An Album Too Far

Album: R.E.M., Green, 1988

Best Track: "You Are the Everything"

Lasting Memory: During the week before Green was released in September 1988, MTV engaged in an absolutely over-the-top promotional campaign for the album and for R.E.M. that, in retrospect, appeared specifically designed to Def Leppard's yearlong stranglehold on the number-one spot on the Top 20 video countdown. The 6 pm EDT Monday world premier of the video for "Orange Crush" was teased several times each hour. The band was interviewed repeatedly. Kurt Loder all but ordered every viewer to camp out on the sidewalk outside their nearest record store so they could purchase Green as soon as it was uncrated.

I complied. Kurt Loder is not a man you want to cross. When the last time you heard anything from Tabitha Soren?

Shame, then, that Green is such a mediocre album. Despite producing the great-when-you-first-hear-it-but-poke-your-own-eardrums-out-on-the-fourth-listen hit "Stand," fails to make much of any impression at all, good or bad.

For listeners willing to focus, "You Are the Everything" and "The Wrong Child" can be sweetly and melancholicly moving, respectively, but it's easy to zone out on both songs because of they are embedded in such a mire. It was probably inevitable that R.E.M. would put out a relatively weak album in 1988, especially since the band had been touring nonstop and releasing a studio record every year since 1983.

The band recovered its fastball later, and it was welcome relief in the fall of 1988 to finally have videos to watch that were not "Pour Some Sugar on Me," but my copy of Green has spent all but a couple of days of the past 21 years in its tape box slot for a very good reason -- it's not great.

Back to box, Green.

Up Next: R.E.M., Automatic for the People, 1992