VINIL Universal Records REM - MTV Unplugged

Rolling Stone's Will Hermes gave the album four out of five stars remarking, "No band but Nirvana made more breathtakingly transformative use of MTV Unplugged than R.E.M."

[drowned in sound] Though the person who invented MTV Unplugged is owed at least a light thwack in the genitals for inspiring Radio 1’s execrable Live Lounge, the show was, ultimately, one of the classier things about the channel in its pomp – a fair few of the acoustic concerts staged under its auspices were very good, with Nirvana’s contribution pretty much validating the series in and of itself.

So I was a little sad to note while, er, ‘researching’ this review that Unplugged has now been relegated to a very occasional online thing - which I suppose is inevitable given MTV doesn’t really play music anymore, but still, I’d vaguely hoped all my favourite indie-rock bands had been doing Unplugged shows, only I hadn’t noticed.

One of the few bands to appear twice were R.E.M., and it’s interesting – well, if you’re a terrible nerd it’s interesting – to note the shared fortune of band and broadcaster. The first time, in 1991, R.E.M. were skyrocketing towards being the biggest band in the world and MTV was their vehicle to the heavens. Tarsem Singh’s evocative video propelled ‘Losing My Religion’ to global ubiquity, and the band’s MTV concert was essentially in lieu of touring seventh album Out of Time, the time off the road giving the band the room they needed to bash out the monumental Automatic for the People just a year later.

The second time R.E.M. appeared, in 2001, things were different. MTV hadn’t quite given up on music yet, but it had kind of de-aligned itself with any scene - it had been the New Romantic channel, it had been the hair metal channel, it had been the grunge channel, it had been the alt rock channel… now it was just MTV, not really standing for anything. The launching of specialised channels was part of that, but the fact is MTV had parted ways with the zeitgeist, and the golden age of the music video was probably over – the most expensive videos of all time were overwhelmingly made in the Nineties.