So why is R.E.M.’s Up on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
Two things immediately spring to mind when I think about Up: one about what the album means for R.E.M.’s career and legacy, the other much more personal.
R.E.M. had three major eras as a band which produced music over the course of roughly thirty years. The first is its indie rock and college rock days, when they amassed a devoted fan base but were not yet a household name. The second ties to the band leaving IRS records to sign with Warner Brothers, which kicked off an era of massive global success on the back of smash hit songs like “Losing My Religion” and massive selling albums like Automatic for the People (#546 of best 1,000 albums ever).
The third era, the “late era” R.E.M. era, stemmed from drummer Bill Berry leaving the band in 1997. Up, released in 1998, is the first post-Berry album with the band (Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, and Mike Mills) carrying on as a trio.
Like much of their late era R.E.M. material, it’s not considered to be one of the band’s better albums – especially by a cohort of early era R.E.M. purists. Some, who look at Up more kindly, see it in terms of the band figuring out their new identity without their longtime drummer in the mix.
I agree with this latter take, but I additionally strongly argue – which I hope is obvious by my placing it within the Top 300 of the best 1,000 albums ever – that it’s a great album of experimentation and reinvention.
Which brings us to the personal thing that comes to mind with Up. It was released almost to the day of when I moved from New York City to Berkeley, California with my man Adam.
We moved into a very oddball but kind of fun place in Berkeley (a story I tell more about in the best 1,000 albums piece on The Pretenders’ Learning to Crawl), and I had a poster of the Up cover art on my wall in my bedroom there. It was one of the very few “decorative” things that I had the money or time to focus on during that time, which for me was an era of deeply personal and geographical transformations myself.
I think that’s partly why I so strongly relate to Up’s dreamy, beautiful, and somewhat mysterious feel as it matches my journey as a lifelong east coast resident to San Francisco’s east bay and entirely new surroundings.
“Airportman,” Up’s opener, must have really freaked people out with how un-R.E.M. it sounds, with its electro-strange fuzzed up chill vibes. Honestly, it sounds like what you might hear in a martini lounge in Cloud City. Which is to say, I dig it.
I also can say with conviction that “Lotus” is an absolute smasher. It’s a strange and deeply compelling rock/pop song, one that only Stipe and crew could conjure.
The use of electronic music and keyboards through most of the album – and especially the lean into pop music versus rock – was surely jarring for many people when Up came out. But I find the songs that go deepest in that direction, especially “At My Most Beautiful” and “Falls to Climb,” the album closer, to be the most rewarding.
Up is an album I like to throw on when I’m in a contemplative, whimsical, or mellow mood. While letting it wash over me, it’s really amazing to find myself winding through fairly unusual R.E.M. territory such as the six-minute-long “Diminished / I’m Not Over You.”
Some stats & info about R.E.M. – Up
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock Music, Pop Music, Alternative Pop
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 2.5 out of 5 stars (!?)
- When was Up released? 1998
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #287 out of 1,000
R.E.M.’s Up on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from R.E.M.’s Up that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
Say, haven’t you noticed? Oh, I ate the lotus.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.