“I don’t really know how else to regard it, except that some energy force in the universe pulled the four of us together to write pop music for the particular moment that we were there doing it,” says vocalist/lyricist Michael Stipe, reflecting on his time with the alternative rock band R.E.M. “We had our day in the sun, and it was amazing.”
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During a three-decade run, R.E.M. became one of the world’s best-selling bands. They released 15 studio albums and dozens of charting singles, including “Radio Free Europe,” “Fall on Me,” “The One I Love,” “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” “Stand,” “Losing My Religion,” “Shiny Happy People,” “Man on the Moon,” “Everybody Hurts,” and many more. Even after the band came to an end in 2011, R.E.M. has continued to be widely regarded as highly influential and beloved.
R.E.M.’s bassist, Mike Mills, credits the members’ commitment to their craft as being a crucial reason for this success. “We felt that songwriting was something we wanted to be really, really, good at,” he says. “We felt that that’s one of the things that might separate us from other bands, so we just worked very hard at that.”
Mills says that R.E.M.’s songwriting process was quite varied: “Sometimes one of us would bring into rehearsal virtually a complete song, in the sense of verses, chorus, bridge all written, and then we’d all just work out our parts. We would bring in less than that, all the way down to just a couple of chords, and then we would just play until either something formed out of the chaos or it didn’t. And then there were times we’d literally make noise until somebody heard somebody else do something, and it sounded like it was worth pursuing.
“We wouldn’t pass a song on to Michael until we thought it was interesting enough on its own,” Mills continues. “Our songs weren’t merely vehicles for words—they were good as instrumentals. A lot of singers have a lot more room to create on a canvas that’s been less painted on, but that just wasn’t how we did it. And then one of his many talents was being able to take a song like that and still find somewhere to put his mark on it.”
“I was always responding to what they had done,” Stipe says. “Typically, it was left to me to find the melody and the cadence within the musical composition and put together a lyric. First a vocal, and then a lyric. The lyric always came last.”
Stipe admits that there were times when his bandmates handed him something, and he realized he had no idea what to do with it. With a laugh, he says this happened “About 800,000 times.” In these cases, the others helped him resolve the issue by re-recording the track with a different arrangement or by assisting with finding a melody line within the song.
“Sometimes I had to really, really, really work at finding my place,” Stipe says. “The compositions on their own as instrumentals are profound and complete, and I would say, ‘I don’t hear a voice on this.’ Because, to me, the song is everything it needs to be. It doesn’t need a voice. But we were a four-piece with a singer, and they would push for me to try to find something.”
As time went on, though, this problem cropped up far less often. “We were together for 32 years, so that process evolved as I became a more confident lyricist and more confident of my abilities as a melodicist,” Stipe says.
His lyrics evolved from being deliberately cryptic on R.E.M.’s earlier releases to becoming increasingly clear and political as the years progressed. His lyrics, and the evocative way he sang them, are frequently credited for being a key part of what made the band so unique.
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“There’s a lot of literary references in my work, but I’m not a very good reader,” he says. “I do absorb different information. I’m like an antenna; It’s just easy for me. I move through whatever room I’m in and I pick up everything that’s there, and that all goes in and processes and comes back out in the form of my lyrics. I guess maybe jammed into my brain, there’s a lot of information that just needs to get out somehow, and it finds storylines or narratives or trajectories that I find interesting.
“Injustice is perhaps, for me, the most jarring aspect of humanity, and that presents itself in all kinds of ways,” Stipe continues. “As a writer, and then also as an activist, I’m often paralyzed or mortified by obvious injustices. I understand that’s a part of who we are, and that’s part of our journey, collectively or individually, to acknowledge these things and then to try to move beyond them. I think that that’s probably a running theme through all the work that I presented with R.E.M.”
The band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980. Their rise to international stardom—along with fellow Athens bands such as The B-52s and Widespread Panic—would help that college town gain the reputation for having one of the best music scenes in the world. (R.E.M. members’ ties to Athens remain strong, with Stipe and Mills both calling from Georgia for this interview.)
“Bill [Berry, drummer] and I had been playing together for a while, so we knew we enjoyed each other’s musical approach,” Mills says of R.E.M.’s early days. “Bill and I showed Peter [Buck, guitarist] and Michael some of our early songs, and we really liked the direction in which they took them, so that was inspiring. And then once we all started writing our own songs, we recognized pretty quickly that they were good songs.”
Mills and Berry had formal musical training, while Stipe and Buck were self-taught. This juxtaposition helped R.E.M. create a highly distinctive sound that combined melodic alternative rock that often veered into unexpected territory.
“It’s good to have somebody in the band who knows a little theory and can take an abstract and turn it into reality,” Mills says. “That was a lot of my contribution for a while because Michael would say, ‘Well, make it sound more purple.’ I would say, OK, let’s figure out how to do that.’ Really, it was good to have a little bit of a technical side of it—but it’s also really good to have no preconceived notions about how things should go, which leaves you with a lot more freedom to take it in a new direction.”
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With their debut EP, Chronic Town (1982), and their first full-length studio album, Murmur (1983), R.E.M. played jangly rock with near-indecipherable lyrics, which immediately proved popular on college radio stations. Through the 1980s and into the 1990s, they morphed into a more expansive sound, and Stipe’s vocals became more pointed.
Their 1991 album, Out of Time, topped the U.S. chart, spawned the successful singles “Losing My Religion” and “Shiny Happy People,” and earned the band three Grammy awards. Their next album, Automatic for the People (1993), did similarly well, and featured the massive hits “Everybody Hurts” and “Man on the Moon.”
For many bands, it would likely be tempting to keep making albums in the same vein in order to continue this winning streak. Instead, R.E.M. released Monster (1994), an edgy album that departed sharply from their previous work. Their later releases (ending with 2011’s Collapse Into Now) also explored esoteric soundscapes. This was, according to Stipe and Mills, a deliberate move.
“We were very careful not to repeat ourselves,” Mills says. “We were also very careful not to play anything that sounded too much like other songs. If it sounded too much like somebody else’s song or even one of our older songs, that would be a warning bell for us to go in another direction.”
“We wanted to really push ourselves, so there are songs that are really outside of our abilities, but they were experiments,” Stipe says. “Some of them are really great; some of them are flops. But I embrace them and am buoyed by both the triumphs and the failures.”
Mills believes that this willingness to follow their instincts, wherever that led them, is a big reason why R.E.M.’s music has connected so strongly with listeners. There was, he says, “an integrity to what we did. I think people understood that we played what we wanted to play, when we wanted to play it, and a lot of people responded to that. And the songs are all full of great melodies. Michael has a great voice. All those things just added up.”
Despite their massive success, the members disbanded R.E.M. in 2011. Both Mills and Stipe affirm that they have zero regrets about this decision, with Mills adding that there is no chance that the band will ever resume recording and touring.
“We knew what a career arc could be, and we also all realized that at that point, it was time to move on,” Mills says. “We had done everything we could think of to do, and we didn’t want to just be doing things to be doing them. So we said, ‘Let’s move on, and we can all have other careers and play with different people and still be friends.’”
Stipe agrees: “I think we called it a day at the right time, to be able to look back and feel really proud of the legacy of what we created, and hopefully built something that will live on. I’m just hoping that the work that we did survives beyond the generation that we entertained as this band. And it seems like it is.”
In 2007, R.E.M. was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2024, they were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Mills says that the latter honor was “a nice validation,” though he tries not to dwell on past achievements. “On the rare times when I look back at everything, I’m very pleased with how we conducted ourselves and the music that we made. We’re all pretty happy with that,” he says.
These days, all four ex-R.E.M. members are focused on new projects. Stipe has a solo album in the works, and Mills recently formed an as-yet-unnamed band; both of them hope to release albums in 2025.
This motivation to keep working, Mills says, comes from “The realization that this is what I do. This is what I am. There’s no reason to stop it. I enjoy it. I do it well. Might as well keep doing it!”
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