Music / Out of Time

But that was just a dream
That was just a dream; that's me in the corner

Her world collapsed early Sunday morning
She got up from the kitchen table
Folded the newspaper and silenced the radio
Those creatures jumped the barricades
And have headed for the sea, sea

"Belong"

Out of Time is the seventh studio album recorded by American Alternative Rock band R.E.M.. It was released through Warner Bros. Records on March 12, 1991.

After the exhaustingly massive 1989 world tour for Green, R.E.M. found themselves burnt out. Bill Berry threatened to quit the band if they went on another world tour for their next album, and his bandmates agreed, spending three weeks cooling off before returning to the studio and producing their follow-up intermittently throughout the fall of 1990. Having made three Hard Rock-infused albums in the latter half of the 80's, they shifted focus towards a much poppier and acoustic sound than before, returning to their Jangle Pop roots while ramping up the acoustic guitars, mandolins, and organs that were previously just a trimming on Green. What's more, the lyrical content became more introspective after their trilogy of protest records, which combined with the shift in style made for both a more accessible take on R.E.M.'s Signature Style and a prelude to the brooding, acoustic style of Automatic for the People a year later.

That accessibility paid off: the second album of their Warner contract, it was their Breakthrough Hit, catapulting the Georgia Alternative Rock band from a cult hit to a household name worldwide. The success was not a complete surprise; their 1987 single "The One I Love" had already been their first to crack the mainstream music listening market, their shift to Warner in 1988 allowed Green to see much greater distribution both at home and abroad than the I.R.S. Records-era albums, and that album's tour allowed them to build up an international fanbase as well as a domestic one. Everything had come together for R.E.M. over the past four years; it was Out of Time that served as the final catalyst.

The album stayed on the Billboard charts for 109 consecutive weeks, topping the charts twice during this time, and has sold over 18 million copies worldwide by the time of this writing. The album additionally topped the charts in the UK, Austria, Canada, the Netherlands, France, and Italy, going on to become the best-selling album of 1991 in Canada and the eleventh best-selling in the US, additionally being the 50th best-selling album of 1992 in the latter country. It would later be certified septuple-platinum in Canada, quintuple-platinum in the UK and Spain, quadruple-platinum in the US, double-platinum in Australia, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, platinum in Austria, quintuple-gold in Germany, and gold in Argentina, Brazil, New Zealand, and Sweden. Out of Time also won the 1992 Grammy award for Best Alternative Album, with two more being picked up by "Losing My Religion" (Best Short Form Music Video and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal).

The album produced four singles: "Losing My Religion", "Shiny Happy People", "Near Wild Heaven", and "Radio Song". The first of those was a particular surprise success: peaking at No. 4 on the Hot 100, it was their highest-charting single up to that point, and in hindsight its success acted as a precursor to the boom in popularity alternative rock as a whole would see later that year with Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Out of Time was also supported by the video album This Film Is On, containing music videos for the aforementioned singles, "Low", "Belong", "Half a World Away", and "Country Feedback", plus supporting live shows.

Not to be confused with the 2003 thriller film starring Denzel Washington.

Tracklist:

Time Side

1. "Radio Song" (4:12)
2. "Losing My Religion" (4:26)
3. "Low" (4:55)
4. "Near Wild Heaven" (3:17)
5. "Endgame" (3:48)

Memory Side

1. "Shiny Happy People" (3:44)
2. "Belong" (4:03)
3. "Half a World Away" (3:26)
4. "Texarkana" (3:36)
5. "Country Feedback" (4:07)
6. "Me in Honey" (4:06)

I meant to turn it off to say goodbye, to trope in quiet:

• Alternate Album Cover: The Spanish LP release replaced the standard cover, depicting the band name and album title atop an ocean backdrop, with an abstract painting.
• Answer Song: Michael Stipe says "Me in Honey" is this to "Eat for Two" by 10,000 Maniacs, covering the same theme of unplanned pregnancy but from the male partner's perspective; Stipe and 10,000 Maniacs frontwoman Natalie Merchant had been romantically affiliated in the past and remained close acquaintances afterwards.
• Anti-Love Song: Michael Stipe described "Country Feedback" as "a love song, but it's certainly from the uglier side. It's pretty much about having given up on a relationship."
• Apocalypse How: "Belong" seems to allude to an unspecified catastrophe.
• Artifact Title: "Texarkana"; the name was in the original set of lyrics Stipe wrote for the song before he tossed them and let Mike Mills write his own (Mills ended up singing lead vocals on the song as a result), also rendering the title a non-appearing one.
• Audience Participation Song: "Losing My Religion" was this during concerts.
• Babies Ever After: The album ends with "Me in Honey", a song about the narrator learning of his partner's pregnancy.
• Breather Episode: "Shiny Happy People", an upbeat song with upbeat lyrics on an album otherwise full of Lyrical Dissonance and occasional straightforwardly dour tracks. It's worth noting though that the instrumental backing was originally written with a darker theme in mind.
• Call-Back: Within the album itself; "Belong" opens with the phrase "Her world collapsed early Sunday morning; she got up from the kitchen table, folded the newspaper, and silenced the radio," alluding to the opening lines of "Radio Song": "The world is collapsing around our ears; I turned up the radio, but I can't hear it."
• Changed for the Video: The music video for "Belong", put together for the This Film Is On video album, is based around a live performance from the Green tour.
• Color Motif: This album continues the band's association with the color yellow; not only is the logo on the front cover and CD label yellow, but the background on said cover has a yellow tint to it, the copyright information on the CD label is yellow, and several images on the foldout liner notes incorporate heavy use of yellow tones.
• Creator Provincialism: "Losing My Religion" comes from a figure of speech for a loss of temper, only really used in the southern United States, including the band's native Georgia. The band didn't realize that the majority of the English-speaking world would be having to guess what they were on about (and therefore make incorrect assumptions, usually by taking the title literally and mistaking it for a Religion Rant Song).
• Deliberately Monochrome: The "Near Wild Heaven" video is shot entirely in saturated sepia. Likewise, the "Belong" video is entirely in black and white.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin:
  • "Low", a minor-key song with gloomy lyrics and muttered, droning vocals.
  • "Country Feedback", a Country Music song with heavy amounts of guitar feedback effects.
• Gender Flip: "Me in Honey" is a retelling of 10,000 Maniacs' "Eat for Two" from the male partner's perspective, showing that he's just as scared as his girlfriend is. The featuring of Kate Pierson on backing vocals lightly implies that the mother-to-be understands that he shares her feelings.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The band continues its history of unusual names for LP sides with this album. The sides are labeled "Time Side" and "Memory Side".
• Instrumentals: "Endgame," aside from wordless mumbling on Stipe's part.
• In the Style of:
  • According to Peter Buck, "Near Wild Heaven" was written as a pastiche of The Beach Boys, being put together on the heels of Capitol Records' Compilation Re-release CDs in 1990. Buck specifically mentions having been listening copiously to the Smiley Smile/Wild Honey combo CD during the recording sessions.
  • Michael Stipe described "Endgame" as an attempt at mimicking the style of Henry Mancini, whose work he grew up listening to.
• Lighter and Softer: The album is considerably less heavy in subject matter than its predecessors, moving away from themes of sociopolitical protest & environmental consciousness in favor of more introspective material, and featuring more upbeat instrumentals on most songs.
• List Song: "Country Feedback" toys with this in its second verse.
  "Self hurt, plastics, collections. Self help, self pain, EST, psychics, fuck all."
• Lyrical Dissonance:
  • Despite its more upbeat tone and avoidance of heavier subject matter, most of the songs on Out of Time still cover fairly moody themes.
  • "Belong" is an inversion of how this trope usually plays out; rather than being an upbeat-sounding song with dark lyrics, it's a dour-sounding song with uplifting lyrics about maintaining one's sense of emotional strength and belonging in the face of an increasingly chaotic world.
  • While no official confirmation exists regarding the song's meaning, "Shiny Happy People" is frequently interpreted as a parody of Chinese propaganda; note that the song and album were released roughly two years after the Tiananmen Square massacre.
• Mood Whiplash: Shifting from "Endgame" to "Shiny Happy People" to "Belong" and from "Texarkana" to "Country Feedback" to "Me in Honey" can throw an uninitiated listener for a pretty severe loop.
  • This is even more prominent when one looks at the order in which singles off of this album were released. The somber mandolin led folk song "Losing My Religion" was the first single, followed up by "Shiny Happy People", an upbeat pop-rock song with string interludes and guest vocals from Kate Pierson, then "Radio Song", a funk influenced song which featured a rap from KRS-One. In Europe, "Shiny Happy People" was followed by "Near Wild Heaven", which is also a happy song, but features Mike Mills (their bassist) on lead vocals.
• New Sound Album: Out of Time continues the trend of each R.E.M. album noticeably deviating from the last; in this case, the main change is the more uptempo and poppier composition style, a marked contrast from the Hard Rock-influenced sound and Protest Song lyricism of Lifes Rich Pageant, Document, and Green. The band also ramp up the Country Music influences, with songs like "Country Feedback" outright veering into alternative country territory; this element would continue into their following material, especially Automatic for the People and a significant portion of New Adventures in Hi-Fi.
• Non-Appearing Title: "Endgame", "Texarkana", "Country Feedback", and "Me in Honey".
• Obsession Song: "Losing My Religion"; in an interview with Q magazine, Stipe elaborated that it was about "someone who pines for someone else. It's unrequited love, what have you."
• Old Media Are Evil: "Radio Song" doesn't exactly provide a positive view on radio broadcasting, portraying it as dangerously escapist, trite, and imprisoning.
• Radio Song: "Radio Song".
• Real Life Writes the Plot: According to a 2021 interview Michael Stipe did with Stereogum, the lyrics to "Belong" were inspired by a headline he saw about the Tiananmen Square massacre; the song was written in 1989, right off the heels of the tragedy.
• "Sesame Street" Cred: "Furry Happy Monsters", possibly the band's only usage of "Shiny Happy People" since it was disowned.
• Sequel Song: Michael Stipe vaguely described "Losing My Religion" as one to "World Leader Pretend" off of R.E.M.'s previous album. In that vein, while "World Leader Pretend" focuses on themes of sorting oneself out before taking action towards others, "Losing My Religion" more thoroughly focuses on those personal messes one ought to clean up.
• Shout-Out: The guitar part that subtly underpins the verses in "Radio Song" quotes the riff in David Bowie's "Fame".
• Special Guest:
  • Kate Pierson of The B-52s provides backing vocals on "Near Wild Heaven", "Shiny Happy People", and "Me in Honey".
  • Peter Holsapple of the dB's provides supplementary guitar parts throughout the album.
  • New Orleans jazz saxophonist Kidd Jordan plays woodwind parts throughout the album.
  • KRS-One contributes a guest rap verse to "Radio Song."
• Spoken Word in Music: "Belong", in which Michael Stipe reads a poem to an instrumental track.
• The Something Song: "Radio Song".
• Step Up to the Microphone: Mike Mills sings lead vocals on "Near Wild Heaven" and "Texarkana", having (co-)written the lyrics to both.
• Title-Only Chorus: "Low".
• Titled After the Song: The supporting video album This Film Is On takes its name from a line at the start of "Country Feedback".
• Vocal Dissonance: Present with "Belong", due to it being a case of Spoken Word in Music; Michael Stipe uses his normal speaking voice for the song, which is so deep and gravely compared to his reedy singing voice that those unacquainted might think the band brought in a guest vocalist.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The music video for "Losing My Religion" is one for the Gabriel García Márquez short story "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings". Michael Stipe further described the song itself as one to "Every Breath You Take" by The Police, being a similarly upbeat-sounding Anti-Love Song with themes of toxic obsession.
• A Wild Rapper Appears!: KRS-One gets a verse at the end of "Radio Song", throughout which he also interjects.
• Wraparound Background: The music video for "Shiny Happy People" features an old man on a bicycle powering the soundstage's wraparound backdrop.

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