Farewell, R.E.M.

As I've written in these pages before, R.E.M.'s 1992 album, "Automatic for the People," is surprisingly challenging -- little about it says pop. In fact, most of it asks for contemplation and maturity, which are two characteristics that don't readily lend themselves to selling millions of records. And yet, the record did just that, and R.E.M. deserves credit for it.

Accomplishing such a feat places R.E.M. somewhere on the family tree of the 1960s' great popular art, at least when basing it on the definition in Louis Menand's recent New Yorker essay about the midcentury critic Dwight Macdonald. The art was "smart and enjoyable, and it made money, too," Menand writes, describing what is commonly known as the middlebrow. Macdonald apparently detested it, but he came of age in an era when the middlebrow didn't exist -- what was popular was no good and what was avant-garde was too unapproachable. I think we're in a similar era today and R.E.M., particularly "Automatic for the People," is one of the last vestiges of a time when you could be both good and popular. (Other holdouts were "OK Computer" and "The Sopranos.") Sure, plenty of good and esoteric artists, writers, musicians, playwrights, etc, receive lots of attention and make more money today because of the Internet, but the cultural fragmentation that results from the Internet also sets the ceiling much lower. This is disappointing: The middlebrow is a powerful uniting force that shouldn't be ignored. What's so bad about the widely available being of a high quality?

R.E.M.'s members said last week they wanted to retire on their own terms, before they became irrelevant. Teasing them for this -- because they haven't released a monumental record in maybe 20 years or a very good one in 12 years -- misses the point. First, they've never had embarrassing moments parading on stage like, most infamously, the Rolling Stones do when they tour. Second and more importantly, R.E.M. has taught you can mine meaningful, confusing, intriguing territory all while figuring out how to make it appealing. This is a delicate trick to turn. Very few artists do it, nearly all wish they could, and R.E.M. has.

Above is the track "New Orleans Instrumental No. 1." No one in 2011 would be bold enough to put such a sweet two-minute instrumental in the middle of a record and still plan it would sell millions. Respect is due.