Accelerate (R.E.M. album)
Encyclopedia
Accelerate is the 14th studio album by the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...

 band R.E.M.
R.E.M.
R.E.M. was an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry. One of the first popular alternative rock bands, R.E.M. gained early attention due to Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style and Stipe's...

, released on March 31, 2008 in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, and on April 1 in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

. Produced with Jacknife Lee
Jacknife Lee
Garret "Jacknife" Lee is an Irish music producer and mixer. He has worked with a variety of artists, including The Cars, U2, R.E.M., Snow Patrol, Bloc Party, AFI, The Hives, Weezer, Vega4 and Editors.-Biography:...

, Accelerate was intended as a departure from the 2004 album Around the Sun
Around the Sun
Around the Sun is the 13th studio album by the American alternative rock band R.E.M., released in 2004.-Description:"The Outsiders" features a guest appearance by rapper Q-Tip. When performed live, Michael Stipe carries out the rap, as he does on a later b-side release of the song."Final Straw" is...

. R.E.M. previewed several of the album's tracks during a five-night residency at the Olympia Theatre
Olympia Theatre, Dublin
The Olympia Theatre is a concert hall/theatre venue in Dublin, Ireland, located in Dame Street.-History:Built in 1879, it was originally called the "Star of Erin Music Hall". Two years later in 1881, it was renamed "Dan Lowrey's Music Hall" and was renamed again in 1889 to "Dan Lowrey's Palace of...

 in Dublin, Ireland
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...

, and recorded the album in a nine-week schedule.

Background and recording

R.E.M.'s previous record Around the Sun
Around the Sun
Around the Sun is the 13th studio album by the American alternative rock band R.E.M., released in 2004.-Description:"The Outsiders" features a guest appearance by rapper Q-Tip. When performed live, Michael Stipe carries out the rap, as he does on a later b-side release of the song."Final Straw" is...

(2004) only sold 240,000 copies in the U.S. and was poorly received by critics. The band members later expressed displeasure with the album. Guitarist Peter Buck
Peter Buck
Peter Lawrence Buck , is an American rock guitarist who is best known for playing in and co-founding alternative rock band R.E.M....

 told Q
Q (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...

, "I personally hated it. [Quickly] No, hated is too hard. I hated the fact that it wasn't as good as it should've been." Buck admitted the band felt pressure to subsequently make a better record; he told Q, "Even Michael [Stipe] was going, 'Y'know, if we make another bad record, it's over.' It's like, 'No kidding.'"

Buck and bassist Mike Mills
Mike Mills
Michael Edward "Mike" Mills is an American multi-instrumentalist and composer who was a founding member of the alternative rock group R.E.M.. Though known primarily as a bass guitarist, backing vocalist, and pianist, his musical repertoire includes also keyboards, guitar, and percussion instruments...

 began working on instrumental demos in winter 2007, assisted by touring members Bill Rieflin and Scott McCaughey
Scott McCaughey
As a singer and songwriter, Scott McCaughey is the leader of the Seattle and Portland-based bands The Young Fresh Fellows and The Minus 5.He is also bassist for Robyn Hitchcock's most recent touring band, The Venus 3, along with Bill Rieflin and Peter Buck....

. The music they wrote was faster and more aggressive than other material they had written in years. Mills suggested the band work out its new songs in a live setting before recording them, as it had done in its early years. Between June 30 and July 5, 2007, R.E.M. played a five-night series of shows at the Dublin's Olympia Theatre. In this series of shows—dubbed "working rehearsals" by the band, many songs on Accelerate were debuted, with many of them still as works in progress. These performances would later be released as Live at The Olympia
Live at The Olympia
Live at The Olympia is a live album by American alternative rock band R.E.M.. It is a recording of five-night residency the band held at Dublin, Ireland's Olympia Theatre between June 30 and July 5, 2007, and released on October 27, 2009. In this series of "working rehearsals" many songs on...

in 2009.

At the urging of The Edge
The Edge
David Howell Evans , more widely known by his stage name The Edge , is a musician best known as the guitarist, backing vocalist, and keyboardist of the Irish rock band U2. A member of the group since its inception, he has recorded 12 studio albums with the band and has released one solo record...

 of U2
U2
U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...

, R.E.M. chose to record the album with producer Jacknife Lee
Jacknife Lee
Garret "Jacknife" Lee is an Irish music producer and mixer. He has worked with a variety of artists, including The Cars, U2, R.E.M., Snow Patrol, Bloc Party, AFI, The Hives, Weezer, Vega4 and Editors.-Biography:...

. Following the Olympia Theatre residency, R.E.M. scheduled three-week recording sessions in three different cities in order to keep its focus. The tight recording schedule prevented Stipe from spending too much time working on his lyrics and vocal parts. Stipe told Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...

, "I work really well under pressure, and the guys know that all too well... So the pace forced me to kind of spit stuff out." Other possible album titles included "Future Tense" and "Wow!". The group mixed the album in a London studio in ten days. Regarding the recording process, Stipe said, "We spent less time making this record than we have in 20 years".

Music

R.E.M. was reluctant to pin down the style of their new album so as not to create wayward expectations. The new material featured in the Dublin concerts demonstrated a much more stripped-down, guitar-driven sound than was featured on the band's recent releases, and Mike Mills has indicated that these shows give a good indication of the band's direction. Stipe said his lyrics on Accelerate are inspired by the contemporary state of the nation, saying, "When the empire is going down the toilet, it's easy to write great, angry songs."

Promotion

On January 1, 2008, R.E.M. launched the website NinetyNights.com, on which a new short clip from Accelerate was posted daily until the album's release. In February, R.E.M. launched the website supernaturalsuperserious.com with eleven videos to promote the album. A week later, R.E.M. launched remaccelerate.com, a web page for promoting and aggregating news about the album itself.

In late March 2008, the band released Accelerate as a digital web streams
Streaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...

 on iLike
ILike
iLike is an online service that allows users to download and share music. The website makes use of a sidebar that is used with Apple's iTunes or Microsoft's Windows Media Player. The program and sidebar are not required in order to use the site but allow for ease in discovering new artists....

 six days prior to the American release of its physical album in April. Michael Stipe said R.E.M. wanted to experiment with its distribution system, citing the change in the music industry since the release of Around the Sun. A deluxe edition of the album was released in addition to the standard edition; it includes a DVD featuring filmmaker Vincent Moon
Vincent Moon
Vincent Moon is an independent filmmaker from Paris mainly known for his field work music videos of indie rock related musicians as well as some notable mainstream artists like Tom Jones, R.E.M. or Arcade Fire. Besides making music videos he also makes experimental films and documentaries...

's film 6 Days, which includes behind-the-scenes footage and performances of various songs on the album. Two B-side tracks, "Red Head Walking" and "Airliner," are included as bonus tracks, along with a 64-page booklet. The vinyl version consists of two 12 inch discs each running at 45 RPM, and contains the full album on CD.

A brief tour, the last of the group's tenure, took place in 2008. It covered Europe, North America, and Latin America.

Release and reception

Accelerate was the band's highest-charting release since 1996's New Adventures in Hi-Fi
New Adventures in Hi-Fi
New Adventures in Hi-Fi is the tenth studio album by the American alternative rock band R.E.M. It was their fifth major label release for Warner Bros. Records, released on September 9, 1996, in Europe and Australia and the following day in the United States...

. It debuted at number two on the Billboard 200
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...

with first week sales of 115,000 copies, went on to sell over 353,000 copies in the U.S. and became the band's eighth album to top the British album charts. "Supernatural Superserious
Supernatural Superserious
"Supernatural Superserious" is a song by American alternative rock band R.E.M.. It is the first single and third track from the band's fourteenth album Accelerate and was first released on February 11, 2008 as an MP3, and February 25, 2008 on CD...

" was released as the album's first single. The second single "Hollow Man
Hollow Man (song)
"Hollow Man" is the fourth track and second single from R.E.M.'s fourteenth album Accelerate. The music video was created by Crush Inc., a graphic-design and production studio based in Toronto, and posted on the band's website on April 23, 2008. The single was released in the UK on June 2, 2008...

", was released in June 2008, with "Man-Sized Wreath
Man-Sized Wreath
"Man-Sized Wreath" is the second track and third single from R.E.M.'s fourteenth album Accelerate, released on August 11, 2008 in the UK. The single was announced after the band's Madison Square Garden show on June 19, 2008, where footage of the upcoming music video was shown. The single is...

" following in August. According to Billboard, Accelerate stayed 18 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart.

Accelerate has been generally well-received by critics, receiving a score of 79 out of 100 on Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...

. Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

gave the album four out of five stars, with critic David Fricke
David Fricke
David Fricke is a senior editor at Rolling Stone magazine, where he writes predominantly on rock music. In the 1990s, he was managing editor before stepping down.-Background:David Fricke is a graduate of Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania...

 praising the group's aggressive sound, writing, "Stipe has not sounded this viscerally engaged in his singing and poetically lethal in his writing since the twilight of the Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

 administration." NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...

reviewer Alan Woodhouse, similarly applauding the group's return to their previous sound, gave Accelerate an eight out of ten rating, and concluded, "Accelerate is by some considerable distance R.E.M.'s best and most cohesive album since [former drummer] Bill Berry
Bill Berry
William "Bill" Thomas Berry is a retired American musician, multi-instrumentalist, best known as the drummer for the alternative rock band R.E.M. In addition to his drumming duties, Berry played many other instruments including guitar, bass guitar, and piano, both for songwriting and on R.E.M....

 left, and crucially echoes a time when they made their best music, if not necessarily their biggest-selling." Q
Q (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...

reviewer Keith Cameron wrote that unlike Around the Sun, "Accelerate is the sound of a band having enjoyed a good word with themselves — and us." Cameron described the album's first three songs as "powerful as the first half of 1986's Lifes Rich Pageant
Lifes Rich Pageant
Lifes Rich Pageant is the fourth album by the American band R.E.M., released in 1986. Intended as an upbeat reaction to the sobering and historical Fables of the Reconstruction, R.E.M...

," but commented that the album suffers through a "midway dip that afflicts even the best R.E.M. album."

Time reviewer Josh Tyrangiel praised guitarist Buck's "resurgence" and "propulsive riffs," but also wrote, "R.E.M.'s 14th album never quite generates the moody atmospherics of their first 10; it's a little hard to lose yourself in something that doesn't pause long enough for you to get lost." Uncut
UNCUT (magazine)
Uncut magazine, trademarked as UNCUT, is a monthly publication based in London. It is available across the English-speaking world, and focuses on music, but also includes film and books sections...

gave the album three out of five stars. Reviewer John Mulvey stated, "Accelerate is a simple, pragmatic record built on an uncomfortable truth: sometimes, even the best bands have to retrace their steps, if only to remind themselves what they're really good at."

Track listing

All songs written by Peter Buck
Peter Buck
Peter Lawrence Buck , is an American rock guitarist who is best known for playing in and co-founding alternative rock band R.E.M....

, Mike Mills
Mike Mills
Michael Edward "Mike" Mills is an American multi-instrumentalist and composer who was a founding member of the alternative rock group R.E.M.. Though known primarily as a bass guitarist, backing vocalist, and pianist, his musical repertoire includes also keyboards, guitar, and percussion instruments...

 and Michael Stipe
Michael Stipe
John Michael Stipe is an American singer and lyricist. He was the lead vocalist of the alternative rock band R.E.M.Stipe is noted and occasionally parodied for the "mumbling" style of his early career as well as his social and political activism. He was in charge of R.E.M.'s visual image; often...

, except as noted.
  1. "Living Well Is the Best Revenge" – 3:11
  2. "Man-Sized Wreath
    Man-Sized Wreath
    "Man-Sized Wreath" is the second track and third single from R.E.M.'s fourteenth album Accelerate, released on August 11, 2008 in the UK. The single was announced after the band's Madison Square Garden show on June 19, 2008, where footage of the upcoming music video was shown. The single is...

    " – 2:32
  3. "Supernatural Superserious
    Supernatural Superserious
    "Supernatural Superserious" is a song by American alternative rock band R.E.M.. It is the first single and third track from the band's fourteenth album Accelerate and was first released on February 11, 2008 as an MP3, and February 25, 2008 on CD...

    " – 3:23
  4. "Hollow Man
    Hollow Man (song)
    "Hollow Man" is the fourth track and second single from R.E.M.'s fourteenth album Accelerate. The music video was created by Crush Inc., a graphic-design and production studio based in Toronto, and posted on the band's website on April 23, 2008. The single was released in the UK on June 2, 2008...

    " – 2:39
  5. "Houston" – 2:05
  6. "Accelerate" – 3:33
  7. "Until the Day Is Done
    Until the Day Is Done
    "Until the Day Is Done" is a song by American rock band R.E.M. from their fourteenth studio album Accelerate. It was debuted on Anderson Cooper 360° to promote the Planet in Peril special and was released as a single on November 14, 2008, as a two-track download-only single...

    " – 4:08
  8. "Mr. Richards" – 3:46
  9. "Sing for the Submarine" – 4:50
  10. "Horse to Water" – 2:18
  11. "I'm Gonna DJ" – 2:07


Bonus tracks
  1. "Redhead Walking" (Calvin Johnson) – 2:11
  2. "Airliner" (Buck, Mills, Stipe, and Scott McCaughey
    Scott McCaughey
    As a singer and songwriter, Scott McCaughey is the leader of the Seattle and Portland-based bands The Young Fresh Fellows and The Minus 5.He is also bassist for Robyn Hitchcock's most recent touring band, The Venus 3, along with Bill Rieflin and Peter Buck....

    ) – 2:21
  3. "Horse to Water" (Live from Athens) – 2:17
  4. "Living Well Is the Best Revenge" (Live from Athens) – 3:12
  5. "Until the Day Is Done" (Live from Athens) – 4:06
  6. "Supernatural Superserious" (Live from Athens) – 3:25

These bonus tracks were available in digital form from online retailers. The first two are also B-sides to the "Supernatural Superserious" single and the last was only released in the iTunes Store
ITunes Store
The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple. Opening as the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, with over 200,000 items to purchase, it is, as of April 2008, the number-one music vendor in the United States...

 with pre-order copies of the album.

Charts

Chart (2008) Peak
position
UK Albums Chart
UK Albums Chart
The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...

1
Canadian Albums Chart
Canadian Albums Chart
The Canadian Albums Chart is the official album sales chart in Canada. It is compiled every Wednesday by U.S.-based music sales tracking company Nielsen Soundscan, and published every Thursday by Jam! Canoe and Billboard, along with its sister charts the Canadian Singles Chart and the Canadian BDS...

1
Irish Albums Chart
Irish Albums Chart
The Irish Albums Chart is the Irish music industry standard albums popularity chart issued weekly by the Irish Recorded Music Association and compiled on its behalf by Chart-Track. Chart rankings are based on sales, which are compiled through over-the-counter retail data captured electronically...

1
Belgian Albums Chart 1
Norwegian Albums Chart 1
German Albums Chart 2
U.S. Billboard 200
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...

2
U.S. Billboard Rock Albums 1
U.S. Billboard Digital Albums 2
U.S. Billboard Alternative Albums 1
Italian Albums Chart 2
Australian Albums Chart
ARIA Charts
The ARIA charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling singles and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA commenced compiling its own charts in-house from the week ending 26 June...

5
Finnish Albums Chart 10
Greek Albums Chart 1
Dutch Album Top 10
MegaCharts
MegaCharts is responsible for the composition and exploitation of a broad collection of official charts in the Netherlands, of which the Mega Top 50 and the Mega Album Top 100 are the most known ones. Mega Charts also provides information to the Stichting Nederlandse Top 40, of which the Dutch Top...

0
2

Year-end charts

Chart (2008) Rank
German Albums Chart
Media Control Charts
The official music charts in Germany are gathered and published by the company Media Control GfK International on behalf of Bundesverband Musikindustrie...

 
39

Certifications

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Country
! Certification
Music recording sales certification
Music recording sales certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped or sold a certain number of copies, where the threshold quantity varies by type and by nation or territory .Almost all countries follow variations of the RIAA certification categories,...


(sales thresholds)
|-
|Germany
Bundesverband Musikindustrie
The Bundesverband Musikindustrie or simply BVMI represents the music industry in Germany. The association represents the interests of nearly 350 labels and music industry related enterprises....


|Gold

External links

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