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top 20 R.E.M.

yes there are many exciting things happening in my life why do you ask
1R.E.M.
Automatic for the People

Nightswimming - one of the greatest songs of all time and a personal favourite. shows how a simple piano melody complimenting a great lyric can be more impactful than almost anything else
2R.E.M.
Lifes Rich Pageant

Fall On Me - the best track from the early years shows why R.E.M.'s lead-backing vocal interplay is probably the best in music. Stipe's favourite for a reason, and most sane people's favourite too
3R.E.M.
Murmur

Shaking Through - OPPORTUNE
4R.E.M.
Out of Time

Country Feedback - wonderful on record, but live becomes a pure vehicle of catharsis that's entirely born of its improvised roots. possibly my favourite Stipe vocal too
5R.E.M.
Automatic for the People

Find the River - if you hear this and don't feel the full weight of leaving home (& the responsibilities, regrets and excitements therein) then I do not fuck with you tbh
6R.E.M.
Fables of the Reconstruction

Feeling Gravitys Pull - the best R.E.M. opener combines a slow-mo instrumental and a phenomenal use of strings for a track that's Radiohead 14 years before Radiohead started making good music
7R.E.M.
Up

Diminished - the most underrated R.E.M. track wrings uncanny emotion from the narrator's ambiguity over whether he killed his lover or not. "is the jury wavering? do they know I sing?" justifies the whole damn album
8R.E.M.
New Adventures in Hi-Fi

Electrolite - a fitting farewell to the Berry era of the band if ever there could be one, and a beautiful ode to an entire century in that way only Stipe can do it
9R.E.M.
Out of Time

Near Wild Heaven - Mills' finest vocal explores the intersection between paradise and realism, I think? idk it just sounds real fuckin' pretty
10R.E.M.
Reckoning

Camera - Reckoning's one moment of unvarnished humanity is completely and utterly moving, and not a second outstaying its welcome
11R.E.M.
Fables of the Reconstruction

Driver 8 - just a banger with a phenomenal chorus
12R.E.M.
Reckoning

Harborcoat - some of Buck and Mills' best ever work soundtracks some of my favourite Stipe poetic nonsense - "they shifted the statues for harbouring ghosts"
13R.E.M.
Monster

Let Me In - the Kurt Cobain tribute is so stubbornly anti-melodic it pretty much becomes distortion and noise, but Stipe's "heyyy - let me in" says all that needed to be said
14R.E.M.
Automatic for the People

Try Not to Breathe - AFTP shows early that it can maintain some energy while still brutally fucking depressing. Stipe leaves the character work behind for a moment and writes about his dying grandmother in one of the greatest choruses of all time
15R.E.M.
Murmur

Perfect Circle - the mystery/ambiguity of Murmur peaks with this song, a gorgeous ode to lost childhood or potentially something else entirely - i'm content never knowing
16R.E.M.
New Adventures in Hi-Fi

E-Bow the Letter - country feedback part deux but not quite as good but it's got that extra patti smith swag
17R.E.M.
Up

Daysleeper - gorgeous piano-led tune shows that Stipe's ability to inhabit every type of character is still his biggest asset as a songwriter, even post-Berry
18R.E.M.
Lifes Rich Pageant

I Believe - almost the perfect LRP song, the bizarre conflation of nature and existentialism reaches its head on a near-perfect absolute banger. "I believe in coyotes and time as an abstract"
19R.E.M.
Out of Time

Me In Honey - simple pleasures are sometimes the best, and this might be the best R.E.M. chorus to just fuckin' wail real loud
20R.E.M.
Reveal

I'll Take the Rain - like Brian Wilson himself waltzed into the studio from the mid-sixties and helped create this post-2000 absolute gem
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