1992 in Albums: Automatic For The People, by R.E.M.

You can be megastars without compromising

Automatic For The People — R.E.M.

Why was Automatic For The People such a gargantuan hit?

It might seem obvious in hindsight, but the record’s success was far from a foregone conclusion in 1992. Out Of Time had catapulted R.E.M. to fame, but much of that had depended on one-off parlour tricks: Kate Pierson’s guest vocals on ‘Shiny Happy People,’ the hip-hop on ‘Radio Song,’ the attention-grabbing weirdness of ‘Losing My Religion.’

Automatic For The People is, in some ways, a kind of retreat from all that. This is much closer to the little indie band that released ‘Radio Free Europe’ back in 1982. The album opens with ‘Drive.’ a moody slow-burner with no obvious chorus, filled with tension and angst.

In a way, the success of Automatic comes down to grunge. R.E.M. clearly got why grunge was taking off in such a big way: it wasn’t the noise, it was that people were sick of the neon plastic fakery of the…