R.E.M. never really chased superstardom, and yet they found themselves thrust into it in the mid-90s. Last week we ended by talking about Green and Out of Time. In part three we chat about Automatic for the People and Monster, before diving into the records they made after drummer and founding member Bill Berry left: Up, Reveal, Around the Sun, Accelerate and Collapse Into Now. This episode's the longest of all four parts precisely because we cover so much ground. We try to give each album a fair hearing before we circle back to Chris' choice of New Adventures in Hi-Fi in part four/Side D.
There's a ton of samples of this, and it soon becomes clear that without Berry and dimming commercial appeal, that they were starting to become a little bit listless. Hope you enjoy getting stuck into it!