R.E.M.
Automatic For The People
Andy Kaufman snuck Dadaism into the general populous using Elvis impersonation, pro-wrestling, and Saturday Night Live. “Man On the Moon,” R.E.M.’s Kaufman tribute on Automatic for the People makes absolute sense—here’s a band whose biggest hit was steeped in religious and mythological imagery making an album about mundane-ness, named after a sign in a diner. R.E.M. boldly tried to sell intellectualism to an anti-intellectual audience. It worked. Automatic for the People sold 4 million copies, and became widely associated with “Everybody Hurts,” the most plain-spoken, accessible song the frequently beguiling Michael Stipe ever wrote. The band constantly found itself on MTV even though it absolutely did not belong there, and Stipe became a genuine rock star even though he embodied the antithesis of that idea. But Automatic for the People also begins with songs called “Drive” and “Try Not to Breathe,” and ends with two songs about jumping into water—in other words, over the course of the album, R.E.M. travel from constriction to freedom. Remember all the people climbing out of their cars on the freeway in the “Everybody Hurts” video? Automatic for the People may have been R.E.M.’s sweetening-the-pill album—in which they aim for a greater audience by toning down their artier instincts—but they also provided people with the escapist metaphor that, in the early nineties, they desperately needed.
-Marty Brown, 2006
I have the feeling that this album was just too successful for you kiddos to put any higher than #18. Am I right?
Posted by: mr. rendon | 2006.10.20 at 12:07