The one-two punch – “Living Well Is the Best Revenge” and “Man-Sized Wreath” – that opens R.E.M.’s new album “Accelerate” is its most potent in more than a decade, a sure sign that the band is shaking off whatever issues have plagued them on recent albums.
But it doesn’t quite break into the Top 5 openers in the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers’ impressive history. Here’s a look at the band’s best opening salvos:
5. Reckoning (1984, IRS): “Harborcoat” and “7 Chinese Brothers” helped define what the “college rock” movement of the mid-‘80s would become. They were songs that were as brainy and sentimental as an auditorium filled with English majors, but they also managed to still rock hard enough to hold their own against the tough guys.
4. Green (1988, Warner Bros.): “Pop Song ‘89” and “Get Up” showed the world that R.E.M. could be arena rockers on their own terms. “Get Up” is really the poppier of the songs, a sugary power-pop confection that could have sprung up in any point in rock history, while “Pop Song” is actually more subversive, cutting the serious talk with a dose of humor. Hi. Hi hi. Hi.
3. Monster (1994, Warner Bros.): “What’s the Frequency Kenneth” and “Crush With Eyeliner” marked the first of the band’s course corrections back toward rock. (“Accelerate” is now the second.) The songs tossed aside fans’ expectations of emotional “Everybody Hurts” stuff and replaced them with a type of glam-rock shock-and-awe, a delightful bit of misdirection that “Kenneth” solidified.
2. Document (1987, IRS): “Finest Worksong” and “Welcome to the Occupation” added a political dimension to the R.E.M. arsenal, though nowhere near as overt as it has become. These songs saw the band expand their field of vision to the world around them while still clinging to their Southern roots and their embrace of the working class.
1. Lifes Rich Pageant (1986, IRS): “Begin the Begin” and “These Days” take no prisoners. They get in your face, crank up Peter Buck’s guitars and dare you not to pay attention. Though the R.E.M. catalog has better songs and more meaningful moments, once these songs get their hooks in you there’s no shaking free and that’s exactly what the best album openers accomplish.