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Home > Atlanta Music Scene > Archives > 2007 > October > 04
Thursday, October 4, 2007
R.E.M.’s “Automatic” turns 15
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On Oct. 5, a Georgia masterpiece turns 15. Though R.E.M.’s “Automatic for the People” (released Oct. 5, 1992) was largely recorded in Bearsville, N.Y., it still has plenty of that Southern peaches-and-kudzu feeling running through it.
To celebrate the anniversary, the music blog Stereogum has gathered a group of indie rockers to record new versions of all the songs on the album. Among the participants: the Meat Puppets, the Wrens, Rogue Wave, Dr. Dog and the Shout Out Louds. You can download them all for free at Stereogum.
“Automatic” was among the Athens quartet’s most successful, both commercially and critically. Three of the albums singles — “Drive,” “Everybody Hurts” and “Man in the Moon” — hit the Top 40 and the album has sold more than 4 million copies in the U.S. alone. Any list of the greatest albums of the ’90s is incomplete without this moody, melancholy triumph.
I’m still partial to “Murmur,” but “Automatic” and “Life’s Rich Pageant” would have to tussle for No. 2 on my list of R.E.M. faves. And “Automatic” is still every bit as powerful as it was back in 1992. Are you an “Automatic” lover or a “Murmur” partisan? Or, do you have another favorite R.E.M. album?
