Automatic For the People

The world was spinning faster in 1992, but Automatic for the People asked us to slow down.

R.E.M.’s eighth studio album arrived just as their previous, Out of Time, was still in orbit — yet rather than coast on momentum, the band turned inward. Instead of the jangly college-rock roots that launched them, or the shiny polish of their recent hits, they delivered something quieter, more mournful, more human. These songs wrestle with age, loss, memory — and, paradoxically, manage to shimmer with clarity and beauty.

What began as an attempt to write rockers became a record that mostly doesn’t. Instead, acoustic instruments, organs, and string arrangements (courtesy of John Paul Jones) carve out a spacious, mid-tempo terrain. From the aching grandeur of “Drive” to the gut-punch gentleness of “Try Not to Breathe” and “Nightswimming,” this is music that carries weight without sounding heavy. Even its brightest moments — the winking “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite” or the soaring “Man on the Moon” — are shaded with melancholy. “Everybody Hurts” might be the most direct song R.E.M. ever wrote, and still one of the most enduring.

There’s an intimacy to Automatic for the People that feels deliberate, hard-earned. It was written while turning thirty, and it sounds like it — wistful, disillusioned, but unwilling to give up wonder entirely. The production, led by Scott Litt, lets the band breathe: Mike Mills’ harmonies glow, Bill Berry’s drums are sparse but precise, and Peter Buck’s guitar feels like a whisper from the next room.

It went on to sell millions, but you wouldn’t know it from the restraint on display. There was no tour. No stadium push. Just a quiet masterpiece that continues to speak softly, long after the noise of the ‘90s has faded.