Album – Up (1998)
Highlight – At My Most Beautiful
Reason – Maybe it was his brush with death on the world tour; or maybe (as he said at the time) he just didn’t want to do it anymore, but when Bill Berry formally left the band on the first day’s rehearsal no matter how amicably given and received, it left the band with a problem. Stipe later said the band then “leapfrogged their next two albums” going past rock, country and straight towards electronica. It made sense without a formal drummer to fill the gap with session players and drum machines, and it gave them the push to head into (yet) another musical direction.
Not that REM turned into Radiohead or something (thank goodness. Look I'm as broad-minded as the next man, and it’s very worthy and honourable the ‘Head are being experimental and arty and whathaveyou, but the fact is Street Spirit, No Surprises, Creep et al will always be better than In Rainbows no matter how much you lie to yourself that they aren’t. Old ‘Head is just better, OK?) even if they did give them the idea. It’s still recognisably REM, just with Daysleeper, Lotus & Airportman adding (yet) more strings to their bow. Sadly, it was never quite able to carry their audience with them and merely six months after release Stipe described it as “dead in the water”. But with At My Most Beautiful heading the pack, one of the most perfect, tender love songs (apparently the lyrics took a year to complete) ever composed, the troubled waters suggested by Falls To Climb (gentleman mark your opponents, fire into your own ranks) were being traversed, more or less.
Stipe Gayness Factor - 7. Having established himself as “Queer”, or “Bi” as the rest of the English speaking world would have it, this is one of the more personal albums Stipe put out, mentioning more of relationship and the dreaded human interaction.
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