R.E.M.'s debut album, released in 1983, was so far removed from the prevailing trends of American popular music that it still sounds miraculous and out of time today. J. Niimi tells the story of the album's genesis - with fascinating input from Don Dixon and Mitch Easter. He also investigates Michael Stipe's hypnotic, mysterious lyrics, and makes the case for Murmur as a work of Southern Gothic art.

R.E.M.'s debut album, released in 1983, was so far removed from the prevailing trends of American popular music that it still sounds miraculous and out of time today. J. Niimi tells the story of the album's genesis - with fascinating input from Don Dixon and Mitch Easter. He also investigates Michael Stipe's hypnotic, mysterious lyrics, and makes the case for Murmur as a work of Southern Gothic art. EXCEPRT: In the course of an interview that took place some twenty years ago, Michael Stipe made passing reference to an essay that had a deep impact on him. It's what came to his mind when, after having been harangued by fans and journalists alike about Murmur's lyrics, already grown weary from having to continually entertain their broad speculations, he finally threw up his hands. "Anyone who really wants to figure out the words to our songs should probably read this essay, then go back and listen," Stipe told the interviewer. "It talks about how people misinterpret something that's being said, and come up with a little phrase or word that actually defines the essence of what the original was better than the original did." What Stipe was trying to say is that if you want answers to R.E.M., you're not only looking in the wrong place, you're also asking the wrong questions.

R.E.M., the most acclaimed American group of their generation, disbanded in September 2011 with their idealism and dignity intact. In this, the final edition of his best-selling R.E.M. biography, Tony Fletcher brings their story to a conclusion and explains what led this unique group to draw a curtain on their career. This Omnibus Enhanced digital edition of Perfect Circle includes a bonus multimedia discography charting every album and single of R.E.M’s career, presented in chronological order through audio, video and imagery. Drawing on interviews with band members, friends, associates and business partners, the book follows R.E.M.’s upward trajectory from the seminal debut Murmur in 1983 to the 1990s when their albums Out Of Time, Automatic For The People and Monster sold tens of millions, making them one of the world’s biggest groups, to their final years together. Granted access to the group throughout their career, Tony Fletcher delves beyond R.E.M.s renowned humility and social awareness, discussing fame, fortune and sexuality with the same keen eye he casts on the group’s astonishing career and musical catalogue. The result is neither blind fan worship nor jaundiced critical cynicism, but a balanced and thorough telling of one of the most compelling rock stories of our time.

R.E.M.'s public image has always been tightly controlled. Icons of anti-celebrity rock, who bacame huge celebrity rock stars, they were, according to the story, the first U.S. post new-wave band who were both commercially successful and cool. Drawing on exclusive interviews with Mike Mills, Peter Buck and other members of R.E.M.'s nuclear family, Fiction re-evaluates the music and career of a group who sold almost no records for the first half of their existence, then became 'the biggest rock group in the world' in the second half.

REM are the most influential, prolific and vital American group of the last quarter century. From their humble post-punk beginnings in the college town of Athens, Georgia to their current standing as a global phenomenon, REM have consistently bucked audience expectations and defied music biz rules. This new edition of Tony Fletcher's acclaimed biography brings the band's story right up to date, covering the departure of drummer Bill Berry, Michael Stipe's increasing role as a spokesman for humane causes, Peter Buck's 'air-rage' trial and the group's music right up to their 2001 Reveal album.

Robert Dean Lurie’s biography is the first completely researched and written since R.E.M. disbanded in 2011. It offers by far the most detailed account of their formative years—the early lives of the band members, their first encounters with one another, their legendary debut show, touring out of the back of a van, initial recordings, their shrewdly paced rise to fame. The people and places of ‘the South’ are crucial to the R.E.M. story in ways much more complex and interesting than have been presented thus far, says Lurie, who explores the myriad ways in which the band’s adopted hometown of Athens, Georgia, and the South in general, have shaped its members and the character and style of their art. The South is more than the background to this story; it plays a major role: the creative ferment that erupted in Athens and gripped many of its young inhabitants in the late 70s and early 80s drew on regional traditions of outsider art and general cultural out-thereness, and gave rise to a free-spirited music scene that produced the B-52’s and Pylon, and laid the ground for R.E.M.’s subsequent breakout success. Lurie has tracked down and interviewed numerous figures in the band’s history who were under-represented in or even absent from earlier biographies, and they contribute previously undocumented stories as well as casting a fresh light on the familiar narrative.

Alan Cross is the preeminent chronicler of popular music. Here he provides a history of Michael Stipe and R.E.M. This look at the band—"Radio Free Athens"—is adapted from the audiobook of the same name.