History Music / AutomaticForThePeople

** The lyrics to "Drive" read like they could be the lyrics to a happy children's song, but when sung to a minor key song with an ominous string arrangement by John Paul Jones of Music/LedZeppelin and with a doomy hard rock chorus, it's very creepy indeed.

Starting production while ''Music/OutOfTime'', their previous effort, shot up the charts, the band initially sought out a harder, more aggressive sound similar to that of their late 80s output as a means of offsetting ''Out of Time''[='s=] LighterAndSofter approach, only to find themselves short on ideas. Consequently, at the suggestion of guitarist Peter Buck, they instead shifted towards a more acoustically-driven, melancholic sound featuring string arrangements by [[Music/LedZeppelin John Paul Jones]]: bleak in both sound and tone, the album ended up becoming the band's darkest, with lyrics focusing on themes of mourning, morality, loss, nostalgia, and depression, fueled by the members of R.E.M. approaching their 30s and consequently no longer being young adults.

-->--'''"Man on the Moon"'''

* ColorMotif: Continuing R.E.M.'s longstanding association with the color yellow, the back cover prominently uses yellow tones, the CD label is bright translucent yellow, and early CD copies feature a translucent yellow media tray, similar to the translucent red tray on Music/DavidByrne's ''[[Music/UhOhDavidByrneAlbum Uh-Oh]]'' from earlier that year. The 25th anniversary deluxe edition release of the album also features a yellow banner on the top of the front cover and prominently features yellow throughout the rest of its packaging too.

* MythologyGag:
** Mike Mills and Bill Berry's backing vocals on "Find the River" hark back to a similar technique on [[Music/{{Reckoning}} "Harborcoat"]] nearly a decade prior, a similarity that Mills confirmed to be an intentional creative decision in an interview with ''Melody Maker''.
** The verses of "Try Not to Breathe" reprise the melody and rhythm of [[Music/LifesRichPageant "Swan Swan H"]].
** The latter lines of the third verse of "Man on the Moon" could allude to the urban legends surrounding Andy Kaufman's death--claims that persist to this day that he's still alive.
--->''Here's a truck stop instead of St. Peter's (yeah yeah yeah yeah)\\
Mr. Andy Kaufman's gone wrestling bears (yeah yeah yeah yeah)''

%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

* CensoredTitle: "Star Me Kitten". The song actually says "Fuck Me Kitten", which was in fact its ''second'' title[[note]]its first was "Hey Love"[[/note]], before Creator/MegRyan (who was filming ''Film/SleeplessInSeattle'' in... well, Seattle, where the band recorded part of ''Automatic for the People'') convinced Stipe to change it, saying that where she'd grown up, if such a PrecisionFStrike appeared on any album, it wouldn't have been put on shelves (or at least would've gotten a "Parental Advisory" label).

* PrecisionFStrike: "Star Me Kitten" and "Ignoreland" both drop the F-bomb, which isn't heard anywhere else on the album. It actually comes pretty close to a ClusterFBomb in both songs ("Star Me Kitten" drops it three times, "Ignoreland" four), but the distortion on the latter and Stipe's quiet delivery on the former may have resulted in the album managing to slip by without an "Explicit Lyrics" sticker.

* DarkerAndEdgier: Compared to ''Music/OutOfTime'' and even all of their prior work, the songs on ''Automatic for the People'' are decidedly more dour and introspective. The album's dark tone was so prominent and unusual by the band's standards, in fact, that it led to widespread media speculation that Stipe was seriously ill, fueled by Music/FreddieMercury's death from AIDS the previous year and the disease's informing of the similarly dark and introspective Music/{{Queen}} album ''Music/{{Innuendo}}''.

The end result was R.E.M.'s biggest commercial success, topping the charts in the UK and New Zealand, and peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. It would end up being the second-best-selling album of 1993 in the UK, and would go on to be certified septuple-platinum in the UK and Canada, quadruple-platinum in the US and Australia, triple-platinum in the Netherlands, double-platinum in Austria, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland, platinum in France and New Zealand, quintuple-gold in Germany, and gold in Argentina. Since its release, it has sold over 18 million copies worldwide, and currently holds the position of being the 60th best-selling album in the United Kingdom (just barely high enough to make it onto Wiki/{{Wikipedia}}'s [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_in_the_United_Kingdom list]] on the category).