Automatic for the People
| Automatic for the People | ||||
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| Studio album by R.E.M. | ||||
| Released | October 5, 1992 | |||
| Recorded | Late 1991 – mid 1992 at various locations | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 48:52 | |||
| Label | Warner Bros. | |||
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| R.E.M. chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Automatic for the People | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |  |
| Blender | |
| Chicago Tribune |  |
| Entertainment Weekly | A |
| Los Angeles Times | |
| NME | 10/10 |
| Q |  |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Select | 5/5 |
| Uncut | |
Automatic for the People is the eighth studio album by American alternative rock band R.E.M., released on October 5, 1992 by Warner Bros. Records. Upon release, it reached number two on the US albums chart and yielded six singles. The album has sold 18 million copies worldwide and is widely considered one of the best albums released in the 1990s.
After promotional duties for their previous album Out of Time in May 1991, the members of R.E.M. began work on their next album. Starting the first week of June, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and drummer Bill Berry met several times a week in a rehearsal studio to work on new material. Once a month they would take a week-long break. The musicians would often trade instruments: Buck would play mandolin, Mills would play piano or organ and Berry would play bass. Buck explained that writing without drums was productive for the band members. The band, intent on delivering an album of harder-rocking material after Out of Time, made an effort to write some faster rock songs during rehearsals, but came up with less than a half-dozen prospective songs in that vein.
When it came time to make demos, the musicians recorded them in their standard band configuration. According to Buck, the musicians recorded about 30 songs. Lead singer Michael Stipe was not present at these sessions; instead, the band gave him the finished demos at the start of 1992. Stipe described the music to Rolling Stone Magazine early that year as "[v]ery mid-tempo, pretty fucking weird [...] More acoustic, more organ-based, less drums". In February, R.E.M. recorded another set of demos at Daniel Lanois' Kingsway Studios in New Orleans.
The group decided to create finished recordings with co-producer Scott Litt at Bearsville Studios in , starting on March 30. The band recorded overdubs in Miami and New York City. String arrangements were recorded in Atlanta. After recording sessions were completed in July, the album was mixed at Bad Animals Studio in Seattle.
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