Warner Bros initially denounced, saying you couldn't have a hit single with a song that featured mandolin. R.E.M. proved them wrong (the song was a worldwide smash) and Losing My Religion has become the milestone of their career. "Before ...Religion, R.E.M. was a large cult band touring 10 months a year... respected and successful (but) still considered kind of minor league," Buck wrote in the liner notes to 'best of' In Time. "Afterward... we were on the covers of all kinds of unlikely magazines and... were one of the biggest bands in the world." The follow-up was the more label-appeasing Shiny Happy People (which the band reportedly hate so much now they left it off In Time and never play it). But those two songs show the breadth and width of Out Of Time's appeal - there's a fairly big gap between the sombre introspection of Losing My Religion and the sparkly day-glo Shiny Happy People, a gap filled by the likes of the medieval-sounding folk of Endgame and Half A World Away, the subdued organ-soaked Low, the near-hip hop of Radio Song (with guest rapper KRS-One), the subtly noisy Stipe favourite Country Feedback and the country-pop of Me In Honey. Out Of Time won three Grammys and ushered them into the big league.

This is so cool:

Automatic For The People (1992)

R.E.M. didn't tour Out Of Time and they wouldn't return to the road until January 1995, when they kicked off their Monster tour in Australia. Not touring gave them the luxury of taking their time on their follow-up to Out Of Time, but instead they headed straight back into the studio and crafted a largely downbeat album that reflected the onset of their 30s by focusing on death, loss, mortality, suicide, family and mourning. Much of the album was written without Stipe present (he wrote the lyrics later when the demos were complete with the exception of Nightswimming - one of the few R.E.M. songs where the lyrics were written first) and with drummer Bill Berry playing bass. Realising they needed some rockers to break the mood, they came up with the peppier The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite, the first of their Andy Kaufman tributes Man On The Moon, and the hair-metal-ish Ignoreland. While the first two were successful singles, it was the gorgeous-sounding opener Drive and the heartbreaking yet uplifting anthem Everybody Hurts - both of which feature sublime string arrangements from Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones - that proved to be the big successes of the album. Buck, writing in the In Time liner notes, noted that while Man On The Moon sounded like "the quintessential R.E.M. song" it almost didn't make it onto the album as Stipe was struggling to write lyrics for it. After four days off, Stipe walked into the vocal booth and nailed the song in one take. Automatic... went top 10 in more than a dozen countries and is their biggest selling album to date.

Here's Bruce Springsteen joining R.E.M. on Man On The Moon at the Vote For Change concert in 2006:

Monster (1994)

WITH Monster, R.E.M. decided to get back on the tour bus and embrace their rock star status. Celebrity and fame are the big lyrical themes and the distorted guitars are front and centre in the mix, almost overwhelming the affected coolness of Stipe's vocals. The album title proved to be apt as the band seemed to be haunted during the making and subsequent tour, encountering a phenomenal run of bad luck. Having demoed 45 songs, R.E.M. headed into a studio to record with long-time producer Scott Litt, with the aim of doing the songs live and moving through them quickly. That plan was derailed by Berry, Mills and Stipe falling ill during recording (not at the same time), the deaths of Stipe's friends Kurt Cobain and River Phoenix, and the band breaking up for a short time due to dis-harmony within the ranks. Adding elements of glam-rock to a grungey rock sound, the songs on Monster are among the most soulless, distant and simple of their career, with Stipe writing each song in character to explore the uglier sides of the music business and stardom. It's not without its highlights, such as What's The Frequency, Kenneth?, the Kurt-and-Courtney-inspired Crush With Eyeliner, the pacy charting non-single Star 69, and the dynamic Bang And Blame. The tour that followed the release of the album saw Berry, Mills and Stipe all hospitalised at separate times, but it also yielded the recordings that made up their next record New Adventures In Hi-Fi. Monster charted and sold well, but has become in retrospect one of their more poorly regarded albums.

Here's the What's The Frequency, Kenneth? video, in all it's strobing glory: