YMMV / R.E.M.

• Alternate Character Interpretation: In "The One I Love", does the guy actually love the girl he's singing to or not? He claims that she was just "a simple prop to occupy [his] time", but his screaming "FIRE!" repeatedly in the chorus could be taken to imply that there was some passion to their relationship which he doesn't want to admit.
• Americans Hate Tingle: Although the band is huge in England now, as the Germans Love David Hasselhoff example below attests, the band initially was not very successful there. Their first UK Top 40 hit was "Orange Crush" in 1989, long after they had established themselves as the top alternative group in the United States. There are several reasons for this: First, I.R.S. Records had crappy distribution outside the U.S., and their similarly successful labelmates The Go-Go's also experienced difficulty with scoring hits in Europe. Secondly the U.K. indie scene was obsessed with their own native jangly guitar band (who themselves struggled to break the U.S. market).
• Anvilicious: Michael Stipe intentionally made "Everybody Hurts" this so the message would be unmistakable to listeners, mainly the teen market he was trying to reach. This is arguably a case of Tropes Are Tools, however.
• Audience-Alienating Era: Though opinions on R.E.M.'s Warner (Bros.) Records output repeatedly shifted with time, the period after Bill Berry's departure is still regarded as a step down compared to earlier material. As the band were a democratic unit who had everyone contribute to the songwriting, losing a member was, in their own words, like cutting off a dog's leg. While the first "trio" album, Up, got Vindicated by History, Reveal remains somewhat divisive and Around the Sun is widely seen as R.E.M.'s nadir by fans, critics, and the band themselves. This decline corresponded with a substantial drop in sales and publicity, with their commercial success and fan reception not recovering until Accelerate and Collapse into Now, the band's last two albums.
• Awesome Music: Too many to list. Even their weaker albums feature some absolutely amazing tracks.
• Broken Base:
  • Had this something awful while they were active, though the rift has largely been sealed in recent years, with their breakup leading many fans to return to and re-evaluate material they had previously disliked. At the time, though, there were those who only liked the albums before or after Stipe stopped burying his vocals (Lifes Rich Pageant being the dividing line), those who only liked the albums before or after they adopted a poppier sound (Green being the dividing line), those who only liked the pre-Out of Time material, and those who only liked the material with Bill Berry. It's pretty strange looking back on just how divisive so many now-beloved albums were. If you thought Weezer's fanbase was fractured, their situation is arguably much tamer compared to what R.E.M. used to face.
  • Whilst as a general rule, Up is considered a good record (albeit noticeably rough compared to its predecessors) and Around the Sun mediocre, fans and critics are very divided on the album in between: Reveal, an LP that is more about soundscapes than catchy songs. It suffered from Hype Backlash at the time and certainly in the UK alienated a lot of fans, who only returned to the band after the critical and commercial success of the single "Bad Day" (released to promote the Greatest Hits Album In Time).
• Chorus-Only Song: "It's The End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)", mainly due to the fact that it's pretty hard to understand what Stipe's saying in the verses since it's so fast.
  • "Low" arguably fits this trope as well.
  • "The One I Love" is an inversion: more people know the verses ("This one goes out to the one I love...") instead of the chorus (Michael Stipe holding the word "fire" for a whole bar while Mike Mills sings "Comin' down on her own now" repeatedly in the background).
• Covered Up:
  • Their version of "Superman" has become better known than the Clique's original, so much so that when the song appeared, re-recorded, in a 1999 commercial, some parts of their fandom were shocked that the band had supposedly sold themselves out in such a manner. The group responded by pointing out that it wasn't their song to begin with, so they had no control over what was done with it.
  • Also, "Strange" is often thought of as a song they originally performed. You'd think the fact that it's credited to a different set of writers would tip off people that it was originally performed by another band. This has actually caused R.E.M. to earn a lot of ire from Wire fans and Hardcore Punk fans in general, who accused R.E.M. of missing the point of the song by "softening it up," to the point where many of said fans outright refuse to listen to R.E.M. out of spite.
  • Wet Wet Wet famously covered The Troggs' "Love Is All Around" in 1994... but it was R.E.M.'s 1991 B-side recording of it that inspired them to do so. As Wet Wet Wet's version was so successful, it's weird for some to hear either The Troggs or R.E.M. versions without thinking of it.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Some of their less commercially successful albums have developed passionate followings nonetheless, most notably New Adventures in Hi-Fi and Fables of the Reconstruction. Monster is a different example in that while it was a commercial success, it was initially highly controversial among fans for its grunge-oriented sound, only to later acquire a cult following of its own for its effective satire of mainstream celebrity culture.
• Epic Riff: Many. "Losing My Religion", "Shiny Happy People", "Man on the Moon", "Drive", "The One I Love", "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?", "Supernatural Superserious", and "Discoverer", among others.
• Fandom Rivalry: With fans of The Smiths, on account of the fact that both bands were pioneering jangle-pop artists from the 80s, yet at the same time the two of them had radically different sounds from one another (R.E.M. specializing in arpeggio-based guitars and tangy, reedy vocals, and the Smiths specializing in riff-based guitars and ethereal, crooning vocals).
• Fanon Discontinuity: Changes from person to person. For some fans, it's after Fables of the Reconstruction, when the band cleaned up their sound; for others, after they signed on Warner Bros. For most, it's after Bill Berry left.
  • While their appeal varies, the first three albums without Berry (Up, Reveal, Around the Sun) are often considered an Audience-Alienating Era that was ended by Accelerate; consequently, any number of fans will try to pretend that any one, two, or even all three of those albums don't exist (though much less commonly with Up after it got Vindicated by History).
• First Installment Wins: A subset of fans maintain that Murmur is the band's best album.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With 10,000 Maniacs, due to both bands having a similar style, as well as Michael Stipe and Natalie Merchant being romantically linked for a while. Both lead singers made contributions to the other bands' albums.
  • Also with The B-52s, due to both bands hailing from Athens, Georgia, and Kate Pierson's guest appearances on Out of Time.
• Fridge Brilliance: "It's The End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" is well known for its Word Salad Lyrics sung really quickly. (So much, not even Michael Stipe is sure of the correct lyrics.) But isn't that representative of the chaos and confusion that would accompany the end of the world as we know it?
• Genius Bonus:
  • "Welcome to the Occupation" is deliberately written in such a manner that it can either be about an "occupation" as in a job, or it can be about an "occupation" as in a country in war. Both meanings imply that the people involved had hoped for better things but have no real choice in the matter. Being screwed over by the government is the main theme of Document.
  • The political subtext of "The Flowers of Guatemala" is more obvious to anyone who knows that Amanita is actually the name of a genus of very poisonous fungi.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • When their popularity dropped off in America, they remained popular in the UK and Ireland, mostly because the genre of music the band performs remains extremely popular in those countries. Indeed, Around the Sun (their only studio album never to have had a song place even on the Bubbling Under chart in the U.S.) produced a #5 hit in the UK.
  • For that matter, "The Great Beyond" hit #3 in the U.K., and it wasn't even an album track, but written for the movie Man on the Moon — which didn't make a peep at their box office.
  • Also inverted: their first album, Murmur, was a hit in the US but did not chart anywhere else (except New Zealand, where it was only a minor hit). They did not even hit the top 10 in any other country besides the US until they signed with Warner Bros.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • "Houston" after the titular city was hit by Hurricane Harvey. The song's opening lines are "If the storm doesn't kill me, the government will./Got to get that out of my head."
  • In "Star 69", Michael sings, "I know all about the warehouse fire." In 2008, a fire at Universal Studios destroyed a number of artists' masters, including some by R.E.M. In 2019, a New York Times article revealed the extent of the destruction, and a spokesperson for REM stated that they were not aware of the destruction of said master tapes.
  • "Ignoreland" from Automatic For The People was written in response to the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush's presidencies and their neoconservative policies. The line "marched into the capital" used to compare the rise of the Reagan-led Neoconservative Revolution to a coup, became frighteningly more prescient after an actual coup attempt in January 2021 that featured mobs of right-wing populist Donald Trump supporters quite literally marching into the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. (the capital of the United States) to try and overturn the results of the 2020 election.
• Heartwarming Moments: During "Let Me In" live performances, the band members form a closed circle and perform an acoustic version of the song as a tribute to Kurt Cobain, to whom the song is dedicated.
  • "Everybody Hurts" performed live in Lima.
    • Heck, "Everybody Hurts" performed anywhere. The 1993 MTV Video Music Awards is another notable example.
    • Glastonbury 1999 had a sweet moment before the encore. The band left the stage to a rapturous applause... And the crowd spontaneously burst into a rousing serenade of "It's the End of The World as We Know It".
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The opening lyrics of "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)": "That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane..." Made even funnier by the mishearing where people hear it as "snakes in airplanes".
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The chorus from "It's The End Of The World" has shown up many times in various parts of pop culture, usually where people try to sing along to it but always end up forgetting the words. Hell, it even named a trope!
  • "STAND IN THE PLACE WHERE YOU L-" ^note The infamously hilarious cutoff during Parks and Recreation, where Ben's 3 weeks of claymation filming produces a clip so short it doesn't even get through the first line of the song.
  • #EverybodySpurts^Explanation A Vine trend where people would post videos of themselves donning a saddened facial expression before drooling dark liquid from their mouths in time to the chorus of "Everybody Hurts".
• Misblamed: Fans, critics, and analysts tend to erroneously point fingers at Bill Berry's departure as being the reason for the band's much-contested incorporation of electronic elements in the late 90s and early 2000s. However, the band themselves stated that the shift was already planned before Berry left, and indeed "Leave" on New Adventures in Hi-Fi was an early hint at that.
• Narm Charm:
  • "Shiny Happy People", especially the video. The blend of oddness and sincerity is most likely why there's such a big enthusiasm gulf between the band and their fans over both. It helps a lot that the song and video receive an assist from Kate Pierson of the The B-52s, whose own band worked with Narm Charm the way Michelangelo worked with marble.
  • "Stand" from the album prior also garners this type of appeal, being based on cheesy bubblegum pop songs from the 1960s. The fact that "Weird Al" Yankovic parodied it (as "Spam") certainly helps.
• Nightmare Fuel: The album cover for Monster is an out-of-focus photo of a balloon featuring a bobcat-cougar-lynx...thing's disembodied head. Worse is that there's a drawing of a headless bear on the back of the CD, implying that what you're looking at is the monster's decapitated head.
• Refrain from Assuming:
  • Those hearing "Oddfellows Local 151" without knowing its title would think it was called "Firehouse" due to that being the entire chorus — in fact, that was its Working Title.
  • Many people thought that "The Great Beyond" was called "I'm Pushing an Elephant Up the Stairs" when released.
  • "So. Central Rain" is not called "Sorry". This got to the point where the single release and some reissues of Reckoning add the parenthetical subtitle "I'm Sorry".
  • Early bootlegs sometimes title the then-unreleased "All The Right Friends" and "Romance" as "I Don't Want You Anymore" and "Easy Come Easy Go" respectively. Though both songs feature the titles in their lyrics, the given phrases are used more prominently.
• Retroactive Recognition: The cinematographer for the music video to "The One I Love" was Alton Brown, who later went on to make the groundbreaking cooking show Good Eats.
• Rewatch Bonus: The music video for "Imitation of Life" is this trope, as there are dozens of different happenings going on that become more obvious when seen again.
• Signature Song: "Losing My Religion" is their best known hit overall. "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" and especially "Everybody Hurts" are not far behind, although the latter is kind of a Black Sheep Hit.
  • "Shiny Happy People" may be a Creator Backlash, and they played it live only twice. That said, it still remains one of their most popular songs.
  • To be fair, there are other iconic and well-remembered songs by them, such as their Breakthrough Hit "The One I Love", "Man on the Moon" and "Nightswimming". Going by album, though...
  • Murmur: "Radio Free Europe" (and "Talk About the Passion to a lesser extent).
  • Reckoning: "So. Central Rain" and not far behind "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville".
  • Fables of the Reconstruction: "Driver 8".
  • Lifes Rich Pageant: "Fall on Me" (though also their Covered Up verion of "Superman" is well-known).
  • Document: "It's the End of the World as We Know It" and "The One I Love".
  • Green: "Orange Crush" and "Stand".
  • Out of Time: "Losing My Religion" of course (and, if you want to go by pure popularity and put aside the association with the band, also "Shiny Happy People").
  • Automatic for the People: "Everybody Hurts" and "Man on the Moon", but the notable songs are several ("Nightswimming", "Drive", "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite").
  • Monster: "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?", with "Bang and Blame" and "Strange Currencies" also being notable.
  • New Adventures in Hi-Fi: "E-Bow the Letter" and "Electrolite".
  • Up: "At My Most Beautiful" and "Daysleeper".
  • Man on the Moon soundtrack: "The Great Beyond".
  • Reveal: "Imitation of Life".
  • In Time: "Bad Day".
  • Around the Sun: "Leaving New York".
  • Accelerate: "Supernatural Superserious".
  • Collapse into Now: "Uberlin" and "Oh My Heart".
• Song Association: If you browse the YouTube video for "Stand", expect a few of the top comments to mention the scene of Ben Wyatt's Requiem For a Tuesday.
• Sophomore Slump: The band's second major-label album Out of Time, despite featuring "Losing My Religion" and subsequently selling more than Green, is often considered a step down from its predecessor.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: While R.E.M. were often considered by the abrasive side of the 80s alternative movement to be rather not abrasive enough, the band's various shifts in sound have all saw backlash from some of its fans, most notoriously the shift to a more polished sound on Green, the one-off grunge experiment on Monster, and the electronic soundscapes on Up.
• Values Resonance: Originally written in reaction to the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, "Ignoreland" from 1992's Automatic For The People still remains relevant all the way into The New '10s and The New '20s.
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: A number of people in the band's native US mispronounce their name as rɛ́m (reflecting the US pronunciation of "REM," as in the band's namesake, REM sleep) rather than the intended pronunciation, ɑ́ːrɪjɛ́m (i.e. "R-E-M," reflecting the UK pronunciation of "REM").
• Vindicated by History: Monster and Up are probably the band's most dramatic examples of this, but this applies to some extent to almost all of the band's post-Automatic output, which was often downgraded until the band broke up, at which point people went back and began reconsidering. Monster in particular was aided by people becoming more aware of the actual intent behind it (a critique of mainstream celebrity culture), while Up was in part aided by electronic music becoming more widely accepted again in the 2010s, allowing people to see that the songwriting on the album was still pretty good at that point.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The music video for "Imitation of Life" is a beautifully done collage of mini-vignettes all occurring at once on a loop, with some very effective use of Pan and Scan to highlight individual moments while also leaving them open for the viewer to detect in advance during re-watches.

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