On The Road Again: R.E.M. "Out Of Time"

jueves, 20 de junio de 2019

R.E.M. "Out Of Time"

Out of Time is the seventh studio album by American alternative rock band R.E.M., released on March 8, 1991 by Warner Bros. Records. With Out of Time, R.E.M.'s status grew from that of a cult band to a massive international act. The record topped the album sales charts in both the U.S. and the United Kingdom, spending 109 weeks on American album charts and enjoying two separate spells at the summit, and spending 183 weeks on the British charts and a single week at the top. The album has sold over four and a half million copies in the U.S. and over 18 million copies worldwide. The album won three Grammy Awards in 1992: one as Best Alternative Music Album, and two for the first single, "Losing My Religion."

Out of Time combines elements of pop, folk and classical music heard on their previous album Green, with a new concentration on country elements that would continue on 1992's Automatic for the People.

Preceded by the release of "Losing My Religion", which became R.E.M.'s biggest U.S. hit, Out of Time gave them their first U.S. and UK No. 1 album. The band did not tour to support the release. In Germany, it is the band's best-selling album, selling more than 1,250,000 copies, reaching 5×gold. Out of Time was the first R.E.M. album to have an alternative expanded release on compact disc, including expanded liner notes and postcards. In Spain, a contest was held to have a limited edition cover with the winner being an abstract oil painting.

The album was featured in Time magazine's unranked list of The All-Time 100 Albums.

Several re-packagings were released for the album's 25th anniversary edition through Concord Records on November 18, 2016.

Warner Brothers executive Jeff Gold, alongside Rock the Vote campaign co-founder and Virgin Records executive Jeff Ayeroff, approached R.E.M. in regards to printing a petition on the back of Out of Time's CD longbox packaging in the United States where buyers were encouraged to sign their name in support for Rock the Vote, who were in support of the Motor Voter Act to ease voter registration, and would allow voters "to register through their local DMV." Gold reasoned, considering many of the album's buyers would be young, that this could "vote out" the controversial Parents Music Resource Center music censorship bill, who "put pressure on the creators and distributors of 'objectionable' music," as well as make good use of the popular longbox packaging format of the day, which many artists and customers considered unnecessary and wasteful. Michael Stipe also appeared in a public service announcement for the campaign.

In July 2014, radio show 99% Invisible said that because of this packaging, Out of Time is "the most politically significant album in the history of the United States." They said that three weeks after the album's release, "they had received 10,000 petitions, 100 per senator, and they just kept coming in droves," and a month following its release, the campaign's political director and members of KMD "wheeled a shopping cart full of the first 10,000 petitions into a senate hearing." The bill was eventually passed in 1995 by Bill Clinton; one commentary later said this happened "in no small part because of R.E.M.’s lobbying."

The 25th anniversary re-release of Out of Time was met with positive reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, this release received an average score of 80, based on 9 reviews.

Track listing

All songs written by Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe.

1991 CD