The singer of REM, Michael Stipe, during the concert that the group offered in Madrid in October 2003. MIGUEL GENER
It has just been 30 years since the publication of
Out of Time
(1991), the album that placed REM in the aristocracy of commercial pop-rock, a true giant band, in punch and public, out of the alternative circuits.
With this album, the band ended up opening the great melon of independent music to mass audiences.
Out of Time
put the group from Athens in the dimension of a best-selling group, but this did not detract from the credibility and quality of their music.
It is an outstanding work, driven from its first steps by the first advance single: 'Losing My Religion', an incontestable song that far surpassed the alternative world at an international level, becoming one of the most listened songs in the decade of the 90s, as well as a timeless classic in rock history.
The group had already become a world event with
Green,
published with the multinational Warner Music, but it is with
Out of Time
that they established themselves as the most fascinating and sweeping pop phenomenon of the decade.
A beautiful and captivating album, where strong watts park for a more acoustic landscape, giving off melancholy in each composition, even in one as silly and perfect as 'Shiny Happy People' with the accompaniment of Kate Pierson from the great The B-52 ′ s.
This is what magnificent works have: even the most inconsequential goes through the present.
REM went through the present since they were born from that scene of the eighties known as New American Rock, formed by regenerators of rock from country and
garage
.
In the middle of a map inhabited by minor road gangs, such as The Long Ryders, Green On Red, Jason & The Scorchers or Dream Syndicate, REM planted a highway.
From his rock with bombastic parables came a direct path to fame, where vintage American sounds were embraced with a renewed pop universe.
A highway that, it should be noted in large letters, always followed a line of artistic coherence that deserves to be recognized.
Because from REM's microcosm, formed by the sonic roots of The Byrds coming together with
garage,
punk and pop, true hymns have emerged that are only reached when the stars cross.
'It's the end of the world as we know it', this is how REM wrote the song that best defines the moment in which we live
Unlike U2, REM always knew when to fold.
They also owned a smarter career and less prone to pop messianism, but in the face of history, the most important thing is one simple thing: REM is missed.
This is a virtue in a world in which other groups and artists are often missed.
What better way to remember them with some of their most iconic songs, including some from
Out of Time.
What a bandon.
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