REM feels unique to me in that the only consistent thing about these ranking lists seems to be that Around the Sun is at the bottom. The rest of the albums always land all over the place in a really subjective way. More than any other musical act, it feels like people have really varied takes on what is best and worst.
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Aww, that’s not completely fair. Collapse into Now is also complete garbage!
The correct list (in my opinion) is:
- Reckoning
- Green
- Automatic for the People
- Out of Time
- Document
- Murmur
- New Adventures in Hifi
- Monster
- Fables of the Reconstruction
- Life’s Rich Pageant
- Dead Letter Office (incl. Chronic Town EP)
- Accelerate
- Reveal
- Up
- Around the Sun
- Collapse Into Now
Up might place higher if they re-recorded it. The songs on it are great when they perform live, but a bit sterile on the studio album.
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Every time I see one of these lists I’m struck by the following:
- The Pat McCarthy albums are seriously underrated. Well, Up and Reveal are anyway. People always cite the production on those albums as why, but I think it’s more likely the arrangements. Folks didn’t like the electronica. I loved it, personally.
- Out of Time is also wildly undervalued.
- Murmur and Document are a tad overrated. (I’ll dodge your bullets now…)
- Accelerate and Collapse Into Now get a little more love than they maybe deserve, possibly because they weren’t at all like the three albums that preceded them.
- There is absolutely no way anyone will ever produce a list like this that makes anyone go, “oh yeah, I’d agree with that…”
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Also, these lists always make me want to do my own, so here it is…
- Up
- New Adventures in Hi-Fi
- Automatic for the People
- Out of Time
- Fables
- Reckoning
- Reveal
- Monster
- Lifes Rich Pageant
- Green
- Murmur
- Document
- Around the Sun
- Collapse Into Now
- Accelerate
That was harder than I thought, and will probably be different tomorrow.
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I agree. CIN is unlistenable garbage, to the extent of damaging their reputation and legacy.