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What happened when REM went mainstream

Peter Ames Carlin’s book The Name of This Band is R.E.M. charts the band’s path from kings of alternative rock to elevator muzak.

R.E.M.’s first musical gestures were fathered by the buzzy American garage rock of the 1960s, mothered by the pointy angles of Britain’s post-punk, and then attached to lyrics that lead singer Michael Stipe once referred to as “complete babbling.” The band’s first release, a quick and picky track called “ Radio Free Europe,” was born in a college record store, and though the spirit of any genius may be fugitive, R.E.M.’s sprouted in a nursery of bohemian super-creativity in Athens, Georgia. pumped out and toured a new album every year, each one slowly deepening its gift for pop formalism in sideways directions—with juts of horns and steam-locomotive bass lines, spirals of hard-to-understand vocals that didn’t get above the instruments, and varying levels of pep surrounded by quasi-literary lyrics. During the band’s 1991 MTV Video of the Year acceptance speech for Out of Time ’s “Losing my Religion,” Stipe wore a stack of T-shirts layered over one another, each bearing a slogan: wear a condom, alternative energy now, the right to vote, handgun control, and love knows no gender.

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