Lifes Rich Pageant

After a break from touring, the band wanted to get away from what Mills called the murky sound of the London sessions with Joe Boyd. They made demos at John Keane's studio in Athens in January and March 1986, later issued as the Athens Demos on the 25th anniversary edition, then recorded in April and May at John Mellencamp's Belmont Mall Studio with Don Gehman, who produced no other R.E.M. album. Gehman wanted the vocals up front, and Mills said the band did not mind having them mixed so loud.

Cuyahoga is about the polluted Ohio river that caught fire in 1969. At the end of Just a Touch Stipe screams that he is so goddamn young, quoting Patti Smith's live cover of My Generation. Superman, a cover written by Mitchell Bottler and Gary Zekley, is sung by Mills. Buck said the title came from the 1964 film A Shot in the Dark. The cover pairs a photograph of Berry with a pair of bison.

It reached No. 21 in the United States and No. 43 in Britain, and it brought the band its first gold record. Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone called it brilliant and groundbreaking, if modestly flawed. Gavin Edwards named Fall on Me the finest song in the R.E.M. canon, and Alexis Petridis of the Guardian wrote that the album may represent the band at their absolute zenith.