R.E.M Album Ranking
A year ago, R.E.M were a band that I didn’t have too much of a relationship with. Sure I knew the big hits like ‘Man on the Moon’ and ‘Losing my Religion’ as well as some other singles like ‘What’s the Frequency Kenneth’ and ‘Everybody Hurts’ which I enjoyed to varying degrees but they were a band I never dug into and one I didn’t know much about. However one album I had heard in full was ‘Reveal’. It came out when I was 10 and me and my mum liked the single ‘Imitation of Life’ so she bought it for us.
But beyond that, I didn’t know where in the US they were from, didn’t know all the members names or even how many albums they had. So I was excited when a podcast I listen to (and highly recommend) called What is Music? were dedicating their 6th series to the band’s career and discography. A perfect chance for me to get acquainted.
And boy I got acquainted. Listening to each album along with the show gave me much welcome insight and context which made the journey much more enjoyable but what obviously stood out the most was how much great music I had been missing all these years!
So now my initial journey of discovery is over it’s time for me to put down my personal ranking of their studio albums. I say initial, as I’m going to be spending time getting to know these records more and more for years.
What is immediately obvious from my ranking is that very definitively have a favourite era and sound of R.E.M, with my favourites coming from one period. Maybe people will disagree with how high I’ve ranked some, and people will definitely disagree with how low I’ve ranked some others but that’s just how it fell. But feel free to leave a comment
What I will say is that I do like almost all of these albums to varying degrees. They’ve now become one of my favourite bands. But without any further rambling, starting from least favourite, here is my ranking of the albums.
Hails!
- Around the Sun
- Collapse Into Now
- New Adventures in Hi-Fi
- Up
- Out of Time
- Accelerate
- Reveal
- Automatic for the People
- Green
- Monster
- Fables of the Reconstruction
- Document
- Murmur
- Reckoning
- Lifes Rich Pageant
