Widely considered to be one of the best albums of the '90s, Automatic For the People followed R.E.M.'s breakthrough album, Out of Time, and did not disappoint. Beloved by critics, the band's eighth studio album topped charts worldwide. Features iconic hit singles 'Nightswimming', 'Man on the Moon' and 90's anthem 'Everybody Hurts'. 

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time Rated 249/500

• USA Version!
• 25th Anniversary Edition
• Remastered from Original Analog Master Tapes
• Cut by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering
• 180 Gram Vinyl presssed at RTI, USA

"R.E.M. has never made music more gorgeous than “Nightswimming and “Find the River,” the ballads that close Automatic for the People and sum up its twilit, soulful intensity. A swirl of images natural and technological – midnight car rides and undertow, old photographs and headlong tides – the songs grapple, through a unifying metaphor of “the recklessness of water,” with the interior world of memory, loss and yearning. This is the members of R.E.M. delving deeper than ever; grown sadder and wiser, the Athens subversives reveal a darker vision that shimmers with new, complex beauty.

Despite its difficult concerns, most of Automatic is musically irresistible. Still present, if at a slower tempo, is the tunefulness that without compromising the band’s highly personal message, made these Georgia misfits platinum sellers. Since “The One I Love,” its Top Forty hit from 1987, R.E.M. has conquered by means of artful videos, surer hooks and fatter production and by expanding thematically to embrace the doomsday politics of Document, the eco-utopianism of Green and the sweet rush of Out of Time. Brilliantly, the new album both questions and clinches that outreaching progress; having won the mainstream’s ear, R.E.M. murmurs in voices of experience – from the heart, one on one." - Rollingstone

"With the release of Automatic for the People, R.E.M. firmly entered their elder-statesmen phase, just as the next wave of alternative rock was cresting. R.E.M.’s career up to that point had represented the platonic ideal of a left-of-center rock band infiltrating the mainstream—a step-by-step process that saw the band turn bolder and its audience get bigger with each album, culminating in the multi-platinum, MTV-saturating success of Out of Time. Ironically, Automatic for the People arrived in a post-Nevermind world where all that careful groundwork was being razed by overzealous major labels desperately seeking the next Nirvana. At the same time, the amped-up, aggressive nature of grunge threatened to make R.E.M.’s increasingly refined, mandolin-plucked pop seem, well, out of time.

The knee-jerk response would’ve been to let Peter Buck pounce on the distortion pedal and reassert the band’s post-punk bona fides (a back-to-basics strategy they hinted at during the Out of Time press cycle), but R.E.M. wisely opted to step aside and let the flannel-clad kids have their moment. Rather than attempt to compete in a world where teen angst was all the rage, R.E.M. set about crafting a rueful response to the onset of middle age—and remind us that life goes on even after your slam-dancing days are over." - Pitchfork

Track Listing:

01. Drive
02. Try Not To Breathe
03. The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite
04. Everybody Hurts
05. New Orleans Instrumental No. 1
06. Sweetness Follows
07. Monty Got A Raw Deal
08. Ignoreland
09. Star Me Kitten
10. Man On The Moon
11. Nightswimming
12. Find The River

Click here to listen to samples on YouTube.com ♫