How much influence did REM have? What's a well-regarded indie musician you'd say was prompted largely by REM itself, rather than Patti Smith and Big Star?
Nirvana - Cobain famously said "If I could write just a couple of songs as good as what they’ve written".
The National - Toured with, worked with, still bring Michael Stipe onstage every once in a while.
Radiohead - Thom Yorke: "I’ve ripped them off left, right and centre for years and years and years and years."
I concede The Decemberists. Basically a band that blended the Athens Elephant 6 sound with 80s college rock. Sure: the Decemberists were more influenced by REM than by Patti Smith or the Velvets or Television.
Wilco is a weird one. I have a suspicion that Wilco, or at least Jay Bennett-era Wilco, is more influenced by mainstream early-90s alt rock than anybody is comfortable admitting. Heavy Metal Band is basically 1979 off Mellon Collie, which: what Chicago band is going to admit that influence?
Collective Soul, Better Than Ezra, Live: these are bands that kind of prove my point. The lead guy from Live once wrote Stipe a letter asking for advice on how to become a rock star.
Tweedy is from the Illinois side of metro St Louis and was touring colleges in southern IL, MO, KY, GA, etc as a member of Uncle Tupelo when he met and became friends with Buck. They collaborated on some projects, and Buck even produced an Uncle Tupelo album.
It’s probably better to think of it as “Tweedy influenced by REM” rather than “Wilco influenced by REM”.
But then Jay Bennett leaves and they're a krautrock band.
That subjectivity depends on what side of the political spectrum you fall.
>> starfucker galaxy
eyeroll
Love/Corgan are still trying to ride their 15-mintues TO THIS DAY. Love is like a venereal disease, she just keeps coming back. And Corgan groomed some teen-aged fan to be his bride and is currently performing 7 hour meditation synthloop pieces to select audiences.
Where's Stipe? Off being a normal human.
>> meeting [grunge] on its own turf"
Uh, when did REM say this?
I'm not saying Stipe is morally equivalent to Corgan (though: be careful how much research you do here). I'm saying that, in the grim span from "Out of Time" to "Monster", Stipe was approximately as authentic as Corgan, and was a social scenester in the same way. It alarms me to realize that Corgan was a more formally interesting songwriter in that period than Stipe was.
REM didn't say they met grunge on its own turf; the article did. But I vividly remember the launch of Monster, and it was in fact an answer to grunge. The author of this piece is not making that up.
I think REM's first couple records (and, probably, Automatic) are basically unimpeachable. I'm not cynically dunking on REM.
I don't think it's performative, but it was definitely a later-stage add-on. The blame for that (positive or negative) falls squarely on Natalie Merchant.
"formally interesting". I'm a native English speaker and composer and don't understand your phrasing.
>> I'm on REM's side of the political spectrum, and have always found Stipe's activism to be performative;
I disagree, but it entirely rests on what one person's definition of "cringey" is. I think your awkward attempts at sounding intellectual are alarmingly cringey and less formally interesting.
By 1993, neither REM nor (obviously) The Smashing Pumpkins were formally interesting bands. But REM would go on to make the same album, just with fewer and fewer hooks. Adore, on the other hand, was the Pumpkins Kid A, a transition from "Shopping Mall Shoegazer" to gothy electronic (it gives me no pleasure to report that the album predates Kid A by 2 years, but may have been expedited by Corgan's hair loss). It wasn't, like, a great album, because the Pumpkins are not Radiohead. But it was a departure, both from their previous catalog and from what was playing on the radio at the time.
(I reassure myself by telling myself that both Radiohead and the Smashing Pumpkins stole this musical shift from Bjork).
An aside: I think you will in the future find that dunks work better when you don't precede them by saying out loud "I don't know what the words in this dunk mean".