I would personally say Country Feedback but that’s my opinion. I WANNA HEAR YOURS!!
I honestly can’t answer off the top of my head, but I can say I have a new favorite! Maybe it was here but I think Bertis tweeted it. It was a demo of Driver 8 and being the train fanatic I am, it was the coolest video ever. Tons of real (old) train footage, real people, great song, I just loved it
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I usually dislike (not hate) the artsy-fartsy type of video, like “Fall on me” or those for Murmur with the guys walking around a derelict garden, no narrative, no relation to the song.
Ah, I love all the weird arty ones. Feeling Gravity’s pull, Life and How to live it, the non-singles from This Film Is On (ie. Country Feedback). It accentuates that mysterious element that the band had before it disipated probably around Monster.
What I do hate are the few that just scream early 90s purgatory. Near Wild Heaven, Radio Song and Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight. They all manage to look like absolute twats.
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Some of my favorites off the top of my head are “Everybody Hurts” (I’m a way bigger fan of the video than I am of the song but I by no means hate the song), “Bittersweet Me,” and “Low.” I can’t say if the first video I saw from them was “The One I Love” or the entirety of Succumbs but at any rate, I had no MTV in 1987 so I’d never seen any of their videos. It took me a little while to come around to “Left of Reckoning” but I soon grew to enjoy it. Not long ago, it was part of the Southern Accent exhibit at the Nasher Museum in Durham, NC.
I didn’t know there was a music video for Country Feedback until I saw this thread and I actually really liked it lol
I have a soft spot for the Leaving New York video, in which I think Stipe sports some awesome clothes and looks fantastic. But sadly, Peter’s transparent expression of boredom and contempt means that I can never entirely lose myself in the video.
And as long as we’re talking about videos, I love the black and white video for Strange Currencies and wish the official R.E.M. YouTube channel would fix the version that they uploaded a couple years ago which abruptly cuts off mid-song.
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Fun fact about the Strange Currencies video: it features Norman Reedus AKA Daryl from The Walking Dead. Big R.E.M. fan, apparently…
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Doesn’t Peter Buck looked bored in most of their videos? I seem to remember him saying he wasn’t especially fond of filming them. On stage, he’s much more animated because that’s obviously more of his element than miming for a camera.
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Yes, he and Mike have both said they deeply disliked making videos (undoubtedly Bill felt the same way). Nevertheless he’s quite prominent in the Losing My Religion video and doesn’t come off as bored. It’s possible that I’m just reading a lot into his expression in the Leaving New York video because of the album’s poor reception.
My favorite Peter bit in a music video is in the video for Bittersweet Me, which is otherwise a silly, low budget video made, I presume, because E-Bow didn’t connect: he does this cool move where he flicks the neck of the guitar during the chorus, and he seems like he’s definitely into the song.
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I believe what you’re are seeing is Buck’s usual demeanor in videos in that particular video.
As for the video for “Bittersweet Me,” I never got the impression that the video was particularly low budget or that it (or any of their videos for that matter) were the result of any sort of reaction to the reception previous songs or albums had received, good or bad. People tend to overlook it for some reason but while “E-Bow the Letter” may not have done so well in the States, in the U.K it was their highest charting single up to that point.