Trivia / Around the Sun

• Creator Backlash: The band heavily disowned the album in the years since its release, and its numbers quickly disappeared from setlists once Accelerate released.
• Creator Breakdown: The album's sound and tone were heavily informed by the burnout the band were facing after touring for the Greatest Hits Album In Time as well as by the depression they felt in the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq War.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Despite his and the rest of the band's distaste towards the finished album as a whole, Michael Stipe listed "Electron Blue" as his favorite R.E.M. song in a 2005 BBC interview.
• Cut Song: A song titled "Magnetic North" was recorded during the sessions for this album, but ultimately was never finished. It would end up being released on the band's Christmas 2007 fanclub single, making it the last song from the Pat McCarthy era before the release of the Jacknife Lee-produced Accelerate and Collapse into Now (the former had already finished recording by Christmas 2007, but "Magnetic North" still featured McCarthy as producer).
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Like Reveal, Around the Sun had two different cases of this trope in its release cycle:
  • The limited edition release of the album included a series of fold-out posters by 14 different visual artists, each of whom provided an illustration for each song on the album, with the illustration on one side of each poster and the accompanying song's lyrics on the back. As there are only 13 songs on the album, the final poster is devoted to the album credits. All of this is packaged alongside the CD in a mini LP-sized box.
  • The album was given a two-disc reissue in 2005 along with every other album in the band's Warner Bros. catalogue up to that point. Like those reissues, this one came with an expanded booklet and a DVD-A that featured the entire album done in a 5.1-channel surround sound mix (courtesy of acclaimed audio engineer Elliot Scheiner), plus bonus video content consisting of the music videos for "Leaving New York" and "Aftermath", a making-of documentary, and a couple concert videos.
• Refitted for Sequel: "Final Straw" was based on a demo from the Monster sessions titled "Harlan County with Whistling". Its completed form would first be released in 2003 before being remixed for this album.
• What Could Have Been: The band attempted to flesh out the Monster outtake "Black Sky" for inclusion on this album (having already included "Final Straw", developed from "Harlan County with Whistling"), but the idea ultimately fell through for unknown reasons. It would instead end up on Accelerate as "Until the Day Is Done".

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