Out of Time is the seventh studio album by American alternative rock band R.E.M., released on March 12, 1991, by Warner Bros. Records. With Out of Time, R.E.M.'s status grew from that of a cult band to a massive international act. The record topped the album sales charts in both the United States and the United Kingdom, spending 109 weeks on U.S. album charts and, with two separate spells at the top, and spending 183 weeks on the British charts, including one week at the top. The album has sold more than four and a half million copies in the United States and more than 18 million copies worldwide. Out of Time won three Grammy Awards in 1992: one as Best Alternative Music Album, and two for its first single, "Losing My Religion".

Details

Out of Time combines elements of pop, folk and classical music heard on the band's previous album, Green, with a new concentration on country elements that would continue on 1992's Automatic for the People. It features guest appearances by KRS-One and Kate Pierson from The B-52's. Preceded by the release of "Losing My Religion", which became R.E.M.'s biggest U.S. hit, Out of Time gave them their first U.S. and UK No. 1 album. The band did not tour to support the release, although they did make occasional appearances on television or at festivals. In Germany, it is the band's best-selling album, selling more than 1,250,000 copies, reaching 5× gold. Out of Time was the first R.E.M. album to have an alternative expanded release on CD, including expanded liner notes and postcards. In Spain, a contest was held to have a limited-edition cover, with the winner being an abstract oil painting. For the 25th anniversary the album was remastered. The standard version of the reissue comes with a second disc of demos, the deluxe version adds a third disc featuring live acoustic tracks. It was released through Concord Records on November 18, 2016.

Packaging

Warner Bros. Records executive Jeff Gold, alongside Rock the Vote campaign co-founder and Virgin Records executive Jeff Ayeroff, approached R.E.M. in regards to printing a petition on the back of Out of Time's CD longbox packaging in the United States, where buyers were encouraged to sign their name in support for Rock the Vote, who were in support of the Motor Voter Act to ease voter registration, and would allow voters "to register through their local DMV". Gold reasoned, considering many of the album's buyers would be young, that this could "vote out" the controversial Parents Music Resource Center music censorship bill, who "put pressure on the creators and distributors of 'objectionable' music", as well as make good use of the popular longbox packaging format of the day, which many artists and customers considered unnecessary and wasteful. Michael Stipe also appeared in a public service announcement for the campaign. In July 2014, radio show 99% Invisible said that because of this packaging, Out of Time is "the most politically significant album in the history of the United States". They said that three weeks after the album's release, "they had received 10,000 petitions, 100 per senator, and they just kept coming in droves", and a month following its release, the campaign's political director and members of KMD "wheeled a shopping cart full of the first 10,000 petitions into a senate hearing". The bill was eventually passed in 1993 by Bill Clinton and was in effect January 1, 1995; one commentary later said this happened "in no small part because of R.E.M.'s lobbying".

Reception

The album received mostly positive reviews from critics. Mark Cooper of Q contrasted Out of Time with its predecessor Green, highlighting Stipe's vocals and the harmony singing while describing the album as a "brooding departure [that] offers them at their most reflective, challenging and intriguing". Terry Staunton in his review for NME praised the album for its refreshing sound, calling it "easily their most eclectic and wildly inspired album yet, although it is still very identifiably REM". At the same time, Entertainment Weekly's David Browne was left unimpressed with the record, criticizing the album for sounding boring, and describing it as "the least satisfying, most forced album they've ever made". Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic gave a low scoring review of two and a half out of five stars, observing, "The scope of R.E.M.'s ambitions is impressive, and the record sounds impeccable, its sunny array of pop and folk songs as refreshing as Michael Stipe's decision to abandon explicitly political lyrics for the personal." concluding "Most of the songs are slight but pleasant, or are awkward experiments like "Radio Song"'s stab at funk, and while this sounds fine as the record is playing, there's not much substantive material to make the record worth returning to." Out of Time was one of R.E.M.'s more successful albums in terms of awards and nominations. It was their only album to win a Grammy Award, for Best Alternative Music Album. It also won the Q Award for Best Album of 1991. In 2000, Out of Time was voted number 49 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums. It was featured in Time magazine's 2006 list of the "All-Time 100 Albums". According to the review aggregator Metacritic, the 25th anniversary re-release of Out of Time received "generally favorable reviews" based on a weighted average score of 80 out of 100 from nine critic reviews.

Track listing

All tracks written by Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe. Time Side Memory Side

Personnel

Personnel adapted from Out of Time liner notes, except where indicated. R.E.M. Additional musicians Production

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications and sales

Release history

In 2005, Warner Bros. Records issued an expanded two-disc edition of Out of Time which includes a CD, a DVD-Audio disc containing a 5.1-channel surround sound mix of the album done by Elliot Scheiner, lyrics, a photo album, and the original CD booklet with expanded liner notes. In 2011 Warner Bros. released a 96 kHz, 24-bit and 192 kHz, 24 bit stereo release (the same High-Resolution stereo mix as featured on the DVD-Audio and later, the Blu-Ray editions) of the album at HDtracks. Out of Time Note Box sets