vinylfanatics.com

**R.E.M. - Green**
★★★★☆

By 1988, R.E.M. had reached a crossroads that would have paralyzed lesser bands. After a decade of steadily building from Athens, Georgia college radio darlings to alternative rock royalty, Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry found themselves at the end of their I.R.S. Records contract with major labels circling like vultures around fresh roadkill. The band that had practically invented the template for indie success was about to go major league, signing a then-unprecedented five-album deal with Warner Bros. worth a reported $10 million. The pressure was on to deliver something that would justify the investment while maintaining the artistic integrity that made them special in the first place.

Enter "Green," an album that sounds like four guys working through their anxieties about selling out by doing exactly what they've always done – making it up as they go along. It's a deliberately schizophrenic record that careens between radio-friendly anthems and willfully obtuse art-rock experiments, often within the same song. If "Document" was R.E.M.'s most focused statement, "Green" is their most scattered – and somehow, that makes perfect sense.

The album opens with "Pop Song 89," a title that's either completely literal or deeply ironic, depending on your perspective. It's got all the hallmarks of a classic R.E.M. track – Buck's jangly guitar, Mills' melodic bass lines, Berry's propulsive drumming, and Stipe's cryptic vocals – but there's something more polished about it, a sheen that suggests studio time and major-label budgets. It's a mission statement disguised as a throwaway, announcing that R.E.M. can play the pop game without losing their souls.

The real revelation comes with "Stand," the album's biggest hit and most controversial track among longtime fans. It's aggressively simple, almost nursery-rhyme basic, with Stipe literally giving directions like some sort of demented aerobics instructor. On paper, it sounds awful. In practice, it's irresistible – a sugar rush of pure pop that proved R.E.M. could write a genuine mainstream hit without completely abandoning their DNA. The fact that it became their biggest single to date while being about absolutely nothing is peak R.E.M.

But "Green" shows its true colors in its quieter moments. "The Wrong Child" finds the band exploring darker territory, with Stipe's vocals floating over a hypnotic groove that builds to a genuinely unsettling climax. "Orange Crush" tackles the Vietnam War through the lens of Agent Orange, wrapping serious subject matter in one of Buck's most memorable guitar hooks. It's political without being preachy, angry without being shrill – everything rock music should be but rarely is.

The album's secret weapon might be "Losing My Religion," though that masterpiece wouldn't arrive until the next album. Instead, "Green" offers "World Leader Pretend," a gorgeous meditation on power and responsibility that finds Stipe at his most vulnerable. It's the kind of song that reminds you why R.E.M. mattered in the first place – four musicians creating something larger than the sum of their parts, touching on universal themes through deeply personal expression.

Not everything works. "Get Up" feels like filler, and some of the album's more experimental moments ("Hairshirt," "The Wrong Child") can feel indulgent. But even the failures feel necessary, like a band working through their identity crisis in real time.

Three decades later, "Green" feels like a pivot point not just for R.E.M., but for alternative rock as a whole. It proved that indie bands could sign to major labels without immediately selling their souls, paving the way for the alternative explosion of the '90s. More importantly, it demonstrated that commercial success and artistic integrity weren't mutually exclusive – a lesson that countless bands have tried to learn ever since.

"Green" isn't R.E.M.'s best album – that honor probably belongs to "Murmur" or "Automatic for the People" – but it might be their most important. It's the sound of a great American band learning they could have it all without losing what made them great in the first place. In a decade obsessed with selling out, R.E.M. found a third option: growing up.