S Club, formerly known as S Club 7, was an English pop group created by former Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller. The group—consisting of Tina Barrett, Paul Cattermole, Jon Lee, Bradley McIntosh, Jo O'Meara, Hannah Spearritt, and Rachel Stevens—rose to fame by starring in their own CBBC television series, Miami 7, in 1999. Over the four years they were together, S Club 7 had four UK number-one singles, one UK numberone-album and had a string of number-one singles throughout Europe. They recorded a total of four studio albums and released eleven singles. Their first album, S Club, had a strong 1990s pop sound, similar to many artists of their time. However, through the course of their career, their musical approach changed to a more dance and R&B sound which is seen mostly in their final album, Seeing Double.
The concept and brand of the group was created by Simon Fuller, who was also their manager through 19 Entertainment; they were signed to Polydor Records. Their television series went on to last four seasons, seeing the group travel across the United States and eventually ending up in Barcelona, Spain. It became popular in 100 different countries where the show was watched by over 90 million viewers.The show, which was a children's sitcom, often mirrored real life events which had occurred in the band, including the relationship of Hannah Spearritt and Paul Cattermole, as well as the eventual departure from the group of the latter.
As well as the popularity of their television series, S Club 7 won two BRIT Awards—in 2000 for British breakthrough act and in 2002, for best British single. In 2001, the group earned the Record of the Year award. The group's success soon changed, however, when Paul Cattermole announced he was to leave in the band, in 2002. Their penultimate single reached #5 in the UK charts, and their final studio album failed to make the top ten.
After Cattermole left the group, S Club 7 fought many rumours presuming that they were about to split.However, on April 21, 2003, during a live onstage performance, S Club announced that they were to disband.
Simon Fuller claims to have chanced upon the concept of S Club 7 the day after he was fired by the Spice Girls in 1997.The group came together after auditioning from over 10,000 hopefuls;Stevens was the only member of the band who did not audition to gain admittance into the group.Instead, two producers from 19 Management approached her and asked her to go into the studio and record a demo tape for Simon Fuller.Both O'Meara and Cattermole were spotted by producers from 19 and asked to audition.After the auditions had been advertised in The Stage newspaper,Lee, Spearritt, Barrett and McIntosh auditioned for the band.After final adjustments, including the removal of three original members, Fuller had created S Club 7.
Once the final lineup was decided, the group flew to Italy in order to become acquainted with each other.Speaking about this first meeting, Stevens remarked that the group "felt comfortable with each other" from the beginning.It is unknown where the name S Club 7 originated, however it has been suggested that the members simply liked that the letter 'S' had many words that began with it.
S Club 7 first came to public attention when they starred in their own 1999 television series, Miami 7.The show first aired on CBBC on BBC One and was a children's sitcom based on the life of the seven members living together in Miami in search of fame in America. Miami 7 was also launched in the United States,where it originally aired on Fox Family, and then later on ABC Family, where it was retitled S Club 7 in Miami. The show was watched by 90 million viewers in over 100 different countries.The group also filmed two TV specials between the first two series of their show. The first, Back to the '50s—which aired on CITV, instead of CBBC—told the story of how the group found themselves back in 1959 when their mileometer tipped over 999,999 miles.In the second TV special, Boyfriends & Birthdays, Stevens' boyfriend gave her an ultimatum of staying with him or remaining with the band.
S Club 7 released their debut single, "Bring It All Back" on June 9, 1999. It was the up-tempo theme music to Miami 7, written by Eliot Kennedy, who had previously worked with the Spice Girls and Take That.The single reached #1 in the United Kingdom, and was made Platinum.On September 20, 1999, the group's second single, "S Club Party", was released. It was written and produced by Norwegian production team Stargate and had a peak position of #2 in the UK and reached #1 in New Zealand.Following the high charting of their first two singles, the group released their debut album, S Club in October 1999. The album rose to #2 in the UK charts,and then became certified Double Platinum.
In December 1999, a double A-side single was released. It featured the ballad, co-written by Cathy Dennis, "Two in a Million" and retro-styled, up-tempo "You're My Number One". "Two in a Million" was the first single where O'Meara took the vocals, setting the standard for future S Club releases. The single soon peaked at #2 in the UK charts.Miami 7 also showcased unreleased tracks, such as "Down at Club S" and "We Can Work It Out", which went on to be included as B-sides on single releases.
The group also recorded vocals for "It's Only Rock 'N' Roll", which raised money for Children's Promise, an alliance of seven children's charities—Barnardo's, Children in Need, ChildLine, The Children's Society, Comic Relief, NCH and the NSPCC.A cover of the Rolling Stones song, the group contributed to the vocals alongside many popular artists, including Mary J. Blige, Natalie Imbruglia and the Spice Girls.It entered the charts at #19, the same week as "Two in a Million/You're My Number One".
In February 2000, the group won the 'British Breakthrough Act' award at the 2000 BRIT Awards.[23] In April 2000, S Club's second TV series, L.A. 7 (renamed S Club 7 in L.A. in the US), was released. The series saw the group depart Miami and move to Los Angeles to seek a record deal. The series introduced the song "Reach", another retro-styled uptempo track, which was again co-written by Cathy Dennis and aired as the main theme tune to the second series.
"Reach" was released as a single in May 2000 and reached #2 on the UK chart.It arguably became one of the group's most successful singles, paving the way for the group's second album, 7 which was released on June 12, 2000. This album was a departure from overtly pop stylings of S Club, with tracks styled more towards R&B than the traditional nineties pop sound of their debut album. The album reached #1 in the UK charts and became certified Triple Platinum;it also became a certified Gold record in the USA.The second single from the album, '"Natural", featured Stevens as lead vocalist. The single reached #3 in September 2000.
S Club 7 took an active part in promoting several different charities during their time as a band. As well as performing for Children in Need, the band launched, on September 25, 2000,a new television series called S Club 7 Go Wild! which saw each band member support an endangered species. Teaming up with the World Wildlife Fund, each member travelled to different destinations worldwide with a hope to raise awareness about the seven endangered creatures, including the Siberian Tiger and the Hyacinth Macaw.In October 2000, the band launched the annual Poppy Appeal Campaign with Dame Thora Hird.S Club 7 also supported Woolworth's Kids First Campaign throughout 1999 and 2000.
In November 2000, S Club 7 were invited to provide the official song for the UK's BBC Children in Need Campaign 2000 and so a new song, the ballad, "Never Had a Dream Come True" was recorded. After topping the UK charts in December 2000,the song was added to a re-release of the 7 album, along with another new track, a cover of Stevie Wonder's "Lately".
On March 20, 2001, Cattermole, Lee and McIntosh were caught with cannabis in London's Covent Garden. The three were cautioned by police at Charing Cross Police Station and released without charge.After the event, they released a public apology stating they were "very stupid" and "very sorry" admitting to having made a "stupid mistake".At the time, BT and Cadbury, who had sponsorship deals with S Club 7, said they were "very disappointed" to learn of the caution but said they would keep their contracts with the band.However, cereal firm Quaker Oats ended talks with 19 Entertainment after learning of the police caution.It was rumoured that merchandising company "PMS International" were to take out an £800,000 lawsuit against the band for declining sales as a direct result of the drugs scandal.However, this came to nothing and any doubts over the future of sponsorship ended when Pepsi signed the band up less than a month after the drugs caution.
"Never Had a Dream Come True" had marked a more mature direction for the group whilst still retaining their pop sensibilities, a direction which continued into their third studio album, Sunshine. The album contained what was to become one of S Club's most popular tracks, "Don't Stop Movin'". The song, which was a disco track and released in April 2001, marked a high point for the group as the single went straight to #1,went Platinum and became the seventh best selling single of 2001.McIntosh, who takes lead vocals with O'Meara in the track, said he was "nervous" about taking lead vocals and was worried how people would react. However, after the song went in at #1, he felt as though he was "supported by the fans" and his fears were alleviated.McIntosh also remarked that the single had broken new ground for the group, and Cattermole thought it to be their "best song by miles".The group won the Record of the Year award for the song,and in February 2002, the single also won the group their second BRIT Award for best British single.The song has since been covered by The Beautiful South for their 2004 album Golddiggas, Headnodders and Pholk Songs, as well as by Starsailor who recorded it for BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge.
By spring 2001, the group were "desperate" to start touring; something which they had always wanted to do, but couldn't because things were "always so hectic".After spending most of early 2001 rehearsing, the S Club Party 2001 tour began on May 19, 2001. Describing the tour, Stevens remarked that seeing a crowd of over 13,000 fans each night coming to see them was "such an unbelievable feeling", and the other members of the group shared an "adrenaline rush" as well as a wave of emotion before going on stage.Once the tour was over, the group had to fly back to the United States in order to film the third series of their television show, Hollywood 7. This third series, which was still set in Los Angeles, was the group's favourite to film because they had more acting experience and could "drop their shoulders" and start to enjoy themselves.The group, however, had to continuously cope with intense schedules and early starts whilst recording for the programme, something which, although the group felt "laid back" about it at the time,was to eventually take its toll and lead to the demise of the band.
Hollywood 7 began airing in September 2001 and dealt with the issue of an on-screen kiss between Spearritt and Cattermole, who had begun dating in real life.Their relationship, which was kept secret for six months, was well received by the band who claimed it had made them all closer as friends.Hollywood 7 aired alongside a new CBBC reality show, S Club Search, which invited children to extend the S Club brand and audition to form a younger version of the band. The new group were to be chosen to sing and dance on tour with S Club 7 on their future S Club 7 Carnival 2002 tour. The eight children who went onto form the band named themselves S Club Juniors and had six top ten UK hits.
The effects of the group's charity single, "Never Had a Dream Come True", were felt when the group handed over £200,000 to Children in Need, from the sales of the CD after the release of "Don't Stop Movin'" in April 2001.As a result, S Club 7 were invited back and asked to record a second consecutive Children in Need single, in November 2001. It was decided that "Have You Ever", a song co-written by Chris Braide and Cathy Dennis, was to be released for the charity campaign. After the success of the previous year's single, the performance on the night featured many primary school children who had pre-recorded their own versions of the chorus.The band felt "overjoyed" that they could, once again, contribute to the Children in Need campaign, feeling that it meant a lot to them to be involved and feeling privileged to be able to help; they also commented that it was nice for British school children to be involved in raising money for charity as well.The single was another success for the group and became their fourth #1;it also became the twenty-first biggest selling single of 2001.
In January 2002, S Club 7 embarked upon their second arena tour, S Club 7 Carnival 2002, which aimed to please fans by stylising their songs to fit with a carnival-like theme with music styles from different countries of the world.Speaking about the tour, McIntosh described it as "older show", a change from S Club Party 2001, which was "more like bubblegum",with Paul Cattermole comparing 2001's "theatrical" tour with the Carnival tour as a more "glitzy, concert stage".The tour was generally well received by the children's media, describing the show as "diverse" and "dazzling",whereas the group was criticised by the broadsheets as being "like a compilation of toddler-friendly Eurovision entries" although conceding that it was a "slick, decent-value show".Cattermole also came in for criticism when he was dubbed overweight and a "heavy-footed dancer".
After the success of their last three singles, all of which had made it to #1, it was disappointing when S Club 7 released their ninth single, "You", and narrowly missed the top spot.The single, which was described as a "candyfloss-bright, tongue-in-cheek 50s pastiche",was to be Paul Cattermole's last single with the band and led the way for a series of events that was to unravel S Club 7's time at the top of the charts, which would ultimately cause the band to split.
In March 2002, Paul Cattermole told The Sun newspaper that it was time for him to "move on" from the group and he wanted to go back to his "rock roots",which heralded back to the time he was part of a nu metal band formed with his old school friends. Talking about his former musical venture three months before he left S Club 7, Cattermole described the band—who had been called Skua—as having a "Limp Bizkit vibe" as well as comparing their style to Rage Against The Machine.Cattermole's resignation came as Skua had decided to reform, and he found it a perfect time to make the transition back from pop to rock as S Club 7's record contracts were up for renewel.Cattermole stayed with the band until June 2002, featuring in five out of thirteen episodes of the group's final television series, Viva S Club, and performing his final concert with the group for Party at the Palace, which was part of Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee celebrations.
After Cattermole's departure, vowing to not disband, the remaining six members stayed together under the name S Club. Despite losing a member of the group, the future remained positive as, although they were very sad to see Cattermole leave the group, they were "delighted" to have extended their contracts meaning they could look forward to new material, a new series of their television show as well as their first feature film.However, media reports of the time weren't so optimistic stating that, as neither the Spice Girls nor Take That had survived once they lost a member of their group, it would be difficult for S Club to remain together in an industry which has a "horrible habit of leaving bands in tatters once the first member has left".After only peaking at #5 in the UK charts with their first single as a six, S Club's positivism was diminished.
Although their progressive musical style was once again furthered with the release of their fourth studio album, Seeing Double, it failed to make an impact on the UK charts, stalling at #17.S Club's time at the top of the charts was slowly coming to an end, and when O'Meara announced that she had an immobilising back condition which could have left her in a wheelchair,and she was unable to take part in television performances, the group was left devastated.
In April 2003, S Club released their first feature film, Seeing Double, which was to be the last time the group would be seen on-screen together. Unlike its television predecessors, the film moved into the realm of children's fantasy, and saw the group fighting evil scientist Victor Gaghan in his quest to clone the world's popstars. The film's release was marked by many rumours that the group were about to split, which were quickly denied by the six.However, ten days after the release of their movie, the rumours were confirmed when it was announced live on stage—during their S Club United tour on April 21, 2003—that, after a final single and greatest hits album, S Club would part ways.The band cited a mutual split, expressing it was simply a time "to move on and face new challenges".Many fans felt "betrayed" and "disappointed" by the breakup, as well as "angry" due to the group denying rumours only two weeks before at the Seeing Double premiere.Many compared the demise of the group to that of fellow pop band Steps, as they too had denied their intentions until the moment before their split, after which they were accused of acting out of "greed and cynicism".Since the split, the members of S Club have commented on how exhausting being in the band was, due to hectic schedules and long filming days.Although confirming the split "wasn't a final straw", Spearritt has remarked that the group had felt it appropriate wanting to do their own thing; she had constantly felt "drained" whilst with S Club.
The final single was a double A-side, coupling "Love Ain't Gonna Wait for You", from their third album Seeing Double, with a new ballad, "Say Goodbye". Returning to the style of their first single, "Say Goodbye" saw vocals shared around the group. The single reached #2 in the UK, beaten to the top spot by R. Kelly's "Ignition (Remix)",and was included on S Club's greatest hits album, Best: The Greatest Hits of S Club 7, released in June 2003. This compilation brought together the group's releases with a previously unreleased track, "Everybody Get Pumped" and 7 track "Bring the House Down". The album reached #2 in the United Kingdom.S Club eventually split up after the release of "Say Goodbye" on May 26, 2003.
On April 27, 2003, it was reported that Spearritt's parents had hired lawyers to chase payments owed to them by Simon Fuller and his management company.They claimed that out of the €75 million fortune the band made for Fuller, they only received €150,000 a year of it.There was also controversy when the band had to travel economy class to America and when Fuller did not turn up for the premiere of Seeing Double.The criticism put to Fuller was similar of that in 1997 when the Spice Girls fired him for being too controlling.
After the group split up, the S Club Juniors rebranded "S Club 8". They also went on to film CBBC show I Dream, releasing their third studio album under the same name.S Club 8 eventually disbanded in 2004.
The style of music S Club 7 normally falls under is pop, or more specifically bubblegum pop, as well as manufactured pop. This is certainly the case for their first album, S Club where simple lyrics, three-chord structures and danceable beats define it so. Their first two singles saw vocals shared equally amongst the seven members of the group, and it was not until their third single, "Two in a Million" that O'Meara became known as their lead vocalist. Although the band were to progressively change their style over the four years they were together, even their first album had many tracks untypical of the pop genre: "You're My Number One" and "Everybody Wants Ya" were motown driven whereas "Viva La Fiesta" and "Buenos Tiempos (It's an S Club Thing)", were both "bouncy, salsa-driven Latino songs".
Over the years, their style and direction changed progressively with each new album. Their second album 7, had songs which had styles far removed from the traditional pop songs rival pop bands of the nineties were releasing. With the release of "Natural" in 2000, S Club 7 showcased a new, R&B-lite sound.The release of their third album, Sunshine, gave audiences their biggest change: the album contained tracks such as the disco-influenced, "Don't Stop Movin'" and the R&B ballad, "Show Me Your Colours". The album marked a more mature approach for the band.
With the departure of Cattermole, S Club released their fourth and final album, Seeing Double which contained many songs with styles not yet explored by the group. The group released "Alive" which was a "power-packed dance floor filler",a style which matched that of their final single "Love Ain't Gonna Wait for You". The album also contained many other dance tracks and songs far removed from their original bubblegum pop stylings, such as the "sex for the CBBC generation" in "Hey Kitty Kitty".Although, in one review, referring to "Gangsta Love", "S Club's spiritual home is the suburban disco, not urban underground clubs, and their attempt to go garage on "Gangsta Love" ends up amusing rather than authentic".
Of course, throughout their releases, S Club 7 always kept their original pop roots, with songs such as "Reach", "You" and "Say Goodbye".
Tina Barrett has kept a relatively low profile since the split. When they first announced they were to break up, she expressed interest in working on a solo career.However, Tina has not released any solo material. In August 2003, a doctor's son was jailed for six months after sending threatening e-mails to Barrett.She was also romantically linked to David Schwimmer in 2004.However, this romance was not taken any further when he moved back to America.
Since leaving S Club 7 in June 2002, Paul Cattermole joined his high school nu metal band Skua. However, they broke up soon afterwards. He then joined Charlie Bullitt but the band broke up in November 2005.Cattermole, after getting together whilst still in the band, continued to date fellow band member Spearritt in a relationship which went on to last for five years.On his MySpace page, he expresses interest in releasing an album in 2008.
Jon Lee stuck to his expressed interest in theatre when he signed up to appear in Les Misérables on the West End in 2004.He played Marius Pontmercy in the production. Lee is also set to appear as the voice of Max in an animated version of Enid Blyton's Famous Five.Lee will also appear in an updated version of James Hick's Telstar where he will play Billy Fury.
Instead of wanting a solo career, Bradley McIntosh wanted to focus on production and writing.However, nothing was heard of him until he joined four other ex-pop stars for MTV's Totally Boyband creating the band Upper Street. After their debut single only reached #35, the group became very quiet and it's presumed that they split up after the departure of their manager Jonathan Shalit.
Jo O'Meara took time out after S Club because of a serious back condition.On October 3, 2005 she released her debut solo single, "What Hurts The Most" and album, Relentless. Her single disappointingly went to #13 and her album charted even more poorly at #48.After her disappointing album sales, Jo went back to her hobby of dog breeding. In 2006, she came third place in BBC talent show Just the Two of Us with partner Chris Fountain.It was not until January 2007 that O'Meara became fully back into the public eye. She appeared on Celebrity Big Brother and was involved in a race row where it was alleged that she, along with Jade Goody and Danielle Lloyd, took part in racial bullying towards Shilpa Shetty.After the event, it was reported that Jo had received death threats and attempted suicide.Since then, Jo has made no public appearances except at a gala performance for Comic Relief.On January 19, 2008, O'Meara announced to the Daily Mail that she is six months pregnant with her first child.In the article, she explains how she feels how her Celebrity Big Brother experience has "made her a better person" and that she is considering taking part in a future charity show organised by Zoe Tyler.
Two days after the split, Hannah Spearritt auditioned for a role in Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London with Frankie Muniz and Anthony Anderson.She won the role of Emily Sommers and her first acting role post-S Club. She took the part as Joan in horror franchise Seed of Chucky and also appeared in BBC's Blessed and independent short film Little Lily. In February 2006, she landed a lead role in ITV sci-fi drama series Primeval as Abby Maitland. After her relationship with Cattermole ended, she got together with Primeval co-star Andrew-Lee Potts and moved in with him. Spearritt also appeared as the murder victim, Tilly Rice, in an ITV production of Agatha Christie's At Bertram's Hotel. She has expressed no interest in starting a solo career since the band split.
Rachel Stevens has perhaps carved the most successful solo career out of all the former S Club 7 members. Less than a month after the group disbanded, Stevens signed a £1 million record contract with Polydor Records and re-signed with Simon Fuller.Her first single, "Sweet Dreams My LA Ex", was released on September 15, 2003 and reached #2 in the UK.Her first studio album, Funky Dory was released on September 29, 2003 and reached #9.Stevens went on to release six more UK singles and a second album, which only reached #28 in the charts.She has released no new material since 2005. More recently, Stevens has expressed an interest in launching an acting career after briefly appearing in Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo and Spider-Plant Man for the Comic Relief 2005 campaign. More recently, Stevens has lent her voice to BBC Scotland animated series "Glendogie Bogey", where she will play Patricia Ravelston.She has described her character as a "real dizzy dora, but at the same time she's really smart and doesn't miss a trick".
In September 2007, Stevens claimed she would never rule out an S Club reunion. In a recent interview with OK! Magazine, Lee and Spearritt discussed how they've both remained friends since S Club's split. They admitted that they've lost touch with O'Meara since the Celebrity Big Brother controversy and Stevens, except when meeting at showbiz parties. When asked about a reunion, Lee said, "Never say never—but no!".
Friday, June 27, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Queen
In 1969, guitarist Brian May, a student at London's Imperial College, and bassist Tim Staffell decided to form a group. May placed an advertisement on the college notice board for a "Mitch Mitchell/Ginger Baker type" drummer; Roger Taylor, a young dental student, auditioned and got the job. They called the group Smile and served as a support act for bands such as Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Yes and the original Genesis. Smile were signed to Mercury Records in 1969, and had their first session in a recording studio in Trident Studios that year. Staffell was attending Ealing Art College with Farrokh Bulsara, later known as Freddie Mercury, and introduced him to the band. Bulsara soon became a keen fan. Staffell left in 1970 to join another band, Humpy Bong; the remaining Smile members, encouraged by Bulsara, changed their name to "Queen" and continued working together. The band had a number of bass players during this period who did not fit with the band's chemistry. It was not until February 1971 that they settled on John Deacon and began to rehearse for the first album.
In 1973, after a series of delays, Queen released their first album, a self-titled project influenced by the heavy metal and progressive rock of the day. The album was received well by critics; Gordon Fletcher of Rolling Stone said "their debut album is superb," and Chicago's Daily Herald called it an "above average debut".However, it drew little mainstream attention and the lead single "Keep Yourself Alive," a Brian May composition, sold poorly. Greg Prato of All Music Guide called it "one of the most underrated hard rock debuts of all time."
The album Queen II was released in 1974. The album reached number five on the British album charts, while the Freddie Mercury-written lead single "Seven Seas of Rhye," reached number ten in the UK, giving the band their first hit. The album is their heaviest and darkest release, featuring long complex instrumental passages, fantasy-themed lyrics and musical virtuosity. The band toured as support to Mott the Hoople in the UK & United States during this period, and they began to gain notice for their energetic and engaging stage shows. However, album sales in the US were, like those of its predecessor, low.
Because of medical complications, May was absent when the band started work on their third album, Sheer Heart Attack, released in 1974. The album reached number two in the United Kingdom, sold well throughout Europe, and went gold in the United States. It gave the band their first real taste of commercial success. The album experimented with a variety of musical genres, including British Music Hall ("Killer Queen"), heavy metal ("Flick of the Wrist", "Brighton Rock", "Tenement Funster", "Now I'm Here", and "Stone Cold Crazy" – a song which Metallica would later cover and earn a Grammy for), ballads ("Lily Of The Valley" and "Dear Friends"), ragtime ("Bring Back That Leroy Brown") and Caribbean ("Misfire"). At this point Queen started to move away from the progressive tendencies of their first two releases into a more radio-friendly, song-oriented style. Sheer Heart Attack introduced new sound and melody patterns that would be refined on their next album A Night at the Opera.
The single "Killer Queen" reached number two on the British charts, and became their first U.S. hit, reaching number twelve in the Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits. It combines camp, vaudeville, British music hall with May’s guitar virtuosity. The album’s second single, "Now I’m Here", a more traditional hard rock composition, was a number eleven hit in Britain.
In 1975, the band left for a world tour with each member in Zandra Rhodes-created costumes and banks of lights and effects. They toured the US, headlining for the first time, and played in Canada for the first time in April. Also at this time, the band's manager Jim Beach negotiated the band out of their Trident contract. They considered options, one of whom was Led Zeppelin’s manager, Peter Grant. Grant wanted them to sign with Led Zeppelin’s own production company, Swan Song Records. This was unacceptable to Queen, so instead they contacted Elton John’s manager, John Reid, who accepted the position. In April 1975 the band toured Japan for the first time.
Later that year the band recorded and released A Night at the Opera. At the time, it was the most expensive album ever produced. Like its predecessor, the album features diverse musical styles and experimentation with stereo sound. In "The Prophet's Song", an eight-minute epic, the middle section is a canon, with simple phrases layered to create a full-choral sound. The album was very successful in Britain, and went triple platinum in the United States. It is considered their magnum opus; in 2003, it was ranked number 230 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
The album also featured the hit single "Bohemian Rhapsody", which was number one in the United Kingdom for nine weeks, and is Britain’s third-best-selling single of all time; it also reached number nine in the United States (a 1992 re-release reached number two). Bohemian Rhapsody has been voted, several times, the greatest song of all time. The band decided to make a video to go with the single. The second single from the album, "You're My Best Friend", peaked at sixteen in the United States and went on to become a worldwide Top Ten hit.
By 1976, Queen were back in the studio, where they recorded A Day at the Races, what may be mistaken simply as a companion album to A Night at the Opera. It again borrowed the name of a Marx Brothers' movie, and its cover was similar to that of A Night at the Opera, a variation on the same Queen Crest. Musically, the album was by both fans’ and critics’ standards a strong effort, and reached number one on the British charts. The major hit on the album was "Somebody to Love", a gospel-inspired song in which Mercury, May, and Taylor multi-tracked their voices to make a 100-voice gospel choir. The song went to number two in the United Kingdom, and number thirteen on the U.S. singles chart. The album also featured one of the band's heaviest songs, Brian May’s "Tie Your Mother Down", which became a staple of their live shows.
Also in 1976, Queen played one of their most famous gigs, a 1976 free concert in Hyde Park, London. It set an attendance record, with 150,000 people confirmed in the audience.
News of the World was released a year later. It contained many songs tailor-made for live performance, including "We Will Rock You" and the rock ballad "We Are the Champions", both of which reached number four in the United States and became enduring international sports anthems. Roger Taylor released his first solo effort in 1977 in the form of a single: the A-side was a cover of a song by The Parliaments "I Wanna Testify", and the B-side was a song by Taylor called "Turn On The TV".
In 1978 the band released Jazz, including the hit singles "Fat Bottomed Girls" and "Bicycle Race" which were also released as a double-A-side single. The word "jazz" was not used in a strict sense, and the album was noted by critics for its collection of different styles, jazz not being one of them.Rolling Stone typically criticised it for being "dull", saying "Queen hasn’t the imagination to play jazz – Queen hasn't the imagination, for that matter, to play rock & roll." Important tracks of the album include "Dead on Time", "Don't Stop Me Now", "Let Me Entertain You", and "Mustapha", in which Arabesque music is combined with heavy rock guitar.
The band’s first live album, Live Killers, was released in 1979; it went platinum twice in the United States. They also released the very successful single "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", a rockabilly song done in the style of Elvis Presley. The song made the top 10 in many countries, and was the band’s first number one single in the United States.
Heretofor, their albums featured a distinctive "No Synthesisers were used on this Album" sleevenote to emphasise their stance that rock music should not involve the use of synthesisers. Queen began the 1980s with The Game. It featured the singles "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "Another One Bites the Dust", both of which reached number one in the United States. The album stayed number one for four weeks in the United States, and sold over four million copies. It was also the only album to ever top the Billboard rock, dance, and R&B charts simultaneously. The album also marked the first appearance of a synthesiser on a Queen album.
1980 also saw the release of the soundtrack Queen had recorded for Flash Gordon.
In 1981, Queen became the first major rock band to play in South American stadiums. Queen played to a total audience of 479,000 people on their South American tour, including five shows in Argentina. In October 1981, Queen performed for more than 150,000 fans at Monterrey (Estadio Universitario) and Puebla (Estadio Zaragoza), Mexico.
Also in 1981, Queen worked with David Bowie on the single "Under Pressure". The first-time collaboration with another artist was spontaneous, as Bowie happened to drop by the studio while Queen were recording. The band were immediately pleased with the results, but Bowie did not play the song live for several years.Upon its release, the song was extremely successful, reaching number one in Britain. The bass line was later used for Vanilla Ice 's 1990 hit "Ice Ice Baby", prompting the threat of a lawsuit over the use of the sample. The lawsuit did not make it to court and was settled for an undisclosed amount.
Later that year, Queen released their first compilation album, entitled Greatest Hits, which showcased the group's highlights from 1974-1981. It was highly successful, and as of 2007, it is the United Kingdom's best selling album. Taylor became the first member of the band to release his own solo album in 1981, entitled Fun In Space.
In 1982 the band released the funk album Hot Space. The band stopped touring North America after their Hot Space Tour, as their success there had waned, although they would perform on American television for the first and only time during the eighth season premiere of Saturday Night Live. Queen left Elektra Records, their label in the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, and signed onto EMI/Capitol Records.
After working steadily for over ten years, Queen decided that they would not perform any live shows in 1983. During this time, they recorded a new album, and several members of the band explored side projects and solo work. May released a mini-album entitled Star Fleet Projest, on which he collaborated with Eddie Van Halen. A computer musician composer in Canada, Kevin Chamberlain, helped with vocals and background music for Mercury's solo project which was later canceled due to creative differences.
In 1984, Queen released the album The Works, which included the successful singles "Radio Ga Ga" and "I Want to Break Free". Despite these hit singles, the album failed to do well in the United States. "Radio Ga Ga" was the band's last original American Top Forty hit until 1989's "I Want It All".
Queen embarked that year on a set of dates during their The Works Tour in Bophuthatswana, South Africa at the arena at Sun City. Upon returning to England, they were the subject of outrage, having played there during the height of apartheid and in violation of worldwide divestment efforts. The band stated that they were playing music for fans in that country, and stressed that the concerts were played before integrated audiences. However, they have since been colloquially known as the "Sun City Rockers", a term used in a disparaging sense to reflect how their actions were condemned as 'hard to defend' by many people.
In early 1985, the band headlined two nights of the Rock in Rio festival. They were booked for January 11 and January 18, but since on both nights the band only got to the stage well past midnight, so some sources mention January 12 and January 19. On each night, they played for 325,000 people. Mercury also released his first solo album, Mr. Bad Guy, in April. At Live Aid, held at Wembley on July 13, 1985, Queen performed some of their greatest hits in what has been considered their best performance to date.
Revitalised by the response to Live Aid and the resulting increase in record sales, Queen ended 1985 by releasing the single "One Vision". The song was used in the film Iron Eagle. Also, a limited-edition boxed set containing all Queen albums was released under the title of "The Complete Works".
In early 1986, Queen recorded the album A Kind of Magic, containing several songs written for the Russell Mulcahy film Highlander. The album was very successful, producing a string of hits including the title track "A Kind of Magic", which contains the key lyrics 'There can be only one', a reference to the movie's plot; "Friends Will Be Friends", "Who Wants to Live Forever" and "Princes of the Universe".
Later that year, Queen went on a sold-out tour (the band's largest) in support of A Kind of Magic. The Magic Tour's highlight was at Wembley Stadium in London and resulted in the live double album, Queen Live At Wembley Stadium, released on CD and as a live concert film. They could not book Wembley for a third night because it was already booked, but they did play at Knebworth Park. The show sold out within two hours and over 120,000 fans packed the park for what proved to be Queen's final live performance with Mercury. More than 1 million people saw Queen on the tour – 400,000 in the United Kingdom alone, a record at the time.
After working on various solo projects during 1988 (including Mercury's collaboration with Montserrat Caballé, Barcelona) the band released The Miracle in 1989. The album continued the direction of A Kind of Magic, using a pop-rock sound mixed with a few heavy numbers. It spawned the European hits "I Want It All", "Breakthru", "The Invisible Man", "Scandal", and "The Miracle".
The Miracle also began a change in direction of Queen's songwriting philosophy. Since the band's beginning, nearly all songs had been written by and credited to a single member, with other members adding minimally. With The Miracle, however, the band's songwriting became more collaborative, and they vowed to credit the final product only to Queen as a group.
After fans and the tabloid press noted Mercury's gaunt appearance in public during 1988, rumours began to spread that Mercury was suffering from AIDS. For reasons still not confirmed, Mercury flatly denied them at the time, insisting he was merely "exhausted" and too busy to provide interviews. However, the band decided to continue making albums free of internal conflict and differences, starting with The Miracle and continuing with Innuendo, which was recorded during 1990 but not released until the beginning of 1991 as Mercury's health was a major factor in the delay.
Despite his deteriorating health, Mercury continued to contribute, working in a creative fervor. The band released their second Greatest Hits compilation, Greatest Hits II, in October 1991.
On 23 November 1991, in a prepared statement made on his deathbed, Mercury finally confirmed that he had AIDS. He died the following day at the age of 45. His funeral service was private, held in accordance with the Zoroastrian religious faith of his family.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was re-released as a single shortly after Mercury's death, with "These Are the Days of Our Lives" as the B-side. The single went to number 1 for the second time in the UK. Initial proceeds from the single – approximately £1,000,000 – were donated to the Terrence Higgins Trust.
Queen's popularity increased once again in the United States after "Bohemian Rhapsody" was featured in the comedy film Wayne's World, helping the song reach number two for five weeks in the United States charts in 1992. The song was made into a Wayne's World music video, with which the band and management were delighted.
On 20 April 1992, the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert was held at London's Wembley Stadium. Performers included Def Leppard, Joe Elliott, Lisa Stansfield, Elton John, David Bowie, Angus Young, Malcolm Young, Brian Johnson (of AC/DC), Robert Plant, Tony Iommi, Annie Lennox, Axl Rose, Slash and Guns N' Roses, Extreme, Roger Daltrey, George Michael, Ian Hunter, Mick Ronson, Zucchero, Metallica, Liza Minnelli, and Spinal Tap, along with the three remaining members of Queen, performed many of Queen's major hits. It was a successful concert that was televised to over 1 billion viewers worldwide. The concert is listed in The Guinness Book of Records as "The largest rock star benefit concert." It raised over £20,000,000 for AIDS charities.
The band also terminated their Capitol Records contract and signed a deal with Hollywood Records as their new U.S label.
Queen never actually disbanded, although their last album of original material, titled Made in Heaven, was released in 1995, four years after Mercury's death. It was constructed from Mercury's final recording sessions in 1991, plus material left over from their previous studio albums. In addition, re-worked material from Mercury's solo album Mr. Bad Guy and a track originally featured on the first album of Taylor's side-project The Cross were included. May and Taylor have often been involved in projects related to raising money for AIDS research. John Deacon's last involvement with the band was in 1997, when the band recorded the track "No-One but You (Only the Good Die Young)". It was the last original song recorded by all three remaining members of Queen, and it was released as a bonus track on the Queen Rocks compilation album later that year.
Several Queen + projects were developed in the following years, a few of them mere remixes with no artistic involvement from the band. In 1999, a Greatest Hits III album was released. This album featured, among others, "Queen + Wyclef Jean" on a rap version of "Another One Bites the Dust"; a live version of "Somebody to Love" by George Michael; and a live version of "The Show Must Go On", performed live in 1997 with Elton John.
Brian May and Roger Taylor performed together as Queen on several occasions (award ceremonies, charity concerts, and the like), sharing vocals with various guest singers. They also recorded several covers of Queen's hits, including "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions".
In 2003, four new songs were recorded by Queen for Nelson Mandela's 46664 campaign against AIDS. The studio versions of Invincible Hope (Queen + Nelson Mandela, feat. Treana Morris), 46664 - The Call, Say It's Not True, and Amandla (Anastacia, Dave Stewart and Queen) have not yet been released on album.
Also, in 2002, Queen collaborated with Ben Elton to make a musical based on their greatest hits, called We Will Rock You. It ran till October 2008 in the Dominion Theatre, London and spawned many over-seas versions.
At the end of 2004, May and Taylor announced that they would reunite and return to touring in 2005, with Paul Rodgers (founder and former lead singer of Free and Bad Company). Brian May's website also stated that Rodgers would be 'featured with' Queen as Queen + Paul Rodgers, not replacing the late Freddie Mercury. The retired Deacon would not be participating; Danny Miranda of Blue Öyster Cult replaced him on bass. Other members of the tour included keyboardist Spike Edney, who played guitar and keyboards in Queen live shows since 1984, and additional guitarist Jamie Moses, who began working with May on solo efforts in the early 1990s.
A live double CD album, Return of the Champions, was released on September 19, 2005. It was recorded in May 2005 during the Queen + Paul Rodgers tour at the Sheffield Arena in Sheffield, England. A DVD from the concert was also released.
In March 2006, Queen + Paul Rodgers set out to tour the United States and Canada. During this tour, the group debuted their first new song, a collaboration called "Take Love". A second live DVD, Super Live in Japan, was released in 2006; the show was filmed at Saitama Super Arena on October 27, 2005.
On August 15, 2006, Brian May confirmed through his website and fan club that Queen + Paul Rodgers would begin producing a new studio album beginning in October, to be recorded at a "secret location".
When "Bohemian Rhapsody" was revealed as Radio 1's most played song ever at the end of JK and Joel's last Chart Show before leaving, Roger Taylor told them via a phonelink to the studio that the band are currently halfway through the new album. It will be released sometime in 2008, with a tour to follow. In January 2008, Brian May confirmed that a European tour is planned to start from about September the same year.
In conjunction with Electronic Arts, Queen released the computer game Queen: The Eye in 1998, to commercial and critical failure. The music itself — tracks from Queen's vast catalogue, in many cases remixed into new instrumental versions — was by and large well received, but the game experience was hampered by poor game play. Adding to the problem was an extremely long development time, resulting in graphic elements that already seemed outdated by the time of release.
Under the supervision of May and Taylor, numerous restoration projects have been underway involving Queen's lengthy audio and video catalogue. DVD releases of their 1986 Wembley concert (titled Live At Wembley Stadium) and 1982 Milton Keynes concert (Queen on Fire - Live at the Bowl), and two Greatest Video Hits (Volumes 1 and 2, spanning the 1970s and 1980s) have seen the band's music remixed into 5.1 and DTS surround sound. So far, only two of the band's albums, A Night at the Opera and The Game, have been fully remixed into high-resolution multichannel surround on DVD-Audio. A Night at the Opera was re-released with some revised 5.1 mixes and accompanying videos in 2005 for the 30th anniversary of the album's original release (CD+DVD-Video set). In 2007 an HD-DVD was released entitled Queen Rock Montreal & Live Aid.
In the Guilty Gear fighting game series, there is a character named for each member of Queen.
Queen contributed music directly to the movies Flash Gordon (1980, directed by Mike Hodges) and Highlander (the original 1986 film, directed by Russell Mulcahy). The theme song, "Princes of the Universe", was also used in the Highlander TV series (1992–1998).
In the United States, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was re-released as a single in 1992 after appearing in Wayne's World. The single subsequently reached number two on the US Billboard chart (with "The Show Must Go On" as the first track on the single) and helped rekindle the band's popularity in North America.
Several films have featured their songs performed by other artists. A cover of "Somebody to Love" by Anne Hathaway featured in the 2004 film Ella Enchanted. In 2006, Brittany Murphy also recorded a cover of the same song for the 2006 movie Happy Feet. In 2001, a version of "The Show Must Go On" was performed by Jim Broadbent and Nicole Kidman in the movie musical Moulin Rouge!. The closing credits of A Knight's Tale released in 2001 has a version of "We Are the Champions" performed by Robbie Williams and Queen; the introduction to the same movie features We Will Rock You played by the medieval audience. In 1992, the film "Gladiator" featured snippets of "We Will Rock You" performed by Warrant whereas their full version was released as a single.
Many other films have featured their songs or sections of their songs. These include:
Keeping in the tradition (since Season Five) of naming each season's episodes after songs from a famous 1970s era rock band (Led Zeppelin for the fifth season, The Who for the sixth and The Rolling Stones for the seventh), the eighth and final season of That '70s Show consisted of episodes named after Queen songs. "Bohemian Rhapsody" served as the season premiere.
On April 11, 2006 Queen appeared on the American singing contest television show American Idol. Each contestant was required to sing a Queen song during that week of the competition. Songs which appeared on the show included "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Fat Bottomed Girls", "The Show Must Go On", "Who Wants to Live Forever", and "Innuendo". Brian May later criticised the show for editing specific scenes, one which made the group's time with contestant Ace Young look negative, despite it being the opposite.
Al Murray's Happy Hour has a Queen theme, as it uses "Don't Stop Me Now" for the introduction and features guest performers along with host Al Murray singing different Queen songs each episode. The remainder of Queen did appear at the end of a series of the show.
"I Was Born to Love You" was used as the theme song of the Japanese drama Pride on Fuji Television in 2004, starring Takuya Kimura and Yūko Takeuchi. The show's soundtrack also contained other songs by Queen, including "We Will Rock You, "We Are the Champions" and "Bohemian Rhapsody".
The band made tentative plans to provide material for use in " The Hotel New Hampshire" but this project was abandoned although "Keep Passing The Open Windows" (which is an important catch-phrase line in the movie) did survive.
In 2002, a musical or "rock theatrical" based on the songs of Queen, titled We Will Rock You, opened at the Dominion Theatre on London's West End. The musical was written by British comedian and author Ben Elton in collaboration with Brian May and Roger Taylor, and produced by Robert De Niro. It has since been staged in Madrid and Barcelona, Spain; Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, and Brisbane, Australia; Cologne, Germany; Vienna, Austria; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; South Africa, Las Vegas United States; Zurich, Switzerland; Tokyo, Japan; Seoul, South Korea; Moscow, Russia; Varberg, Sweden; Auckland, New Zealand; Toronto, Canada; and Singapore.
The original London production was scheduled to close on Saturday, October 7, 2006 at the Dominion Theatre, but due to public demand, the show has now been extended indefinitely. We Will Rock You has become the longest running musical ever to run at this prime London theatre, overtaking the previous record holder, the Grease musical.
The launch of the musical coincided with Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee. As part of the Jubilee celebrations Brian May performed a guitar solo of "God Save the Queen",as featured on Queen's A Night at the Opera, from the roof of Buckingham Palace. The recording of this performance was used as video for the same song on the 30th Anniversary DVD edition of A Night at the Opera.
Sean Bovim created "Queen at the Ballet", a tribute to Freddie Mercury, which uses Queen's music as a soundtrack for the show’s dancers, who interpret the stories behind tracks such as "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Radio Ga Ga" and "Killer Queen."
Queen composed music that drew inspiration from many different genres of music, often with a tongue-in-cheek attitude. Among the genres they have been associated with are: dance/disco, glam rock, hard rock, heavy metal, pop rock, progressive rock and psychedelic rock. Queen also wrote songs that were inspired by genres that are not or barely associated with rock, such as country, ragtime, opera, symphonic rock, gospel, vaudeville and folk.
Sonic experimentation figured heavily in Queen's songs. A distinctive characteristic of Queen's music are the vocal harmonies which are usually comprised of the voices of May, Mercury and Taylor best heard on the studio albums A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races. Some of the ground work for the development of this sound can be attributed to their former producer Roy Thomas Baker as well as their engineer Mike Stone. Besides vocal harmonies, Queen were also known for multi-tracking voices to imitate the sound of a large choir through overdubs. According to Brian May, there are over 180 vocal overdubs in "Bohemian Rhapsody".Many Queen songs were also written with audience participation in mind, such as "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions".
More recently Queen has been recognised as having made significant contributions to such genres as arena rock, hard rock, heavy metal, pop rock and progressive rock, amongst others. Hence the band has been cited as an influence by many other musicians. Moreover, like their music, the collection of bands and artists that have claimed to be influenced by Queen is diverse and spans different generations, countries and genres.
Some of the musicians that have cited the band as an influence include: Anthrax, Dream Theater, Bang Camaro, Ben Folds Five,Boston, Blind Guardian, Kurt Cobain, Def Leppard, The Darkness, Extreme, Foo Fighters, The Germs, Work (band), Neal Century, The Go Go's, Davey Havok, My Chemical Romance, Jeff Scott Soto, The Killers, Green Day, Guns N' Roses, Helloween, Iron Maiden,Judas Priest, Kansas, Manic Street Preachers, Metallica, George Michael, Marilyn Manson, Kaiser Chiefs, Muse, Mika, Nine Inch Nails, Panic at the Disco, Radiohead, The Smashing Pumpkins, Switches, Max Cavalera, Styx, Sweet, DragonForce, Cesare Cremonini and Threshold keyboardist Richard West; amongst others.
Michael Jackson was a friend of Mercury's in the early 1980s and cited the Hot Space album as a driving influence behind the making of his 1982 album Thriller on which Mercury was originally scheduled to appear. Queen have also been cited as a major influence on the "neo-classical metal" genre by Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen."Stone Cold Crazy", from 1974's Sheer Heart Attack album, is often cited as an early precursor of the speed- or thrash metal subgenre. Metallica recorded a cover version of the song, which first appeared on the "Rubaiyat — Electra's 40th Anniversary" album in 1990, and won the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance in 1991. In the early '70s, Queen helped spur the heavy metal genre's evolution by discarding much of its blues influence; the New Wave of British Heavy Metal followed in a similar vein, fusing the music with a punk rock sensibility and an increasing emphasis on speed.
As of 2005, according to The Guinness Book of World Records, Queen albums have spent a total of 1,322 weeks or twenty-seven years on the United Kingdom album charts; more time than any other musical act including The Beatles and Elvis Presley. Also in 2005, with the release of their live album with Paul Rodgers, Queen moved into third place on the list of acts with the most aggregate time spent on the British record charts.
In 2006, the Greatest Hits album was found to be the United Kingdom's all-time best selling album, with sales upwards of 5,407,587 copies, over 604,295 more copies than its nearest competitor, The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Their Greatest Hits II album came in seventh with sales upwards of 3,631,321 copies.
One of rock's most successful, influential and popular acts, the band has released a total of eighteen number one albums, eighteen number one singles, and ten number one DVDs worldwide making them one of the world's best-selling music artists. Their total album sales have been estimated at over 300 million worldwide including 32.5 million in the United States alone as of 2004. The band is also the only group in which every member has composed more than one chart-topping single.
The Queen logo, also known as the Queen Crest, was designed by Mercury (who gained a diploma in Illustration and Graphic Design from Ealing Art College in London) shortly before the release of their first album. The logo features the zodiac signs of all four members: two lions for Leo (Deacon and Taylor), a crab for Cancer (May), and two fairies for Virgo (Mercury). The lions are embracing a stylised letter Q, the crab is resting atop the Q with flames rising directly above it, and the fairies are each sheltering below a lion. There is also a crown inside the Q and the whole logo is over-shadowed by an enormous phoenix. The whole symbol bears a passing resemblance to the Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom, particularly with the lion supporters. The original logo, as found on the reverse-side of the first album cover, was a simple line drawing but more intricate colour versions were used on later album covers.
In 1973, after a series of delays, Queen released their first album, a self-titled project influenced by the heavy metal and progressive rock of the day. The album was received well by critics; Gordon Fletcher of Rolling Stone said "their debut album is superb," and Chicago's Daily Herald called it an "above average debut".However, it drew little mainstream attention and the lead single "Keep Yourself Alive," a Brian May composition, sold poorly. Greg Prato of All Music Guide called it "one of the most underrated hard rock debuts of all time."
The album Queen II was released in 1974. The album reached number five on the British album charts, while the Freddie Mercury-written lead single "Seven Seas of Rhye," reached number ten in the UK, giving the band their first hit. The album is their heaviest and darkest release, featuring long complex instrumental passages, fantasy-themed lyrics and musical virtuosity. The band toured as support to Mott the Hoople in the UK & United States during this period, and they began to gain notice for their energetic and engaging stage shows. However, album sales in the US were, like those of its predecessor, low.
Because of medical complications, May was absent when the band started work on their third album, Sheer Heart Attack, released in 1974. The album reached number two in the United Kingdom, sold well throughout Europe, and went gold in the United States. It gave the band their first real taste of commercial success. The album experimented with a variety of musical genres, including British Music Hall ("Killer Queen"), heavy metal ("Flick of the Wrist", "Brighton Rock", "Tenement Funster", "Now I'm Here", and "Stone Cold Crazy" – a song which Metallica would later cover and earn a Grammy for), ballads ("Lily Of The Valley" and "Dear Friends"), ragtime ("Bring Back That Leroy Brown") and Caribbean ("Misfire"). At this point Queen started to move away from the progressive tendencies of their first two releases into a more radio-friendly, song-oriented style. Sheer Heart Attack introduced new sound and melody patterns that would be refined on their next album A Night at the Opera.
The single "Killer Queen" reached number two on the British charts, and became their first U.S. hit, reaching number twelve in the Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits. It combines camp, vaudeville, British music hall with May’s guitar virtuosity. The album’s second single, "Now I’m Here", a more traditional hard rock composition, was a number eleven hit in Britain.
In 1975, the band left for a world tour with each member in Zandra Rhodes-created costumes and banks of lights and effects. They toured the US, headlining for the first time, and played in Canada for the first time in April. Also at this time, the band's manager Jim Beach negotiated the band out of their Trident contract. They considered options, one of whom was Led Zeppelin’s manager, Peter Grant. Grant wanted them to sign with Led Zeppelin’s own production company, Swan Song Records. This was unacceptable to Queen, so instead they contacted Elton John’s manager, John Reid, who accepted the position. In April 1975 the band toured Japan for the first time.
Later that year the band recorded and released A Night at the Opera. At the time, it was the most expensive album ever produced. Like its predecessor, the album features diverse musical styles and experimentation with stereo sound. In "The Prophet's Song", an eight-minute epic, the middle section is a canon, with simple phrases layered to create a full-choral sound. The album was very successful in Britain, and went triple platinum in the United States. It is considered their magnum opus; in 2003, it was ranked number 230 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
The album also featured the hit single "Bohemian Rhapsody", which was number one in the United Kingdom for nine weeks, and is Britain’s third-best-selling single of all time; it also reached number nine in the United States (a 1992 re-release reached number two). Bohemian Rhapsody has been voted, several times, the greatest song of all time. The band decided to make a video to go with the single. The second single from the album, "You're My Best Friend", peaked at sixteen in the United States and went on to become a worldwide Top Ten hit.
By 1976, Queen were back in the studio, where they recorded A Day at the Races, what may be mistaken simply as a companion album to A Night at the Opera. It again borrowed the name of a Marx Brothers' movie, and its cover was similar to that of A Night at the Opera, a variation on the same Queen Crest. Musically, the album was by both fans’ and critics’ standards a strong effort, and reached number one on the British charts. The major hit on the album was "Somebody to Love", a gospel-inspired song in which Mercury, May, and Taylor multi-tracked their voices to make a 100-voice gospel choir. The song went to number two in the United Kingdom, and number thirteen on the U.S. singles chart. The album also featured one of the band's heaviest songs, Brian May’s "Tie Your Mother Down", which became a staple of their live shows.
Also in 1976, Queen played one of their most famous gigs, a 1976 free concert in Hyde Park, London. It set an attendance record, with 150,000 people confirmed in the audience.
News of the World was released a year later. It contained many songs tailor-made for live performance, including "We Will Rock You" and the rock ballad "We Are the Champions", both of which reached number four in the United States and became enduring international sports anthems. Roger Taylor released his first solo effort in 1977 in the form of a single: the A-side was a cover of a song by The Parliaments "I Wanna Testify", and the B-side was a song by Taylor called "Turn On The TV".
In 1978 the band released Jazz, including the hit singles "Fat Bottomed Girls" and "Bicycle Race" which were also released as a double-A-side single. The word "jazz" was not used in a strict sense, and the album was noted by critics for its collection of different styles, jazz not being one of them.Rolling Stone typically criticised it for being "dull", saying "Queen hasn’t the imagination to play jazz – Queen hasn't the imagination, for that matter, to play rock & roll." Important tracks of the album include "Dead on Time", "Don't Stop Me Now", "Let Me Entertain You", and "Mustapha", in which Arabesque music is combined with heavy rock guitar.
The band’s first live album, Live Killers, was released in 1979; it went platinum twice in the United States. They also released the very successful single "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", a rockabilly song done in the style of Elvis Presley. The song made the top 10 in many countries, and was the band’s first number one single in the United States.
Heretofor, their albums featured a distinctive "No Synthesisers were used on this Album" sleevenote to emphasise their stance that rock music should not involve the use of synthesisers. Queen began the 1980s with The Game. It featured the singles "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "Another One Bites the Dust", both of which reached number one in the United States. The album stayed number one for four weeks in the United States, and sold over four million copies. It was also the only album to ever top the Billboard rock, dance, and R&B charts simultaneously. The album also marked the first appearance of a synthesiser on a Queen album.
1980 also saw the release of the soundtrack Queen had recorded for Flash Gordon.
In 1981, Queen became the first major rock band to play in South American stadiums. Queen played to a total audience of 479,000 people on their South American tour, including five shows in Argentina. In October 1981, Queen performed for more than 150,000 fans at Monterrey (Estadio Universitario) and Puebla (Estadio Zaragoza), Mexico.
Also in 1981, Queen worked with David Bowie on the single "Under Pressure". The first-time collaboration with another artist was spontaneous, as Bowie happened to drop by the studio while Queen were recording. The band were immediately pleased with the results, but Bowie did not play the song live for several years.Upon its release, the song was extremely successful, reaching number one in Britain. The bass line was later used for Vanilla Ice 's 1990 hit "Ice Ice Baby", prompting the threat of a lawsuit over the use of the sample. The lawsuit did not make it to court and was settled for an undisclosed amount.
Later that year, Queen released their first compilation album, entitled Greatest Hits, which showcased the group's highlights from 1974-1981. It was highly successful, and as of 2007, it is the United Kingdom's best selling album. Taylor became the first member of the band to release his own solo album in 1981, entitled Fun In Space.
In 1982 the band released the funk album Hot Space. The band stopped touring North America after their Hot Space Tour, as their success there had waned, although they would perform on American television for the first and only time during the eighth season premiere of Saturday Night Live. Queen left Elektra Records, their label in the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, and signed onto EMI/Capitol Records.
After working steadily for over ten years, Queen decided that they would not perform any live shows in 1983. During this time, they recorded a new album, and several members of the band explored side projects and solo work. May released a mini-album entitled Star Fleet Projest, on which he collaborated with Eddie Van Halen. A computer musician composer in Canada, Kevin Chamberlain, helped with vocals and background music for Mercury's solo project which was later canceled due to creative differences.
In 1984, Queen released the album The Works, which included the successful singles "Radio Ga Ga" and "I Want to Break Free". Despite these hit singles, the album failed to do well in the United States. "Radio Ga Ga" was the band's last original American Top Forty hit until 1989's "I Want It All".
Queen embarked that year on a set of dates during their The Works Tour in Bophuthatswana, South Africa at the arena at Sun City. Upon returning to England, they were the subject of outrage, having played there during the height of apartheid and in violation of worldwide divestment efforts. The band stated that they were playing music for fans in that country, and stressed that the concerts were played before integrated audiences. However, they have since been colloquially known as the "Sun City Rockers", a term used in a disparaging sense to reflect how their actions were condemned as 'hard to defend' by many people.
In early 1985, the band headlined two nights of the Rock in Rio festival. They were booked for January 11 and January 18, but since on both nights the band only got to the stage well past midnight, so some sources mention January 12 and January 19. On each night, they played for 325,000 people. Mercury also released his first solo album, Mr. Bad Guy, in April. At Live Aid, held at Wembley on July 13, 1985, Queen performed some of their greatest hits in what has been considered their best performance to date.
Revitalised by the response to Live Aid and the resulting increase in record sales, Queen ended 1985 by releasing the single "One Vision". The song was used in the film Iron Eagle. Also, a limited-edition boxed set containing all Queen albums was released under the title of "The Complete Works".
In early 1986, Queen recorded the album A Kind of Magic, containing several songs written for the Russell Mulcahy film Highlander. The album was very successful, producing a string of hits including the title track "A Kind of Magic", which contains the key lyrics 'There can be only one', a reference to the movie's plot; "Friends Will Be Friends", "Who Wants to Live Forever" and "Princes of the Universe".
Later that year, Queen went on a sold-out tour (the band's largest) in support of A Kind of Magic. The Magic Tour's highlight was at Wembley Stadium in London and resulted in the live double album, Queen Live At Wembley Stadium, released on CD and as a live concert film. They could not book Wembley for a third night because it was already booked, but they did play at Knebworth Park. The show sold out within two hours and over 120,000 fans packed the park for what proved to be Queen's final live performance with Mercury. More than 1 million people saw Queen on the tour – 400,000 in the United Kingdom alone, a record at the time.
After working on various solo projects during 1988 (including Mercury's collaboration with Montserrat Caballé, Barcelona) the band released The Miracle in 1989. The album continued the direction of A Kind of Magic, using a pop-rock sound mixed with a few heavy numbers. It spawned the European hits "I Want It All", "Breakthru", "The Invisible Man", "Scandal", and "The Miracle".
The Miracle also began a change in direction of Queen's songwriting philosophy. Since the band's beginning, nearly all songs had been written by and credited to a single member, with other members adding minimally. With The Miracle, however, the band's songwriting became more collaborative, and they vowed to credit the final product only to Queen as a group.
After fans and the tabloid press noted Mercury's gaunt appearance in public during 1988, rumours began to spread that Mercury was suffering from AIDS. For reasons still not confirmed, Mercury flatly denied them at the time, insisting he was merely "exhausted" and too busy to provide interviews. However, the band decided to continue making albums free of internal conflict and differences, starting with The Miracle and continuing with Innuendo, which was recorded during 1990 but not released until the beginning of 1991 as Mercury's health was a major factor in the delay.
Despite his deteriorating health, Mercury continued to contribute, working in a creative fervor. The band released their second Greatest Hits compilation, Greatest Hits II, in October 1991.
On 23 November 1991, in a prepared statement made on his deathbed, Mercury finally confirmed that he had AIDS. He died the following day at the age of 45. His funeral service was private, held in accordance with the Zoroastrian religious faith of his family.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was re-released as a single shortly after Mercury's death, with "These Are the Days of Our Lives" as the B-side. The single went to number 1 for the second time in the UK. Initial proceeds from the single – approximately £1,000,000 – were donated to the Terrence Higgins Trust.
Queen's popularity increased once again in the United States after "Bohemian Rhapsody" was featured in the comedy film Wayne's World, helping the song reach number two for five weeks in the United States charts in 1992. The song was made into a Wayne's World music video, with which the band and management were delighted.
On 20 April 1992, the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert was held at London's Wembley Stadium. Performers included Def Leppard, Joe Elliott, Lisa Stansfield, Elton John, David Bowie, Angus Young, Malcolm Young, Brian Johnson (of AC/DC), Robert Plant, Tony Iommi, Annie Lennox, Axl Rose, Slash and Guns N' Roses, Extreme, Roger Daltrey, George Michael, Ian Hunter, Mick Ronson, Zucchero, Metallica, Liza Minnelli, and Spinal Tap, along with the three remaining members of Queen, performed many of Queen's major hits. It was a successful concert that was televised to over 1 billion viewers worldwide. The concert is listed in The Guinness Book of Records as "The largest rock star benefit concert." It raised over £20,000,000 for AIDS charities.
The band also terminated their Capitol Records contract and signed a deal with Hollywood Records as their new U.S label.
Queen never actually disbanded, although their last album of original material, titled Made in Heaven, was released in 1995, four years after Mercury's death. It was constructed from Mercury's final recording sessions in 1991, plus material left over from their previous studio albums. In addition, re-worked material from Mercury's solo album Mr. Bad Guy and a track originally featured on the first album of Taylor's side-project The Cross were included. May and Taylor have often been involved in projects related to raising money for AIDS research. John Deacon's last involvement with the band was in 1997, when the band recorded the track "No-One but You (Only the Good Die Young)". It was the last original song recorded by all three remaining members of Queen, and it was released as a bonus track on the Queen Rocks compilation album later that year.
Several Queen + projects were developed in the following years, a few of them mere remixes with no artistic involvement from the band. In 1999, a Greatest Hits III album was released. This album featured, among others, "Queen + Wyclef Jean" on a rap version of "Another One Bites the Dust"; a live version of "Somebody to Love" by George Michael; and a live version of "The Show Must Go On", performed live in 1997 with Elton John.
Brian May and Roger Taylor performed together as Queen on several occasions (award ceremonies, charity concerts, and the like), sharing vocals with various guest singers. They also recorded several covers of Queen's hits, including "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions".
In 2003, four new songs were recorded by Queen for Nelson Mandela's 46664 campaign against AIDS. The studio versions of Invincible Hope (Queen + Nelson Mandela, feat. Treana Morris), 46664 - The Call, Say It's Not True, and Amandla (Anastacia, Dave Stewart and Queen) have not yet been released on album.
Also, in 2002, Queen collaborated with Ben Elton to make a musical based on their greatest hits, called We Will Rock You. It ran till October 2008 in the Dominion Theatre, London and spawned many over-seas versions.
At the end of 2004, May and Taylor announced that they would reunite and return to touring in 2005, with Paul Rodgers (founder and former lead singer of Free and Bad Company). Brian May's website also stated that Rodgers would be 'featured with' Queen as Queen + Paul Rodgers, not replacing the late Freddie Mercury. The retired Deacon would not be participating; Danny Miranda of Blue Öyster Cult replaced him on bass. Other members of the tour included keyboardist Spike Edney, who played guitar and keyboards in Queen live shows since 1984, and additional guitarist Jamie Moses, who began working with May on solo efforts in the early 1990s.
A live double CD album, Return of the Champions, was released on September 19, 2005. It was recorded in May 2005 during the Queen + Paul Rodgers tour at the Sheffield Arena in Sheffield, England. A DVD from the concert was also released.
In March 2006, Queen + Paul Rodgers set out to tour the United States and Canada. During this tour, the group debuted their first new song, a collaboration called "Take Love". A second live DVD, Super Live in Japan, was released in 2006; the show was filmed at Saitama Super Arena on October 27, 2005.
On August 15, 2006, Brian May confirmed through his website and fan club that Queen + Paul Rodgers would begin producing a new studio album beginning in October, to be recorded at a "secret location".
When "Bohemian Rhapsody" was revealed as Radio 1's most played song ever at the end of JK and Joel's last Chart Show before leaving, Roger Taylor told them via a phonelink to the studio that the band are currently halfway through the new album. It will be released sometime in 2008, with a tour to follow. In January 2008, Brian May confirmed that a European tour is planned to start from about September the same year.
In conjunction with Electronic Arts, Queen released the computer game Queen: The Eye in 1998, to commercial and critical failure. The music itself — tracks from Queen's vast catalogue, in many cases remixed into new instrumental versions — was by and large well received, but the game experience was hampered by poor game play. Adding to the problem was an extremely long development time, resulting in graphic elements that already seemed outdated by the time of release.
Under the supervision of May and Taylor, numerous restoration projects have been underway involving Queen's lengthy audio and video catalogue. DVD releases of their 1986 Wembley concert (titled Live At Wembley Stadium) and 1982 Milton Keynes concert (Queen on Fire - Live at the Bowl), and two Greatest Video Hits (Volumes 1 and 2, spanning the 1970s and 1980s) have seen the band's music remixed into 5.1 and DTS surround sound. So far, only two of the band's albums, A Night at the Opera and The Game, have been fully remixed into high-resolution multichannel surround on DVD-Audio. A Night at the Opera was re-released with some revised 5.1 mixes and accompanying videos in 2005 for the 30th anniversary of the album's original release (CD+DVD-Video set). In 2007 an HD-DVD was released entitled Queen Rock Montreal & Live Aid.
In the Guilty Gear fighting game series, there is a character named for each member of Queen.
Queen contributed music directly to the movies Flash Gordon (1980, directed by Mike Hodges) and Highlander (the original 1986 film, directed by Russell Mulcahy). The theme song, "Princes of the Universe", was also used in the Highlander TV series (1992–1998).
In the United States, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was re-released as a single in 1992 after appearing in Wayne's World. The single subsequently reached number two on the US Billboard chart (with "The Show Must Go On" as the first track on the single) and helped rekindle the band's popularity in North America.
Several films have featured their songs performed by other artists. A cover of "Somebody to Love" by Anne Hathaway featured in the 2004 film Ella Enchanted. In 2006, Brittany Murphy also recorded a cover of the same song for the 2006 movie Happy Feet. In 2001, a version of "The Show Must Go On" was performed by Jim Broadbent and Nicole Kidman in the movie musical Moulin Rouge!. The closing credits of A Knight's Tale released in 2001 has a version of "We Are the Champions" performed by Robbie Williams and Queen; the introduction to the same movie features We Will Rock You played by the medieval audience. In 1992, the film "Gladiator" featured snippets of "We Will Rock You" performed by Warrant whereas their full version was released as a single.
Many other films have featured their songs or sections of their songs. These include:
Keeping in the tradition (since Season Five) of naming each season's episodes after songs from a famous 1970s era rock band (Led Zeppelin for the fifth season, The Who for the sixth and The Rolling Stones for the seventh), the eighth and final season of That '70s Show consisted of episodes named after Queen songs. "Bohemian Rhapsody" served as the season premiere.
On April 11, 2006 Queen appeared on the American singing contest television show American Idol. Each contestant was required to sing a Queen song during that week of the competition. Songs which appeared on the show included "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Fat Bottomed Girls", "The Show Must Go On", "Who Wants to Live Forever", and "Innuendo". Brian May later criticised the show for editing specific scenes, one which made the group's time with contestant Ace Young look negative, despite it being the opposite.
Al Murray's Happy Hour has a Queen theme, as it uses "Don't Stop Me Now" for the introduction and features guest performers along with host Al Murray singing different Queen songs each episode. The remainder of Queen did appear at the end of a series of the show.
"I Was Born to Love You" was used as the theme song of the Japanese drama Pride on Fuji Television in 2004, starring Takuya Kimura and Yūko Takeuchi. The show's soundtrack also contained other songs by Queen, including "We Will Rock You, "We Are the Champions" and "Bohemian Rhapsody".
The band made tentative plans to provide material for use in " The Hotel New Hampshire" but this project was abandoned although "Keep Passing The Open Windows" (which is an important catch-phrase line in the movie) did survive.
In 2002, a musical or "rock theatrical" based on the songs of Queen, titled We Will Rock You, opened at the Dominion Theatre on London's West End. The musical was written by British comedian and author Ben Elton in collaboration with Brian May and Roger Taylor, and produced by Robert De Niro. It has since been staged in Madrid and Barcelona, Spain; Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, and Brisbane, Australia; Cologne, Germany; Vienna, Austria; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; South Africa, Las Vegas United States; Zurich, Switzerland; Tokyo, Japan; Seoul, South Korea; Moscow, Russia; Varberg, Sweden; Auckland, New Zealand; Toronto, Canada; and Singapore.
The original London production was scheduled to close on Saturday, October 7, 2006 at the Dominion Theatre, but due to public demand, the show has now been extended indefinitely. We Will Rock You has become the longest running musical ever to run at this prime London theatre, overtaking the previous record holder, the Grease musical.
The launch of the musical coincided with Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee. As part of the Jubilee celebrations Brian May performed a guitar solo of "God Save the Queen",as featured on Queen's A Night at the Opera, from the roof of Buckingham Palace. The recording of this performance was used as video for the same song on the 30th Anniversary DVD edition of A Night at the Opera.
Sean Bovim created "Queen at the Ballet", a tribute to Freddie Mercury, which uses Queen's music as a soundtrack for the show’s dancers, who interpret the stories behind tracks such as "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Radio Ga Ga" and "Killer Queen."
Queen composed music that drew inspiration from many different genres of music, often with a tongue-in-cheek attitude. Among the genres they have been associated with are: dance/disco, glam rock, hard rock, heavy metal, pop rock, progressive rock and psychedelic rock. Queen also wrote songs that were inspired by genres that are not or barely associated with rock, such as country, ragtime, opera, symphonic rock, gospel, vaudeville and folk.
Sonic experimentation figured heavily in Queen's songs. A distinctive characteristic of Queen's music are the vocal harmonies which are usually comprised of the voices of May, Mercury and Taylor best heard on the studio albums A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races. Some of the ground work for the development of this sound can be attributed to their former producer Roy Thomas Baker as well as their engineer Mike Stone. Besides vocal harmonies, Queen were also known for multi-tracking voices to imitate the sound of a large choir through overdubs. According to Brian May, there are over 180 vocal overdubs in "Bohemian Rhapsody".Many Queen songs were also written with audience participation in mind, such as "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions".
More recently Queen has been recognised as having made significant contributions to such genres as arena rock, hard rock, heavy metal, pop rock and progressive rock, amongst others. Hence the band has been cited as an influence by many other musicians. Moreover, like their music, the collection of bands and artists that have claimed to be influenced by Queen is diverse and spans different generations, countries and genres.
Some of the musicians that have cited the band as an influence include: Anthrax, Dream Theater, Bang Camaro, Ben Folds Five,Boston, Blind Guardian, Kurt Cobain, Def Leppard, The Darkness, Extreme, Foo Fighters, The Germs, Work (band), Neal Century, The Go Go's, Davey Havok, My Chemical Romance, Jeff Scott Soto, The Killers, Green Day, Guns N' Roses, Helloween, Iron Maiden,Judas Priest, Kansas, Manic Street Preachers, Metallica, George Michael, Marilyn Manson, Kaiser Chiefs, Muse, Mika, Nine Inch Nails, Panic at the Disco, Radiohead, The Smashing Pumpkins, Switches, Max Cavalera, Styx, Sweet, DragonForce, Cesare Cremonini and Threshold keyboardist Richard West; amongst others.
Michael Jackson was a friend of Mercury's in the early 1980s and cited the Hot Space album as a driving influence behind the making of his 1982 album Thriller on which Mercury was originally scheduled to appear. Queen have also been cited as a major influence on the "neo-classical metal" genre by Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen."Stone Cold Crazy", from 1974's Sheer Heart Attack album, is often cited as an early precursor of the speed- or thrash metal subgenre. Metallica recorded a cover version of the song, which first appeared on the "Rubaiyat — Electra's 40th Anniversary" album in 1990, and won the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance in 1991. In the early '70s, Queen helped spur the heavy metal genre's evolution by discarding much of its blues influence; the New Wave of British Heavy Metal followed in a similar vein, fusing the music with a punk rock sensibility and an increasing emphasis on speed.
As of 2005, according to The Guinness Book of World Records, Queen albums have spent a total of 1,322 weeks or twenty-seven years on the United Kingdom album charts; more time than any other musical act including The Beatles and Elvis Presley. Also in 2005, with the release of their live album with Paul Rodgers, Queen moved into third place on the list of acts with the most aggregate time spent on the British record charts.
In 2006, the Greatest Hits album was found to be the United Kingdom's all-time best selling album, with sales upwards of 5,407,587 copies, over 604,295 more copies than its nearest competitor, The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Their Greatest Hits II album came in seventh with sales upwards of 3,631,321 copies.
One of rock's most successful, influential and popular acts, the band has released a total of eighteen number one albums, eighteen number one singles, and ten number one DVDs worldwide making them one of the world's best-selling music artists. Their total album sales have been estimated at over 300 million worldwide including 32.5 million in the United States alone as of 2004. The band is also the only group in which every member has composed more than one chart-topping single.
The Queen logo, also known as the Queen Crest, was designed by Mercury (who gained a diploma in Illustration and Graphic Design from Ealing Art College in London) shortly before the release of their first album. The logo features the zodiac signs of all four members: two lions for Leo (Deacon and Taylor), a crab for Cancer (May), and two fairies for Virgo (Mercury). The lions are embracing a stylised letter Q, the crab is resting atop the Q with flames rising directly above it, and the fairies are each sheltering below a lion. There is also a crown inside the Q and the whole logo is over-shadowed by an enormous phoenix. The whole symbol bears a passing resemblance to the Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom, particularly with the lion supporters. The original logo, as found on the reverse-side of the first album cover, was a simple line drawing but more intricate colour versions were used on later album covers.
R.E.M.
In January 1980, Michael Stipe met Peter Buck in the Athens record store where Buck worked. The pair discovered that they shared similar tastes in music, particularly punk rock and protopunk artists like Patti Smith, Television, and The Velvet Underground. Stipe said, "It turns out that I was buying all the records that [Buck] was saving for himself."Stipe and Buck soon met fellow University of Georgia students Mike Mills and Bill Berry, who had played music together since high school.The quartet agreed to collaborate on several songs; Stipe later commented that "there was never any grand plan behind any of it."Their still-unnamed band spent several months rehearsing and played its first show on April 5, 1980 at a friend's birthday party held in a converted Episcopal church. After considering names like "Twisted Kites", "Cans of Piss", and "Negro Wives", the band settled on "R.E.M.", which Stipe selected at random from a dictionary.
The band members eventually dropped out of school to focus on their developing group. They found a manager in Jefferson Holt, a record store owner who was so impressed by an R.E.M. performance in his hometown of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, that he moved to Athens. R.E.M.'s success was almost immediate in Athens and surrounding areas; the band drew progressively larger crowds for shows, which caused some resentment in the Athens music scene. Over the next year and a half, R.E.M. toured throughout the Southern United States. Touring was arduous since a touring circuit for alternative rock bands did not then exist. The group had to tour in an old blue van driven by Holt, and the band members lived on a food allowance of $2 a day.Of the van, friend-of-the-band Jane Pratt explained: "It had no seats in the back, and they would put all of their equipment in the back. When they would stay at hotels, three of them would go into one room, two would go in the other but they would keep rotating so that one person slept in the van, that was pretty much the plan." "When you live in a van together for about five years, you get real close," joked Berry.
"It was all or nothing every night,” recalled Stipe in 1998. "It was all or nothing every song. Every time you opened your mouth, it had to be everything that you could give." Berry added: "We weren't really trying to become huge or hugely popular, but we did want to have fun and maybe not have regrets later on in our lives."
During the summer of 1981, R.E.M. recorded its first single, "Radio Free Europe", at producer Mitch Easter's Drive-In Studios in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The single was released on the local independent record label Hib-Tone with an initial pressing of one thousand copies, which quickly sold out. Despite its limited pressing, the single garnered critical acclaim; it was listed as one of the ten best singles of the year by The New York Times, and the Village Voice named it Single of the Year in its 1981 Pazz & Jop critics poll.
R.E.M. recorded the Chronic Town EP with Mitch Easter in October 1981, and planned to release it on a new indie label named Dasht Hopes.However, a demo of the band's first recording session with Easter had been circulating for months, and I.R.S. Records acquired a copy. The band turned down the advances of major label RCA Records in favor of I.R.S., with whom they signed a contract in May 1982. I.R.S. released Chronic Town that August as its first American release.A positive review of the EP by NME praised the songs' auras of mystery, and concluded, "R.E.M. ring true, and it's great to hear something as unforced and cunning as this."
I.R.S. first paired R.E.M. with producer Stephen Hague to record its debut album. Hague's emphasis on technical perfection left the band unsatisfied, and the band members asked the label to let them record with Easter. I.R.S. agreed to a "tryout" session, allowing the band to return to North Carolina and record the song "Pilgrimage" with Easter and producing partner Don Dixon. After hearing the track, I.R.S. permitted the group to record the album with Dixon and Easter.Because of its bad experience with Hague, the band recorded the album via a process of negation, refusing to incorporate rock music clichés such as guitar solos or then-popular synthesizers, in order to give its music a timeless feel. The completed album, Murmur, was greeted with critical acclaim upon its release in 1983, with Rolling Stone listing the album as its record of the year. The album reached number 36 on the Billboard album chart. A re-recorded version of "Radio Free Europe" was the album's lead single and reached number 78 on the Billboard singles chart in 1983. Despite the acclaim awarded the album, Murmur sold only about 200,000 copies, which I.R.S.'s Jay Boberg felt was below expectations.
R.E.M. made its first national television appearance on Late Night with David Letterman in October 1983, during which the group performed a new, unnamed song.The piece, eventually titled "So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)", became the first single from the band's second album, Reckoning (1984), which was also recorded with Easter and Dixon. The album met with critical acclaim; NME's Mat Snow wrote that Reckoning "confirms R.E.M. as one of the most beautifully exciting groups on the planet".In late 1983 the band embarked on its first tour of Europe. While Reckoning peaked at number 27 on the US album charts—an unusually high chart placing for a college rock band at the time—scant airplay and poor distribution overseas resulted in it charting no higher than number 91 in Britain.
The band's third album, Fables of the Reconstruction (1985), demonstrated a change in direction. Instead of Dixon and Easter, R.E.M. chose producer Joe Boyd, who had worked with Fairport Convention and Nick Drake, to record the album in England. The band members found the sessions unexpectedly difficult, and were miserable due to the cold winter weather and poor food; the situation brought the band to the verge of break-up. The gloominess surrounding the sessions ended up providing the context for the album itself. Lyrically, Stipe began to create storylines in the mode of Southern mythology, noting in a 1985 interview that he was inspired by "the whole idea of the old men sitting around the fire, passing on … legends and fables to the grandchildren".Fables of the Reconstruction became the biggest-selling record released by I.R.S. to that point in America. However, the album performed poorly in Europe and its critical reception was mixed, with some critics regarding it as dreary and poorly recorded.As with the previous records, the singles from Fables of the Reconstruction were mostly ignored by mainstream radio. Meanwhile, I.R.S. was becoming frustrated with the band's reluctance to achieve mainstream success.
For its fourth album, R.E.M. enlisted John Mellencamp's producer, Don Gehman. The result, Lifes Rich Pageant (1986), was more accessible to listeners outside of college radio, with Stipe's vocals closer to the forefront of the music. In a 1986 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Peter Buck related, "Michael is getting better at what he's doing, and he's getting more confident at it. And I think that shows up in the projection of his voice." The album improved markedly upon the sales of Fables of the Reconstruction and eventually peaked at number 21 on the Billboard album chart. The single "Fall on Me" also picked up support on commercial radio.The album was the band's first to be certified gold for selling 500,000 copies.While American college radio remained R.E.M.'s core support, the band was beginning to chart hits on mainstream rock formats; however, the music still encountered resistance from Top 40 radio. Following the success of Lifes Rich Pageant, I.R.S. issued Dead Letter Office, a compilation of tracks recorded by the band during their album sessions, many of which had either been issued as B-sides or left unreleased altogether. Shortly thereafter, I.R.S. compiled R.E.M.'s music video catalog (except "Wolves, Lower") as the band's first video release, Succumbs.
Don Gehman was unable to produce R.E.M.'s fifth album and suggested the group work with Scott Litt.Litt would be the producer for the band's next five albums. Document (1987) featured some of Stipe's most openly political lyrics, particularly on "Welcome To the Occupation" and "Exhuming McCarthy", which were reactions to the conservative political environment of the 1980s under American President Ronald Reagan.Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote in his review of the album, "'Document' is both confident and defiant; if R.E.M. is about to move from cult-band status to mass popularity, the album decrees that the band will get there on its own terms."Document was R.E.M.'s breakthrough album, and the first single "The One I Love" charted in the Top 20 in the US, UK, and Canada.By January 1988, Document had become the group's first album to sell a million copies.In light of the band's breakthrough, the December 1987 cover of Rolling Stone declared R.E.M. "America's Best Rock & Roll Band".
Frustrated that its records did not see satisfactory overseas distribution, R.E.M. left I.R.S. when its contract expired and signed with the major label Warner Bros. Records.In 1988, I.R.S. released the compilation Eponymous, which included most of the band's singles and a number of rarities. The band's 1988 Warner Bros. debut, Green, was recorded in Nashville, Tennessee, and showcased the group experimenting with its sound.The record's tracks ranged from the upbeat first single "Stand" (a huge American hit),to more political material, like the rock-oriented "Orange Crush" and "World Leader Pretend", dealing with the Vietnam War and the Cold War, respectively.Green has gone on to sell four million copies worldwide. The band supported the album with its biggest and most visually developed tour to date, featuring back-projections and art films playing on the stage.After the Green tour, the band members unofficially decided to take the following year off, the first extended break in the band's career.
R.E.M. reconvened in mid-1990 to record its seventh album, Out of Time. In a departure from previous albums, the band members often wrote the music with non-traditional rock instrumentation including mandolin, organ, and acoustic guitar.Released in March 1991, Out of Time was the band's first album to top both the US and UK charts.The record eventually sold 4.2 million copies in the US alone,and about 12 million copies worldwide by 1996. The album's lead single "Losing My Religion" was a worldwide hit that received heavy rotation on radio, as did the music video on MTV. "Losing My Religion" was R.E.M.'s highest-charting single in the US, reaching number four on the Billboard charts."There've been very few life-changing events in our career because our career has been so gradual," Mills said years later. "If you want to talk about life changing, I think 'Losing My Religion' is the closest it gets". The album's second single. "Shiny Happy People" (one of three songs on the record to feature vocals from Kate Pierson of fellow Athens band The B-52's), was also a major hit, reaching number 10 in the US and number six in the UK.Out of Time garnered R.E.M. seven nominations at the 1992 Grammy Awards, the most nominations of any artist that year. The band won three awards: one for Best Alternative Music Album and two for "Losing My Religion", Best Short Form Music Video and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.R.E.M. did not tour to promote Out of Time; instead the group played a series of one-off shows, including an appearance taped for an episode of MTV Unplugged.
After spending some months off, R.E.M. returned to the studio in 1991 to record its next album. Late in 1992, the band released Automatic for the People. Though the group had intended to make a harder-rocking album after the softer textures of Out of Time,the somber Automatic for the People "[seemed] to move at an even more agonized crawl", according to Melody Maker. The album dealt with themes of loss and mourning inspired by "that sense of … turning thirty", according to Buck.Several songs featured string arrangements by former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. Considered by a number of critics (as well as by Buck and Mills) to be the band's best album, Automatic for the People reached numbers one and two on UK and US charts, respectively, and generated the American Top 40 hit singles "Drive", "Man on the Moon", and "Everybody Hurts".The album would sell about ten million copies worldwide.As with Out of Time, there was no tour in support of the album. The decision to forgo a tour, in conjunction with Stipe's physical appearance, generated rumors that the singer was dying, which were vehemently denied by the band.
After the band released two slow-paced albums in a row, R.E.M.'s 1994 album Monster was, as Buck said, "a 'rock' record, with the rock in quotation marks." In contrast to sound of its predecessors, the music of Monster consisted of distorted guitar tones, minimal overdubs, and touches of 1970s glam rock. Like Out of Time, Monster topped the charts in both the US and UK.The record sold about nine million copies worldwide.The singles "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" and "Bang and Blame" were the band's last American Top 40 hits, although all the singles from Monster reached the Top 30 on the British charts.
In January of 1995 R.E.M. set out on its first tour in six years. The tour was a huge commercial success, but the period was difficult for the group. On March 1, Berry collapsed on stage during a performance in Lausanne, Switzerland. It transpired that he had suffered a brain aneurysm. He had surgery immediately and had fully recovered within a month. Berry's aneurysm was only the beginning of a series of health problems that plagued the Monster Tour. Mills had to undergo abdominal surgery to remove an intestinal adhesion in July; a month later, Stipe had to have an emergency surgery to repair a hernia.Despite all the problems, the group had recorded the bulk of a new album while on the road. The band brought along eight-track recorders to capture its shows, and used the recordings as the base elements for the album.
R.E.M. re-signed with Warner Bros. Records in 1996 for a reported $80 million, the largest recording contract in history at that point.The group's 1996 album New Adventures in Hi-Fi debuted at number two in the US and number one in the UK. The five million copies of the album sold were a reversal of the group's commercial fortunes of the previous five years.Time writer Christopher John Farley argued that the poor sales of the album were due to its lackluster quality and the declining commercial power of alternative rock as a whole.That same year, R.E.M. parted ways with manager Jefferson Holt, allegedly due to sexual harassment charges levied against him by a member of the band's home office in Athens. The group's lawyer, Bertis Downs, assumed managerial duties.
In April 1997, the band convened at Buck's Kauai, Hawaii, holiday home to record demos of material intended for the next album. The band sought to reinvent its sound and intended to incorporate drum loops and percussion experiments.Just as the sessions were due to begin in October, Berry decided, after months of contemplation and discussions with Downs and Mills, to tell the rest of the band that he was quitting.Berry told his band mates that he would not quit if they would break up as a result, so Stipe, Mills, and Buck agreed to carry on as a three-piece with his blessing.Berry publicly announced his departure three weeks later in October 1997. Berry told the press, "I'm just not as enthusiastic as I have been in the past about doing this anymore . . . I have the best job in the world. But I'm kind of ready to sit back and reflect and maybe not be a pop star anymore."Stipe admitted that the band would be different without a major contributor: "For me, Mike, and Peter, as R.E.M., are we still R.E.M.? I guess a three-legged dog is still a dog. It just has to learn to run differently."
The band cancelled its scheduled recording sessions as a result of Berry's departure. "Without Bill it was different, confusing", Mills later said. "We didn't know exactly what to do. We couldn't rehearse without a drummer."The remaining members of R.E.M. resumed work on the album in February 1998 at Toast Studios in San Francisco.The band ended its decade-long collaboration with Scott Litt and hired Pat McCarthy to produce the record. Nigel Godrich was taken on as assistant producer, and drafted in ex-Screaming Trees member Barrett Martin and Beck's touring drummer Joey Waronker. The recording process was plagued with tension, and the group came close to disbanding. Bertis Downs called an emergency meeting where the band members sorted out their problems and agreed to continue as a group.Led off by the single "Daysleeper", Up (1998) debuted in the top ten in the US and UK. However, the album was a relative failure, selling 900,000 copies in the US by mid-1999 and eventually selling just over two million copies worldwide.While R.E.M.'s American sales were declining, the group's commercial base was shifting to the UK, where more R.E.M. records were sold per capita than any other country and the band's singles regularly entered the Top 20.
A year after Up's release, R.E.M. wrote the instrumental score to the Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon, a first for the group. The film took its title from the Automatic for the People song of the same name.The song "The Great Beyond" was released as a single from the Man on the Moon soundtrack album. "The Great Beyond" only reached number 57 on the American pop charts, but was the band's highest-charting single ever in the UK, reaching number three in 2000.
R.E.M. recorded the majority of its twelfth album Reveal (2001) in Canada and Ireland from May to October 2000.Reveal shared the "lugubrious pace" of Up,and featured drumming by Joey Waronker, as well as contributions by Scott McCaughey (a co-founder of the band The Minus 5 with Buck) and Posies founder Ken Stringfellow. Global sales of the album were over four million, but in the United States Reveal sold about the same number of copies as Up.The album was led by the single "Imitation of Life," which reached number six in the UK.Writing for Rock's Backpages, The Rev. Al Friston described the album as "loaded with golden loveliness at every twist and turn", in comparison to the group's "essentially unconvincing work on New Adventures in Hi-Fi and Up."Similarly, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone called Reveal "a spiritual renewal rooted in a musical one" and praised its "ceaselessly astonishing beauty."
In 2003, Warner Bros. released the compilation album In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003, which featured two new songs, "Bad Day" and "Animal". That same year Berry made a surprise appearance during an R.E.M. concert in Raleigh, North Carolina, performing backing vocals on "Radio Free Europe". He then sat behind the drum kit for a performance of the early R.E.M. song "Permanent Vacation", marking his first performance with the band since his retirement.
R.E.M. released Around the Sun in 2004. During production of the album in 2002, Stipe said, "[The album] sounds like it's taking off from the last couple of records into unchartered R.E.M. territory. Kind of primitive and howling".After the album's release, Mills said, "I think, honestly, it turned out a little slower than we intended for it to, just in terms of the overall speed of songs."Around the Sun received a mixed critical reception, and peaked at number 13 on the Billboard charts.The first single from the album, "Leaving New York", was a Top 5 hit in the UK.For the record and subsequent tour, the band hired a new full-time touring drummer, Bill Rieflin, who had previously been a member of Ministry. In late 2004 R.E.M. toured with Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Bright Eyes and others on the Vote for Change tour. Throughout 2005, the band embarked on its first full-length world tour since the Monster Tour ten years earlier. During the tour, R.E.M. participated in the London event of Live 8.
EMI, which owns the I.R.S. catalogue, released a compilation album covering R.E.M.'s work during its tenure on the label in September 2006 called And I Feel Fine... The Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982-1987. The DVD When the Light Is Mine: The Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982-1987 was released simultaneously. That same month, all four original band members performed during the ceremony for their induction into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. While rehearsing for the ceremony, the band recorded a cover of John Lennon's "#9 Dream" for Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur, a tribute album benefiting Amnesty International. The song, released as a single for the album and the campaign, featured Bill Berry's first studio recording with the band since his departure almost a decade earlier.In October 2006, R.E.M. was nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in its first year of eligibility.The band was one of five nominees accepted into the Hall that year, and the induction ceremony took place on March 12, 2007, at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The group, which was inducted by Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder, performed four songs with Bill Berry.
Work on the group's fourteenth album, Accelerate, commenced in early 2007. The band recorded with producer Jacknife Lee in Vancouver and Dublin, where it played five nights in the Olympia Theatre between June 30 and July 5 as part of a "working rehearsal".R.E.M. Live, the band's first live album (featuring songs from a 2005 Dublin show), was released in October 2007.R.E.M. released Accelerate in early 2008. The album debuted at number two on the Billboard charts,and became the band's eighth album to top the British album charts.Rolling Stone reviewer David Fricke considered Accelerate an improvement over the band's previous post-Berry albums, calling it "one of the best records R.E.M. have ever made."
In a 1988 interview, Peter Buck described typical R.E.M. songs as, "Minor key, mid-tempo, enigmatic, semi-folk-rock-balladish things. That's what everyone thinks and to a certain degree, that's true."All songwriting is credited to the entire band, even though individual members are sometimes responsible for writing the majority of a particular song.Each member is given an equal vote in the songwriting process; however, Buck has conceded that Stipe, as the band's lyricist, can rarely be persuaded to follow an idea he does not favor. Among the original line-up, there were divisions of labor in the songwriting process: Stipe would write lyrics and devise melodies, Buck would edge the band in new musical directions, and Mills and Berry would fine-tune the compositions due to their greater musical experience.
Michael Stipe sings in "wailing, keening, arching vocal figures" that R.E.M. biographer David Buckley compared to Celtic folk artists and Muslim mujahideen.Stipe often harmonizes with Mills in songs; in the chorus for "Stand," Mills and Stipe alternate singing lyrics, creating a dialogue.Early articles about the band focused on Stipe's singing style (described as "mumbling" by The Washington Post), which often rendered his lyrics indecipherable.Creem writer John Morthland wrote in his review of Murmur, "I still have no idea what these songs are about, because neither me nor anyone else I know has ever been able to discern R.E.M.'s lyrics."[Stipe commented in 1984, "It's just the way I sing. If I tried to control it, it would be pretty false."Producer Joe Boyd convinced Stipe to begin singing more clearly during the recording of Fables of the Reconstruction.
Stipe insisted that many of his early lyrics were "nonsense", saying in a 1994 online chat, "You all know there aren't words, per se, to a lot of the early stuff. I can't even remember them." In truth, many early R.E.M. songs had definite lyrics that Stipe wrote with care. Stipe explained in 1984 that when he started writing lyrics they were like "simple pictures", but after a year he grew tired of the approach and "started experimenting with lyrics that didn't make exact linear sense, and it's just gone from there." In the mid-1980s, as Stipe's pronunciation while singing became clearer, the band decided that its lyrics should convey ideas on a more literal level. Mills explained, "After you've made three records and you've written several songs and they've gotten better and better lyrically the next step would be to have somebody question you and say, are you saying anything? And Michael had the confidence at that point to say yes . . ." Songs like "Cuyahoga" and "Fall on Me" on Lifes Rich Pageant dealt with such concerns as pollution. Stipe incorporated more politically-oriented concerns into his lyrics on Document and Green. "Our political activism and the content of the songs was just a reaction to where we were, and what we were surrounded by, which was just abject horror," Stipe said later. "In 1987 and '88 there was nothing to do but be active." While Stipe continued to write songs with political subject matter like "Ignoreland" and "Final Straw", later albums have focused on other topics. Automatic for the People dealt with "mortality and dying. Pretty turgid stuff", according to Stipe, while Monster critiqued love and mass culture.
Peter Buck's style of playing guitar has been singled out by many as the most distinctive aspect of R.E.M.'s music. During the 1980s, Buck's "economical, arpeggiated, poetic" style reminded British music journalists of 1960s American folk rock band The Byrds. Buck has stated "[Byrds guitarist] Roger McGuinn was a big influence on me as a guitar player." Comparisons were also made with the guitar playing of Johnny Marr of alternative rock contemporaries The Smiths. While Buck professed being a fan of the group, he admitted he initially criticized the band simply because he was tired of fans asking him if he was influenced by Marr. Buck generally eschews guitar solos; he explained in 2002, "I know that when guitarists rip into this hot solo, people go nuts, but I don't write songs that suit that, and I am not interested in that. I can do it if I have to, but I don't like it."Mike Mills' melodic approach to bass playing is inspired by Paul McCartney and Chris Squire of Yes; Mills has said, "I always played a melodic bass, like a piano bass in some ways . . . I never wanted to play the traditional locked into the kick drum, root note bass work." Mills has more musical training than his bandmates, which he has said "made it easier to turn abstract musical ideas into reality."
R.E.M. was pivotal in the creation and development of the alternative rock genre. All Music Guide states, "R.E.M. mark the point when post-punk turned into alternative rock."In the early 1980s, the alternative rock of R.E.M. stood in contrast to the post-punk and New Wave genres that had preceded it. Music journalist Simon Reynolds noted that the post-punk movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s "had taken whole swaths of music off the menu", particularly that of the 1960s, and that "After postpunk's demystification and New Pop's schematics, it felt liberating to listen to music rooted in mystical awe and blissed-out surrender." Reynolds declared R.E.M., a band that recalled the music of the 1960s with its "plangent guitar chimes and folk-styled vocals" and who "wistfully and abstractly conjured visons and new frontiers for America", one of "the two most important alt-rock bands of the day."With the release of Murmur, R.E.M. had the most impact musically and commercially of the developing alternative genre's early groups, leaving in its wake a number of jangle pop followers.
R.E.M.'s early breakthrough success served as an inspiration for other alternative bands. Spin referred to the "R.E.M. model"—career decisions that R.E.M. made which set guidelines for other underground artists to follow in their own careers. Spin's Charles Aaron wrote that by 1985, "They'd shown how far an underground, punk-inspired rock band could go within the industry without whoring out its artistic integrity in any obvious way. They'd figured out how to buy in, not sellout-in other words, they'd achieved the American Bohemian Dream." Steve Wynn of Dream Syndicate said, "They invented a whole new ballgame for all of the other bands to follow whether it was Sonic Youth or the Replacements or Nirvana or Butthole Surfers. R.E.M. staked the claim. Musically, the bands did different things, but R.E.M. was first to show us you can be big and still be cool." Biographer David Buckley stated that between 1991 and 1994, a period that saw the band sell an estimated 30 million albums, R.E.M. "asserted themselves as rivals to U2 for the title of biggest rock band in the world."
Later alternative bands such as Nirvana, Pavement and Live have drawn inspiration from R.E.M.'s music. "When I was 15 years old in Richmond, Virginia, they were a very important part of my life," Pavement's Bob Nastanovich said, "as they were for all the members of our band." Pavement devoted the song "Unseen Power of the Picket Fence" from the No Alternative compilation (1993) to discussing R.E.M's first two albums at length. Kurt Cobain of Nirvana was a vocal fan of R.E.M., and had plans to collaborate on a musical project with Stipe before his death in April 1994. Cobain told Rolling Stone in an interview earlier that year, "I don’t know how that band does what they do. God, they’re the greatest. They’ve dealt with their success like saints, and they keep delivering great music."
Throughout R.E.M.'s career, its members have sought to highlight social and political issues. According to the Los Angeles Times, R.E.M. is considered to be one of the United States' "most liberal and politically correct rock groups." The band's members are "on the same page" politically, sharing a liberal and progressive outlook. Mills has admitted that there is occasionally dissension between band members on what causes they might support, but acknowledged "Out of respect for the people who disagree, those discussions tend to stay in-house, just because we'd rather not let people know where the divisions lie, so people can't exploit them for their own purposes." An example is that in 1990 Buck noted that Stipe was involved with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, but the rest of the band was not.
R.E.M. has helped raise funds for environmental, feminist and human rights causes, and has been involved in campaigns to encourage voter registration. During the Green tour, Stipe took time during sets to inform the audience about a variety of pressing socio-political issues. Through the late 1980s and 1990s, the band (particularly Stipe) increasingly used its media coverage on national television to mention a variety of causes it felt were important. One example is when the band attended the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards, during which Stipe wore a half-dozen white shirts emblazoned with slogans including "rainforest", "love knows no colors", and "handgun control now".R.E.M. helped raise awareness of Aung San Suu Kyi and human rights violations in Burma, when they worked with the Freedom Campaign and the US Campaign for Burma.The band participated in the 2004 Vote for Change tour that sought to mobilize American voters to support Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. R.E.M.'s political stance, particularly coming from a wealthy rock band under contract to a label owned by a multinational corporation, has received criticism from some quarters. Former Q editor Paul Du Noyer criticized the band's "celebrity liberalism", saying,
It's an entirely pain-free form of rebellion that they're adopting. There's no risk involved in it whatsoever, but quite a bit of shoring up of customer loyalty. And when I read their expressions of how cross they are at the election of [US president] George W. Bush, I just hear the sound of Democrat teddy bears being thrown out of cots."
Since the late 1980s, R.E.M. has been involved in the local politics of its hometown of Athens, Georgia. Buck explained to Sounds in 1987, "Michael always says think local and act local—we have been doing a lot of stuff in our town to try and make it a better place." The band has often donated funds to local charities and to help renovate and preserve historic buildings in the town. R.E.M.'s political clout was credited with the narrow election of Athens mayor Gwen O'Looney twice in the 1990s.
The band members eventually dropped out of school to focus on their developing group. They found a manager in Jefferson Holt, a record store owner who was so impressed by an R.E.M. performance in his hometown of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, that he moved to Athens. R.E.M.'s success was almost immediate in Athens and surrounding areas; the band drew progressively larger crowds for shows, which caused some resentment in the Athens music scene. Over the next year and a half, R.E.M. toured throughout the Southern United States. Touring was arduous since a touring circuit for alternative rock bands did not then exist. The group had to tour in an old blue van driven by Holt, and the band members lived on a food allowance of $2 a day.Of the van, friend-of-the-band Jane Pratt explained: "It had no seats in the back, and they would put all of their equipment in the back. When they would stay at hotels, three of them would go into one room, two would go in the other but they would keep rotating so that one person slept in the van, that was pretty much the plan." "When you live in a van together for about five years, you get real close," joked Berry.
"It was all or nothing every night,” recalled Stipe in 1998. "It was all or nothing every song. Every time you opened your mouth, it had to be everything that you could give." Berry added: "We weren't really trying to become huge or hugely popular, but we did want to have fun and maybe not have regrets later on in our lives."
During the summer of 1981, R.E.M. recorded its first single, "Radio Free Europe", at producer Mitch Easter's Drive-In Studios in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The single was released on the local independent record label Hib-Tone with an initial pressing of one thousand copies, which quickly sold out. Despite its limited pressing, the single garnered critical acclaim; it was listed as one of the ten best singles of the year by The New York Times, and the Village Voice named it Single of the Year in its 1981 Pazz & Jop critics poll.
R.E.M. recorded the Chronic Town EP with Mitch Easter in October 1981, and planned to release it on a new indie label named Dasht Hopes.However, a demo of the band's first recording session with Easter had been circulating for months, and I.R.S. Records acquired a copy. The band turned down the advances of major label RCA Records in favor of I.R.S., with whom they signed a contract in May 1982. I.R.S. released Chronic Town that August as its first American release.A positive review of the EP by NME praised the songs' auras of mystery, and concluded, "R.E.M. ring true, and it's great to hear something as unforced and cunning as this."
I.R.S. first paired R.E.M. with producer Stephen Hague to record its debut album. Hague's emphasis on technical perfection left the band unsatisfied, and the band members asked the label to let them record with Easter. I.R.S. agreed to a "tryout" session, allowing the band to return to North Carolina and record the song "Pilgrimage" with Easter and producing partner Don Dixon. After hearing the track, I.R.S. permitted the group to record the album with Dixon and Easter.Because of its bad experience with Hague, the band recorded the album via a process of negation, refusing to incorporate rock music clichés such as guitar solos or then-popular synthesizers, in order to give its music a timeless feel. The completed album, Murmur, was greeted with critical acclaim upon its release in 1983, with Rolling Stone listing the album as its record of the year. The album reached number 36 on the Billboard album chart. A re-recorded version of "Radio Free Europe" was the album's lead single and reached number 78 on the Billboard singles chart in 1983. Despite the acclaim awarded the album, Murmur sold only about 200,000 copies, which I.R.S.'s Jay Boberg felt was below expectations.
R.E.M. made its first national television appearance on Late Night with David Letterman in October 1983, during which the group performed a new, unnamed song.The piece, eventually titled "So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)", became the first single from the band's second album, Reckoning (1984), which was also recorded with Easter and Dixon. The album met with critical acclaim; NME's Mat Snow wrote that Reckoning "confirms R.E.M. as one of the most beautifully exciting groups on the planet".In late 1983 the band embarked on its first tour of Europe. While Reckoning peaked at number 27 on the US album charts—an unusually high chart placing for a college rock band at the time—scant airplay and poor distribution overseas resulted in it charting no higher than number 91 in Britain.
The band's third album, Fables of the Reconstruction (1985), demonstrated a change in direction. Instead of Dixon and Easter, R.E.M. chose producer Joe Boyd, who had worked with Fairport Convention and Nick Drake, to record the album in England. The band members found the sessions unexpectedly difficult, and were miserable due to the cold winter weather and poor food; the situation brought the band to the verge of break-up. The gloominess surrounding the sessions ended up providing the context for the album itself. Lyrically, Stipe began to create storylines in the mode of Southern mythology, noting in a 1985 interview that he was inspired by "the whole idea of the old men sitting around the fire, passing on … legends and fables to the grandchildren".Fables of the Reconstruction became the biggest-selling record released by I.R.S. to that point in America. However, the album performed poorly in Europe and its critical reception was mixed, with some critics regarding it as dreary and poorly recorded.As with the previous records, the singles from Fables of the Reconstruction were mostly ignored by mainstream radio. Meanwhile, I.R.S. was becoming frustrated with the band's reluctance to achieve mainstream success.
For its fourth album, R.E.M. enlisted John Mellencamp's producer, Don Gehman. The result, Lifes Rich Pageant (1986), was more accessible to listeners outside of college radio, with Stipe's vocals closer to the forefront of the music. In a 1986 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Peter Buck related, "Michael is getting better at what he's doing, and he's getting more confident at it. And I think that shows up in the projection of his voice." The album improved markedly upon the sales of Fables of the Reconstruction and eventually peaked at number 21 on the Billboard album chart. The single "Fall on Me" also picked up support on commercial radio.The album was the band's first to be certified gold for selling 500,000 copies.While American college radio remained R.E.M.'s core support, the band was beginning to chart hits on mainstream rock formats; however, the music still encountered resistance from Top 40 radio. Following the success of Lifes Rich Pageant, I.R.S. issued Dead Letter Office, a compilation of tracks recorded by the band during their album sessions, many of which had either been issued as B-sides or left unreleased altogether. Shortly thereafter, I.R.S. compiled R.E.M.'s music video catalog (except "Wolves, Lower") as the band's first video release, Succumbs.
Don Gehman was unable to produce R.E.M.'s fifth album and suggested the group work with Scott Litt.Litt would be the producer for the band's next five albums. Document (1987) featured some of Stipe's most openly political lyrics, particularly on "Welcome To the Occupation" and "Exhuming McCarthy", which were reactions to the conservative political environment of the 1980s under American President Ronald Reagan.Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote in his review of the album, "'Document' is both confident and defiant; if R.E.M. is about to move from cult-band status to mass popularity, the album decrees that the band will get there on its own terms."Document was R.E.M.'s breakthrough album, and the first single "The One I Love" charted in the Top 20 in the US, UK, and Canada.By January 1988, Document had become the group's first album to sell a million copies.In light of the band's breakthrough, the December 1987 cover of Rolling Stone declared R.E.M. "America's Best Rock & Roll Band".
Frustrated that its records did not see satisfactory overseas distribution, R.E.M. left I.R.S. when its contract expired and signed with the major label Warner Bros. Records.In 1988, I.R.S. released the compilation Eponymous, which included most of the band's singles and a number of rarities. The band's 1988 Warner Bros. debut, Green, was recorded in Nashville, Tennessee, and showcased the group experimenting with its sound.The record's tracks ranged from the upbeat first single "Stand" (a huge American hit),to more political material, like the rock-oriented "Orange Crush" and "World Leader Pretend", dealing with the Vietnam War and the Cold War, respectively.Green has gone on to sell four million copies worldwide. The band supported the album with its biggest and most visually developed tour to date, featuring back-projections and art films playing on the stage.After the Green tour, the band members unofficially decided to take the following year off, the first extended break in the band's career.
R.E.M. reconvened in mid-1990 to record its seventh album, Out of Time. In a departure from previous albums, the band members often wrote the music with non-traditional rock instrumentation including mandolin, organ, and acoustic guitar.Released in March 1991, Out of Time was the band's first album to top both the US and UK charts.The record eventually sold 4.2 million copies in the US alone,and about 12 million copies worldwide by 1996. The album's lead single "Losing My Religion" was a worldwide hit that received heavy rotation on radio, as did the music video on MTV. "Losing My Religion" was R.E.M.'s highest-charting single in the US, reaching number four on the Billboard charts."There've been very few life-changing events in our career because our career has been so gradual," Mills said years later. "If you want to talk about life changing, I think 'Losing My Religion' is the closest it gets". The album's second single. "Shiny Happy People" (one of three songs on the record to feature vocals from Kate Pierson of fellow Athens band The B-52's), was also a major hit, reaching number 10 in the US and number six in the UK.Out of Time garnered R.E.M. seven nominations at the 1992 Grammy Awards, the most nominations of any artist that year. The band won three awards: one for Best Alternative Music Album and two for "Losing My Religion", Best Short Form Music Video and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.R.E.M. did not tour to promote Out of Time; instead the group played a series of one-off shows, including an appearance taped for an episode of MTV Unplugged.
After spending some months off, R.E.M. returned to the studio in 1991 to record its next album. Late in 1992, the band released Automatic for the People. Though the group had intended to make a harder-rocking album after the softer textures of Out of Time,the somber Automatic for the People "[seemed] to move at an even more agonized crawl", according to Melody Maker. The album dealt with themes of loss and mourning inspired by "that sense of … turning thirty", according to Buck.Several songs featured string arrangements by former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. Considered by a number of critics (as well as by Buck and Mills) to be the band's best album, Automatic for the People reached numbers one and two on UK and US charts, respectively, and generated the American Top 40 hit singles "Drive", "Man on the Moon", and "Everybody Hurts".The album would sell about ten million copies worldwide.As with Out of Time, there was no tour in support of the album. The decision to forgo a tour, in conjunction with Stipe's physical appearance, generated rumors that the singer was dying, which were vehemently denied by the band.
After the band released two slow-paced albums in a row, R.E.M.'s 1994 album Monster was, as Buck said, "a 'rock' record, with the rock in quotation marks." In contrast to sound of its predecessors, the music of Monster consisted of distorted guitar tones, minimal overdubs, and touches of 1970s glam rock. Like Out of Time, Monster topped the charts in both the US and UK.The record sold about nine million copies worldwide.The singles "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" and "Bang and Blame" were the band's last American Top 40 hits, although all the singles from Monster reached the Top 30 on the British charts.
In January of 1995 R.E.M. set out on its first tour in six years. The tour was a huge commercial success, but the period was difficult for the group. On March 1, Berry collapsed on stage during a performance in Lausanne, Switzerland. It transpired that he had suffered a brain aneurysm. He had surgery immediately and had fully recovered within a month. Berry's aneurysm was only the beginning of a series of health problems that plagued the Monster Tour. Mills had to undergo abdominal surgery to remove an intestinal adhesion in July; a month later, Stipe had to have an emergency surgery to repair a hernia.Despite all the problems, the group had recorded the bulk of a new album while on the road. The band brought along eight-track recorders to capture its shows, and used the recordings as the base elements for the album.
R.E.M. re-signed with Warner Bros. Records in 1996 for a reported $80 million, the largest recording contract in history at that point.The group's 1996 album New Adventures in Hi-Fi debuted at number two in the US and number one in the UK. The five million copies of the album sold were a reversal of the group's commercial fortunes of the previous five years.Time writer Christopher John Farley argued that the poor sales of the album were due to its lackluster quality and the declining commercial power of alternative rock as a whole.That same year, R.E.M. parted ways with manager Jefferson Holt, allegedly due to sexual harassment charges levied against him by a member of the band's home office in Athens. The group's lawyer, Bertis Downs, assumed managerial duties.
In April 1997, the band convened at Buck's Kauai, Hawaii, holiday home to record demos of material intended for the next album. The band sought to reinvent its sound and intended to incorporate drum loops and percussion experiments.Just as the sessions were due to begin in October, Berry decided, after months of contemplation and discussions with Downs and Mills, to tell the rest of the band that he was quitting.Berry told his band mates that he would not quit if they would break up as a result, so Stipe, Mills, and Buck agreed to carry on as a three-piece with his blessing.Berry publicly announced his departure three weeks later in October 1997. Berry told the press, "I'm just not as enthusiastic as I have been in the past about doing this anymore . . . I have the best job in the world. But I'm kind of ready to sit back and reflect and maybe not be a pop star anymore."Stipe admitted that the band would be different without a major contributor: "For me, Mike, and Peter, as R.E.M., are we still R.E.M.? I guess a three-legged dog is still a dog. It just has to learn to run differently."
The band cancelled its scheduled recording sessions as a result of Berry's departure. "Without Bill it was different, confusing", Mills later said. "We didn't know exactly what to do. We couldn't rehearse without a drummer."The remaining members of R.E.M. resumed work on the album in February 1998 at Toast Studios in San Francisco.The band ended its decade-long collaboration with Scott Litt and hired Pat McCarthy to produce the record. Nigel Godrich was taken on as assistant producer, and drafted in ex-Screaming Trees member Barrett Martin and Beck's touring drummer Joey Waronker. The recording process was plagued with tension, and the group came close to disbanding. Bertis Downs called an emergency meeting where the band members sorted out their problems and agreed to continue as a group.Led off by the single "Daysleeper", Up (1998) debuted in the top ten in the US and UK. However, the album was a relative failure, selling 900,000 copies in the US by mid-1999 and eventually selling just over two million copies worldwide.While R.E.M.'s American sales were declining, the group's commercial base was shifting to the UK, where more R.E.M. records were sold per capita than any other country and the band's singles regularly entered the Top 20.
A year after Up's release, R.E.M. wrote the instrumental score to the Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon, a first for the group. The film took its title from the Automatic for the People song of the same name.The song "The Great Beyond" was released as a single from the Man on the Moon soundtrack album. "The Great Beyond" only reached number 57 on the American pop charts, but was the band's highest-charting single ever in the UK, reaching number three in 2000.
R.E.M. recorded the majority of its twelfth album Reveal (2001) in Canada and Ireland from May to October 2000.Reveal shared the "lugubrious pace" of Up,and featured drumming by Joey Waronker, as well as contributions by Scott McCaughey (a co-founder of the band The Minus 5 with Buck) and Posies founder Ken Stringfellow. Global sales of the album were over four million, but in the United States Reveal sold about the same number of copies as Up.The album was led by the single "Imitation of Life," which reached number six in the UK.Writing for Rock's Backpages, The Rev. Al Friston described the album as "loaded with golden loveliness at every twist and turn", in comparison to the group's "essentially unconvincing work on New Adventures in Hi-Fi and Up."Similarly, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone called Reveal "a spiritual renewal rooted in a musical one" and praised its "ceaselessly astonishing beauty."
In 2003, Warner Bros. released the compilation album In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003, which featured two new songs, "Bad Day" and "Animal". That same year Berry made a surprise appearance during an R.E.M. concert in Raleigh, North Carolina, performing backing vocals on "Radio Free Europe". He then sat behind the drum kit for a performance of the early R.E.M. song "Permanent Vacation", marking his first performance with the band since his retirement.
R.E.M. released Around the Sun in 2004. During production of the album in 2002, Stipe said, "[The album] sounds like it's taking off from the last couple of records into unchartered R.E.M. territory. Kind of primitive and howling".After the album's release, Mills said, "I think, honestly, it turned out a little slower than we intended for it to, just in terms of the overall speed of songs."Around the Sun received a mixed critical reception, and peaked at number 13 on the Billboard charts.The first single from the album, "Leaving New York", was a Top 5 hit in the UK.For the record and subsequent tour, the band hired a new full-time touring drummer, Bill Rieflin, who had previously been a member of Ministry. In late 2004 R.E.M. toured with Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Bright Eyes and others on the Vote for Change tour. Throughout 2005, the band embarked on its first full-length world tour since the Monster Tour ten years earlier. During the tour, R.E.M. participated in the London event of Live 8.
EMI, which owns the I.R.S. catalogue, released a compilation album covering R.E.M.'s work during its tenure on the label in September 2006 called And I Feel Fine... The Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982-1987. The DVD When the Light Is Mine: The Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982-1987 was released simultaneously. That same month, all four original band members performed during the ceremony for their induction into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. While rehearsing for the ceremony, the band recorded a cover of John Lennon's "#9 Dream" for Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur, a tribute album benefiting Amnesty International. The song, released as a single for the album and the campaign, featured Bill Berry's first studio recording with the band since his departure almost a decade earlier.In October 2006, R.E.M. was nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in its first year of eligibility.The band was one of five nominees accepted into the Hall that year, and the induction ceremony took place on March 12, 2007, at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The group, which was inducted by Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder, performed four songs with Bill Berry.
Work on the group's fourteenth album, Accelerate, commenced in early 2007. The band recorded with producer Jacknife Lee in Vancouver and Dublin, where it played five nights in the Olympia Theatre between June 30 and July 5 as part of a "working rehearsal".R.E.M. Live, the band's first live album (featuring songs from a 2005 Dublin show), was released in October 2007.R.E.M. released Accelerate in early 2008. The album debuted at number two on the Billboard charts,and became the band's eighth album to top the British album charts.Rolling Stone reviewer David Fricke considered Accelerate an improvement over the band's previous post-Berry albums, calling it "one of the best records R.E.M. have ever made."
In a 1988 interview, Peter Buck described typical R.E.M. songs as, "Minor key, mid-tempo, enigmatic, semi-folk-rock-balladish things. That's what everyone thinks and to a certain degree, that's true."All songwriting is credited to the entire band, even though individual members are sometimes responsible for writing the majority of a particular song.Each member is given an equal vote in the songwriting process; however, Buck has conceded that Stipe, as the band's lyricist, can rarely be persuaded to follow an idea he does not favor. Among the original line-up, there were divisions of labor in the songwriting process: Stipe would write lyrics and devise melodies, Buck would edge the band in new musical directions, and Mills and Berry would fine-tune the compositions due to their greater musical experience.
Michael Stipe sings in "wailing, keening, arching vocal figures" that R.E.M. biographer David Buckley compared to Celtic folk artists and Muslim mujahideen.Stipe often harmonizes with Mills in songs; in the chorus for "Stand," Mills and Stipe alternate singing lyrics, creating a dialogue.Early articles about the band focused on Stipe's singing style (described as "mumbling" by The Washington Post), which often rendered his lyrics indecipherable.Creem writer John Morthland wrote in his review of Murmur, "I still have no idea what these songs are about, because neither me nor anyone else I know has ever been able to discern R.E.M.'s lyrics."[Stipe commented in 1984, "It's just the way I sing. If I tried to control it, it would be pretty false."Producer Joe Boyd convinced Stipe to begin singing more clearly during the recording of Fables of the Reconstruction.
Stipe insisted that many of his early lyrics were "nonsense", saying in a 1994 online chat, "You all know there aren't words, per se, to a lot of the early stuff. I can't even remember them." In truth, many early R.E.M. songs had definite lyrics that Stipe wrote with care. Stipe explained in 1984 that when he started writing lyrics they were like "simple pictures", but after a year he grew tired of the approach and "started experimenting with lyrics that didn't make exact linear sense, and it's just gone from there." In the mid-1980s, as Stipe's pronunciation while singing became clearer, the band decided that its lyrics should convey ideas on a more literal level. Mills explained, "After you've made three records and you've written several songs and they've gotten better and better lyrically the next step would be to have somebody question you and say, are you saying anything? And Michael had the confidence at that point to say yes . . ." Songs like "Cuyahoga" and "Fall on Me" on Lifes Rich Pageant dealt with such concerns as pollution. Stipe incorporated more politically-oriented concerns into his lyrics on Document and Green. "Our political activism and the content of the songs was just a reaction to where we were, and what we were surrounded by, which was just abject horror," Stipe said later. "In 1987 and '88 there was nothing to do but be active." While Stipe continued to write songs with political subject matter like "Ignoreland" and "Final Straw", later albums have focused on other topics. Automatic for the People dealt with "mortality and dying. Pretty turgid stuff", according to Stipe, while Monster critiqued love and mass culture.
Peter Buck's style of playing guitar has been singled out by many as the most distinctive aspect of R.E.M.'s music. During the 1980s, Buck's "economical, arpeggiated, poetic" style reminded British music journalists of 1960s American folk rock band The Byrds. Buck has stated "[Byrds guitarist] Roger McGuinn was a big influence on me as a guitar player." Comparisons were also made with the guitar playing of Johnny Marr of alternative rock contemporaries The Smiths. While Buck professed being a fan of the group, he admitted he initially criticized the band simply because he was tired of fans asking him if he was influenced by Marr. Buck generally eschews guitar solos; he explained in 2002, "I know that when guitarists rip into this hot solo, people go nuts, but I don't write songs that suit that, and I am not interested in that. I can do it if I have to, but I don't like it."Mike Mills' melodic approach to bass playing is inspired by Paul McCartney and Chris Squire of Yes; Mills has said, "I always played a melodic bass, like a piano bass in some ways . . . I never wanted to play the traditional locked into the kick drum, root note bass work." Mills has more musical training than his bandmates, which he has said "made it easier to turn abstract musical ideas into reality."
R.E.M. was pivotal in the creation and development of the alternative rock genre. All Music Guide states, "R.E.M. mark the point when post-punk turned into alternative rock."In the early 1980s, the alternative rock of R.E.M. stood in contrast to the post-punk and New Wave genres that had preceded it. Music journalist Simon Reynolds noted that the post-punk movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s "had taken whole swaths of music off the menu", particularly that of the 1960s, and that "After postpunk's demystification and New Pop's schematics, it felt liberating to listen to music rooted in mystical awe and blissed-out surrender." Reynolds declared R.E.M., a band that recalled the music of the 1960s with its "plangent guitar chimes and folk-styled vocals" and who "wistfully and abstractly conjured visons and new frontiers for America", one of "the two most important alt-rock bands of the day."With the release of Murmur, R.E.M. had the most impact musically and commercially of the developing alternative genre's early groups, leaving in its wake a number of jangle pop followers.
R.E.M.'s early breakthrough success served as an inspiration for other alternative bands. Spin referred to the "R.E.M. model"—career decisions that R.E.M. made which set guidelines for other underground artists to follow in their own careers. Spin's Charles Aaron wrote that by 1985, "They'd shown how far an underground, punk-inspired rock band could go within the industry without whoring out its artistic integrity in any obvious way. They'd figured out how to buy in, not sellout-in other words, they'd achieved the American Bohemian Dream." Steve Wynn of Dream Syndicate said, "They invented a whole new ballgame for all of the other bands to follow whether it was Sonic Youth or the Replacements or Nirvana or Butthole Surfers. R.E.M. staked the claim. Musically, the bands did different things, but R.E.M. was first to show us you can be big and still be cool." Biographer David Buckley stated that between 1991 and 1994, a period that saw the band sell an estimated 30 million albums, R.E.M. "asserted themselves as rivals to U2 for the title of biggest rock band in the world."
Later alternative bands such as Nirvana, Pavement and Live have drawn inspiration from R.E.M.'s music. "When I was 15 years old in Richmond, Virginia, they were a very important part of my life," Pavement's Bob Nastanovich said, "as they were for all the members of our band." Pavement devoted the song "Unseen Power of the Picket Fence" from the No Alternative compilation (1993) to discussing R.E.M's first two albums at length. Kurt Cobain of Nirvana was a vocal fan of R.E.M., and had plans to collaborate on a musical project with Stipe before his death in April 1994. Cobain told Rolling Stone in an interview earlier that year, "I don’t know how that band does what they do. God, they’re the greatest. They’ve dealt with their success like saints, and they keep delivering great music."
Throughout R.E.M.'s career, its members have sought to highlight social and political issues. According to the Los Angeles Times, R.E.M. is considered to be one of the United States' "most liberal and politically correct rock groups." The band's members are "on the same page" politically, sharing a liberal and progressive outlook. Mills has admitted that there is occasionally dissension between band members on what causes they might support, but acknowledged "Out of respect for the people who disagree, those discussions tend to stay in-house, just because we'd rather not let people know where the divisions lie, so people can't exploit them for their own purposes." An example is that in 1990 Buck noted that Stipe was involved with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, but the rest of the band was not.
R.E.M. has helped raise funds for environmental, feminist and human rights causes, and has been involved in campaigns to encourage voter registration. During the Green tour, Stipe took time during sets to inform the audience about a variety of pressing socio-political issues. Through the late 1980s and 1990s, the band (particularly Stipe) increasingly used its media coverage on national television to mention a variety of causes it felt were important. One example is when the band attended the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards, during which Stipe wore a half-dozen white shirts emblazoned with slogans including "rainforest", "love knows no colors", and "handgun control now".R.E.M. helped raise awareness of Aung San Suu Kyi and human rights violations in Burma, when they worked with the Freedom Campaign and the US Campaign for Burma.The band participated in the 2004 Vote for Change tour that sought to mobilize American voters to support Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. R.E.M.'s political stance, particularly coming from a wealthy rock band under contract to a label owned by a multinational corporation, has received criticism from some quarters. Former Q editor Paul Du Noyer criticized the band's "celebrity liberalism", saying,
It's an entirely pain-free form of rebellion that they're adopting. There's no risk involved in it whatsoever, but quite a bit of shoring up of customer loyalty. And when I read their expressions of how cross they are at the election of [US president] George W. Bush, I just hear the sound of Democrat teddy bears being thrown out of cots."
Since the late 1980s, R.E.M. has been involved in the local politics of its hometown of Athens, Georgia. Buck explained to Sounds in 1987, "Michael always says think local and act local—we have been doing a lot of stuff in our town to try and make it a better place." The band has often donated funds to local charities and to help renovate and preserve historic buildings in the town. R.E.M.'s political clout was credited with the narrow election of Athens mayor Gwen O'Looney twice in the 1990s.
Panic at the Disco
The band was formed in the suburban area of Summerlin, Las Vegas, by the two childhood friends Ryan Ross on the guitar and Spencer Smith on the drums. Since the age of thirteen, the two played Blink-182 covers in bands of different formations. Ross and Smith then created a band under the name of "Summer League", possibly a reference to the suburb in which they lived or possibly not, with childhood friends Brent Wilson, and Trevor who would later leave the band.
It was at Palo Verde High School where Wilson met Brendon Urie. Wilson had asked Urie to try out as guitarist for Panic at the disco, as they were looking for a replacement guitarist at the time. Originally, Urie was not the band's lead singer or their guitarist. Rather, the position belonged to current guitarist and lyricist Ross. However, when they heard him sing backup vocals during a rehearsal, they were impressed with his backup vocal abilities and unanimously decided to make him the
singer. The band then settled on the name 'Panic! at the Disco.' They lifted the name from the lyrics of a song called "Panic," by Name Taken: Panic at the disco / Sat back and took it so slow / Are you nervous? Are you shaking? / Save compliments to praise compilation / We don't have to feel we fit in / We can move back / We can leave them.Although the band often says that the name comes from the song Panic by The Smiths, it was revealed by them that the Name Taken song did also lend inspiration to the band, but that the song by The Smiths is sometimes easier to explain to the ones who are unaware of Name Taken.
In order to promote music, the band contacted Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz through LiveJournal, and sent him an internet link to their PureVolume site. Wentz took a trip to Las Vegas to meet the band. After seeing them practice, he asked if they would sign with his Fueled by Ramen imprint label Decaydance.
Panic at the Disco released their debut album A Fever You Can't Sweat Out on September 27, 2005, making a fan base through PureVolume and MySpace, though achieving little commercial recognition. After a consistent presence in PureVolume's top 10 signed artists, and reaching number one in MySpace's indie charts, Panic at the Disco were featured on MTV's Total Request Live on January 17, 2006, where they premiered their music video for "I Write Sins Not Tragedies." Featuring Lucent Dossier Vaudeville Cirque and a circus wedding theme, the video débuted at #10 on the TRL countdown, later winning the Video of the Year award at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards. The single itself, released April 27, 2006 got to #7 in the US charts.
The band was originally third-billed for the Truckstops & Statelines Winter Tour in early 2006, which was headlined by The Academy Is... and included Acceptance as direct support and Hellogoodbye on the line-up. Due to their increase in popularity before and during the tour, the band ended up getting pushed above Acceptance to second-billed every night playing right before the headliner and "A Fever You Can't Sweat Out" outsold The Academy Is...'s debut album, "Almost Here" during the tour.
Their second single, "But It's Better If You Do", was released in the UK on May 1st, 2006 where it debuted, and peaked, at #23. The accompanying music video, released the previous month, portrays the band playing in a speakeasy in 1930's America, which, according to Urie, shows "the dark and secluded style of Panic."[
The band officially announced the departure of their bassist, Brent Wilson, with a message on the band's website on May 17, 2006. Wilson has since claimed that the decision to leave was not his, and that he was fired without warning for monetary reasons, though the rest of the band deny this. Wilson is now demanding a cut in royalties, and has threatened he will take his former band to court if need be.
Just days after Wilson's departure, the band embarked on their first headlining tour through Europe, with long-time friend, Jon Walker, formerly of 5o4plan, filling in for the summer tour as a temporary bassist while a permanent replacement was sought. All of the dates were sold out, with some, notably Manchester, selling out in a matter of hours. Upon their return, the band embarked on a two-month North American headlining tour with supporting acts The Hush Sound, OK Go, The Dresden Dolls, and Lucent Dossier Vaudeville Cirque, still retaining Jon Walker as a temporary bassist. On July 3 of that year, the band's MySpace profile was edited to list Walker as bassist/vocals, and he became a permanent member of Panic at the Disco.
The success of their first two singles helped catapult their debut album to the top of the Billboard Independent chart and to #13 on the Billboard 200 in July 2006. The video for "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" has been streamed from YouTube almost 9 million times.
Towards the end of July 2006 Panic at the Disco released their third music video, "Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off." The video features people with fish tank helmets walking the streets of what appears to be a studio back lot. The video only shows the band in one shot, reportedly because they felt that their looks were distracting from their music.
In early August 2006, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out went Platinum, having sold over one million albums.
During Panic's opening song on August 25, 2006 at the Carling Weekend: Reading Festival, an unknown audience member threw a bottle at the stage, which struck and temporarily knocked out Brendon Urie, forcing the band to stop playing. After some minutes, he got back up and shouted to the crowd, "You can't take me out! Let's see how well you guys do with my left side", and continued with the same song. In a phone interview Ryan Ross stated that "We [Panic!] were kinda expecting that [The bottling] going into the Reading, because we heard that that's kinda a tradition they have over there" and then continued by saying that "We walked on and we were kinda expecting that to keep our heads up the whole time, and unfortunately Brendon, he was catching bottles coming towards me and Jon and then he was dodging them himself, and kinda just didn't see one coming that I saw and it got him pretty good, and I dunno that's the only time anything like that's ever happened so hopefully we won't have to worry about anything like that too much."
The band embarked on a world tour in the later part of 2006. It included dates in Australia, New Zealand, and continental Europe. On November 7, 2006, they kicked off their first-ever arena tour with Bloc Party (who shortly dropped out because of drummer Matt Tong suffering a collapsed lung) and Jack's Mannequin. The Plain White T's were added to the next few weeks of The Nothing Rhymes With Circus Tour. They opened up the shows beginning in New York through November 26 in Iowa. After that, Cobra Starship were on the tour through December 9 in San Diego. The band appeared along with Fall Out Boy, Marilyn Manson, and other bands on the special edition soundtrack of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas covering "This Is Halloween", which was re-released in 3D on October 20.
Their final single from A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, "Build God, Then We'll Talk", was released on March 5, 2007. The accompanying music video portrays the fallacy of relationships.
In May 2007 it was announced that a Smashing Pumpkins Tribute LP would be released, compiled by MySpace and Spin. The LP features Panic's cover of "Tonight, Tonight" and was included free in the June 26, 2007 issue of Spin.
In early 2007, Panic at the Disco began writing their follow up album but decided to rewrite the entire album from scratch in July 2007. While speaking to MTV, Ryan Ross explained that the album lacked a band set up "sounded like a film score." He also explained that the new songs have "a more positive outlook to them." The band also began performing new songs during various festivals and gigs - two of these songs: "Nine in the Afternoon" and "When the Day Met the Night".
Rob Mathes, who produced the record, described the album as “the most significant music project I have done in a while in that it is young and intense, adventurous and endlessly creative. Working with these young kids has made me look at music the way I did when I discovered early records by The Who and Brian Eno-period David Bowie when I was 16. For this project I am also filled with “gratitude”. The band previously planned to have Danny Elfman, who worked on the original Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack, produce the album.
On November 19 on the NBC drama Heroes a recorded portion of Panic's song "Nine in the Afternoon" was played during a scene where Claire Bennet is practicing for a pep rally.
On December 11, it was announced on Billboard.com that Panic's second album was set to be released on March 25, 2008. Later that day, a series of puzzles began to appear on the Panic at the Disco website. The first puzzle led to the answer of "You Don't Have to Worry" - Drummer Spencer Smith explained that it was a lyric from a song named "We're So Starving".
The video for "Nine in the Afternoon" was shot on the December 21 and 22, ahead of the release as a single in January 2008.
A second puzzle revealed samples from a song on the upcoming album with the third piece of the puzzle leading to a blog entry on MySpace which updated the progress of the album while releasing a rough version of the song "We're So Starving". The band also announced that they would be recording the strings and mixing the album at Abbey Road Studios.
On January 9, the exclamation point in the band's name was dropped, a day later the band's homepage was changed to the logo for the Honda Civic Tour, which the band is headlining this year. They confirmed that the second album was titled Pretty. Odd. with a release date of March 25, 2008. They defended the decision to drop the exclamation point during an interview with MTV : "It was never part of the name to us. (...) When we started doing new promo stuff for this album, we just told everyone not to use it anymore."
A fresh puzzle appeared on the band's website on the January 16, various parts of the puzzle were released on to different websites. A week later, the completed puzzle appeared on the website revealing the album cover of Pretty. Odd.
On January 26, a new puzzle was added to the site, this led to the back cover of the album being revealed.
The single for "Nine in the Afternoon" was added to Amazon.com's digital music catalogue. Although the song will only be available for purchase on January 29, a 30 second preview of the final version was uploaded and later removed.
On January 28, "Nine in the Afternoon" was made available (in full) on the band's official MySpace page. iTunes made the Deluxe Edition and Standard Edition of the album available for pre-order on January 29, 2008.
The day after the video for the first single "Nine in the Afternoon" aired, the band shot a whole new video for the next single, entitled "That Green Gentlemen (Things Have Changed)".
On February 23, Panic at the Disco hosted a private event with fan club members at The Fillmore at Irving Plaza in New York City. The band held a Q&A session with the fans and those in attendance got to hear for the first time three new songs. The setlist included: "We're So Starving," "Nine in the Afternoon", "But It's Better If You Do", "She's a Handsome Woman", "That Green Gentlemen (Things Have Changed)", "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" and "Mad as Rabbits".
A poster for the event featured a Wal-Mart Soundcheck logo, which leads some people to believe the band will soon have a performance up on their website and possibly have Pretty. Odd. released in a Walmart packaging that comes with an exclusive DVD.
During their recent 2008 European Tour, Panic at the Disco performed songs from their new album, Pretty. Odd., including: "That Green Gentleman (Things Have Changed)", "Nine in the Afternoon", "She's a Handsome Woman", "Mad as Rabbits", and "We're So Starving".
In June, Panic at the Disco embarked on a world tour, with dates in Australia and Japan already announced.
On March 30, the album hit #2 in the UK Albums Chart. The album also debuted at #2 in the U.S., selling 139,000 copies in its first week On April 8, the album debuted at #1 in Australia.
For the week of April 7 to April 12, 2008, Panic was the MTV Artist of the Week. They began the Honda Civic Tour April 10th of the same week at The Warfield in San Francisco, California.
Panic at the Disco is known for its mock Victorian circus shows, where it brings an entourage of contortionists and dancers on stage with it as it performs.
They also had a performance in Times Square during the New Year's Eve events in December 2006/January 2007 with Carson Daly. They performed two songs, "Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off" (Last performance in 2006) and "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" (First performance in 2007). Although both songs have swear words Panic at the Disco sang censored versions of the songs.
Live, they have also performed cover versions of Third Eye Blind's "Slow Motion", Radiohead's "Karma Police", Smashing Pumpkins` "Tonight, Tonight", two versions of Counting Crows' "Round Here", K-Ci and Jojo`s "All My Life", Britney Spears' "Baby One More Time", Nelly Furtado's "Maneater", Queen's "Killer Queen", The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby", Blink-182's "What's My Age Again?", and The Band's "The Weight".
The band also stated that they would stop doing their circus-themed shows, and plans to perform their shows on a new variety of themes.
While Panic has been called an emo band, they themselves do not consider their music emo as stated in an interview with NME, "Emo is bullshit. We want to be the new Radiohead."
However, Panic has gone on record many times saying that their second album would be completely different from A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, as Rolling Stone wrote in an article: "The group cemented its current direction with their first single, called "Nine in the Afternoon". "It’s influenced by the music our parents listened to: the Beach Boys, the Kinks, the Beatles", says Ross. "Our new songs are more like classic rock than modern rock. We got older and started listening to different music – and this seems like the natural thing to do right now." The Vanderbilt University online student community, insidevandy.com, reported on the album style in a blog. "Band members have referenced more mature influences and have expressed a desire for a less hurried, digitized sound than on their previous effort...The first single from the album, 'Nine In The Afternoon,'...displays what Panic has described as the album's classic rock tone. The song's bouncy sound and classic pop structure and instrumentation allude to mature influences...Another new song, 'When the Day Met the Night,' reflects a similar style, featuring poppy, tinkling piano melodies and sunshine-y guitar riffs."
Current members:
• Brendon Urie- vocals, guitar, keyboards (2004-present)
• Ryan Ross - guitar, keyboards, vocals (2004-present)
• Jon Walker - bass guitar, vocals (2006-present)
• Spencer Smith - drums, percussion (2004-present)
Former members:
Brent Wilson - - bass guitar, vocals (2004-2006)
It was at Palo Verde High School where Wilson met Brendon Urie. Wilson had asked Urie to try out as guitarist for Panic at the disco, as they were looking for a replacement guitarist at the time. Originally, Urie was not the band's lead singer or their guitarist. Rather, the position belonged to current guitarist and lyricist Ross. However, when they heard him sing backup vocals during a rehearsal, they were impressed with his backup vocal abilities and unanimously decided to make him the
singer. The band then settled on the name 'Panic! at the Disco.' They lifted the name from the lyrics of a song called "Panic," by Name Taken: Panic at the disco / Sat back and took it so slow / Are you nervous? Are you shaking? / Save compliments to praise compilation / We don't have to feel we fit in / We can move back / We can leave them.Although the band often says that the name comes from the song Panic by The Smiths, it was revealed by them that the Name Taken song did also lend inspiration to the band, but that the song by The Smiths is sometimes easier to explain to the ones who are unaware of Name Taken.
In order to promote music, the band contacted Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz through LiveJournal, and sent him an internet link to their PureVolume site. Wentz took a trip to Las Vegas to meet the band. After seeing them practice, he asked if they would sign with his Fueled by Ramen imprint label Decaydance.
Panic at the Disco released their debut album A Fever You Can't Sweat Out on September 27, 2005, making a fan base through PureVolume and MySpace, though achieving little commercial recognition. After a consistent presence in PureVolume's top 10 signed artists, and reaching number one in MySpace's indie charts, Panic at the Disco were featured on MTV's Total Request Live on January 17, 2006, where they premiered their music video for "I Write Sins Not Tragedies." Featuring Lucent Dossier Vaudeville Cirque and a circus wedding theme, the video débuted at #10 on the TRL countdown, later winning the Video of the Year award at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards. The single itself, released April 27, 2006 got to #7 in the US charts.
The band was originally third-billed for the Truckstops & Statelines Winter Tour in early 2006, which was headlined by The Academy Is... and included Acceptance as direct support and Hellogoodbye on the line-up. Due to their increase in popularity before and during the tour, the band ended up getting pushed above Acceptance to second-billed every night playing right before the headliner and "A Fever You Can't Sweat Out" outsold The Academy Is...'s debut album, "Almost Here" during the tour.
Their second single, "But It's Better If You Do", was released in the UK on May 1st, 2006 where it debuted, and peaked, at #23. The accompanying music video, released the previous month, portrays the band playing in a speakeasy in 1930's America, which, according to Urie, shows "the dark and secluded style of Panic."[
The band officially announced the departure of their bassist, Brent Wilson, with a message on the band's website on May 17, 2006. Wilson has since claimed that the decision to leave was not his, and that he was fired without warning for monetary reasons, though the rest of the band deny this. Wilson is now demanding a cut in royalties, and has threatened he will take his former band to court if need be.
Just days after Wilson's departure, the band embarked on their first headlining tour through Europe, with long-time friend, Jon Walker, formerly of 5o4plan, filling in for the summer tour as a temporary bassist while a permanent replacement was sought. All of the dates were sold out, with some, notably Manchester, selling out in a matter of hours. Upon their return, the band embarked on a two-month North American headlining tour with supporting acts The Hush Sound, OK Go, The Dresden Dolls, and Lucent Dossier Vaudeville Cirque, still retaining Jon Walker as a temporary bassist. On July 3 of that year, the band's MySpace profile was edited to list Walker as bassist/vocals, and he became a permanent member of Panic at the Disco.
The success of their first two singles helped catapult their debut album to the top of the Billboard Independent chart and to #13 on the Billboard 200 in July 2006. The video for "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" has been streamed from YouTube almost 9 million times.
Towards the end of July 2006 Panic at the Disco released their third music video, "Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off." The video features people with fish tank helmets walking the streets of what appears to be a studio back lot. The video only shows the band in one shot, reportedly because they felt that their looks were distracting from their music.
In early August 2006, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out went Platinum, having sold over one million albums.
During Panic's opening song on August 25, 2006 at the Carling Weekend: Reading Festival, an unknown audience member threw a bottle at the stage, which struck and temporarily knocked out Brendon Urie, forcing the band to stop playing. After some minutes, he got back up and shouted to the crowd, "You can't take me out! Let's see how well you guys do with my left side", and continued with the same song. In a phone interview Ryan Ross stated that "We [Panic!] were kinda expecting that [The bottling] going into the Reading, because we heard that that's kinda a tradition they have over there" and then continued by saying that "We walked on and we were kinda expecting that to keep our heads up the whole time, and unfortunately Brendon, he was catching bottles coming towards me and Jon and then he was dodging them himself, and kinda just didn't see one coming that I saw and it got him pretty good, and I dunno that's the only time anything like that's ever happened so hopefully we won't have to worry about anything like that too much."
The band embarked on a world tour in the later part of 2006. It included dates in Australia, New Zealand, and continental Europe. On November 7, 2006, they kicked off their first-ever arena tour with Bloc Party (who shortly dropped out because of drummer Matt Tong suffering a collapsed lung) and Jack's Mannequin. The Plain White T's were added to the next few weeks of The Nothing Rhymes With Circus Tour. They opened up the shows beginning in New York through November 26 in Iowa. After that, Cobra Starship were on the tour through December 9 in San Diego. The band appeared along with Fall Out Boy, Marilyn Manson, and other bands on the special edition soundtrack of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas covering "This Is Halloween", which was re-released in 3D on October 20.
Their final single from A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, "Build God, Then We'll Talk", was released on March 5, 2007. The accompanying music video portrays the fallacy of relationships.
In May 2007 it was announced that a Smashing Pumpkins Tribute LP would be released, compiled by MySpace and Spin. The LP features Panic's cover of "Tonight, Tonight" and was included free in the June 26, 2007 issue of Spin.
In early 2007, Panic at the Disco began writing their follow up album but decided to rewrite the entire album from scratch in July 2007. While speaking to MTV, Ryan Ross explained that the album lacked a band set up "sounded like a film score." He also explained that the new songs have "a more positive outlook to them." The band also began performing new songs during various festivals and gigs - two of these songs: "Nine in the Afternoon" and "When the Day Met the Night".
Rob Mathes, who produced the record, described the album as “the most significant music project I have done in a while in that it is young and intense, adventurous and endlessly creative. Working with these young kids has made me look at music the way I did when I discovered early records by The Who and Brian Eno-period David Bowie when I was 16. For this project I am also filled with “gratitude”. The band previously planned to have Danny Elfman, who worked on the original Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack, produce the album.
On November 19 on the NBC drama Heroes a recorded portion of Panic's song "Nine in the Afternoon" was played during a scene where Claire Bennet is practicing for a pep rally.
On December 11, it was announced on Billboard.com that Panic's second album was set to be released on March 25, 2008. Later that day, a series of puzzles began to appear on the Panic at the Disco website. The first puzzle led to the answer of "You Don't Have to Worry" - Drummer Spencer Smith explained that it was a lyric from a song named "We're So Starving".
The video for "Nine in the Afternoon" was shot on the December 21 and 22, ahead of the release as a single in January 2008.
A second puzzle revealed samples from a song on the upcoming album with the third piece of the puzzle leading to a blog entry on MySpace which updated the progress of the album while releasing a rough version of the song "We're So Starving". The band also announced that they would be recording the strings and mixing the album at Abbey Road Studios.
On January 9, the exclamation point in the band's name was dropped, a day later the band's homepage was changed to the logo for the Honda Civic Tour, which the band is headlining this year. They confirmed that the second album was titled Pretty. Odd. with a release date of March 25, 2008. They defended the decision to drop the exclamation point during an interview with MTV : "It was never part of the name to us. (...) When we started doing new promo stuff for this album, we just told everyone not to use it anymore."
A fresh puzzle appeared on the band's website on the January 16, various parts of the puzzle were released on to different websites. A week later, the completed puzzle appeared on the website revealing the album cover of Pretty. Odd.
On January 26, a new puzzle was added to the site, this led to the back cover of the album being revealed.
The single for "Nine in the Afternoon" was added to Amazon.com's digital music catalogue. Although the song will only be available for purchase on January 29, a 30 second preview of the final version was uploaded and later removed.
On January 28, "Nine in the Afternoon" was made available (in full) on the band's official MySpace page. iTunes made the Deluxe Edition and Standard Edition of the album available for pre-order on January 29, 2008.
The day after the video for the first single "Nine in the Afternoon" aired, the band shot a whole new video for the next single, entitled "That Green Gentlemen (Things Have Changed)".
On February 23, Panic at the Disco hosted a private event with fan club members at The Fillmore at Irving Plaza in New York City. The band held a Q&A session with the fans and those in attendance got to hear for the first time three new songs. The setlist included: "We're So Starving," "Nine in the Afternoon", "But It's Better If You Do", "She's a Handsome Woman", "That Green Gentlemen (Things Have Changed)", "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" and "Mad as Rabbits".
A poster for the event featured a Wal-Mart Soundcheck logo, which leads some people to believe the band will soon have a performance up on their website and possibly have Pretty. Odd. released in a Walmart packaging that comes with an exclusive DVD.
During their recent 2008 European Tour, Panic at the Disco performed songs from their new album, Pretty. Odd., including: "That Green Gentleman (Things Have Changed)", "Nine in the Afternoon", "She's a Handsome Woman", "Mad as Rabbits", and "We're So Starving".
In June, Panic at the Disco embarked on a world tour, with dates in Australia and Japan already announced.
On March 30, the album hit #2 in the UK Albums Chart. The album also debuted at #2 in the U.S., selling 139,000 copies in its first week On April 8, the album debuted at #1 in Australia.
For the week of April 7 to April 12, 2008, Panic was the MTV Artist of the Week. They began the Honda Civic Tour April 10th of the same week at The Warfield in San Francisco, California.
Panic at the Disco is known for its mock Victorian circus shows, where it brings an entourage of contortionists and dancers on stage with it as it performs.
They also had a performance in Times Square during the New Year's Eve events in December 2006/January 2007 with Carson Daly. They performed two songs, "Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off" (Last performance in 2006) and "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" (First performance in 2007). Although both songs have swear words Panic at the Disco sang censored versions of the songs.
Live, they have also performed cover versions of Third Eye Blind's "Slow Motion", Radiohead's "Karma Police", Smashing Pumpkins` "Tonight, Tonight", two versions of Counting Crows' "Round Here", K-Ci and Jojo`s "All My Life", Britney Spears' "Baby One More Time", Nelly Furtado's "Maneater", Queen's "Killer Queen", The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby", Blink-182's "What's My Age Again?", and The Band's "The Weight".
The band also stated that they would stop doing their circus-themed shows, and plans to perform their shows on a new variety of themes.
While Panic has been called an emo band, they themselves do not consider their music emo as stated in an interview with NME, "Emo is bullshit. We want to be the new Radiohead."
However, Panic has gone on record many times saying that their second album would be completely different from A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, as Rolling Stone wrote in an article: "The group cemented its current direction with their first single, called "Nine in the Afternoon". "It’s influenced by the music our parents listened to: the Beach Boys, the Kinks, the Beatles", says Ross. "Our new songs are more like classic rock than modern rock. We got older and started listening to different music – and this seems like the natural thing to do right now." The Vanderbilt University online student community, insidevandy.com, reported on the album style in a blog. "Band members have referenced more mature influences and have expressed a desire for a less hurried, digitized sound than on their previous effort...The first single from the album, 'Nine In The Afternoon,'...displays what Panic has described as the album's classic rock tone. The song's bouncy sound and classic pop structure and instrumentation allude to mature influences...Another new song, 'When the Day Met the Night,' reflects a similar style, featuring poppy, tinkling piano melodies and sunshine-y guitar riffs."
Current members:
• Brendon Urie- vocals, guitar, keyboards (2004-present)
• Ryan Ross - guitar, keyboards, vocals (2004-present)
• Jon Walker - bass guitar, vocals (2006-present)
• Spencer Smith - drums, percussion (2004-present)
Former members:
Brent Wilson - - bass guitar, vocals (2004-2006)
O-Town
O-Town were assembled for the first season of the ABC reality television series Making the Band. The ratings of Making the Band were strong enough to warrant a second (and eventually third and fourth) seasons, which made O-Town the first cast of a reality TV show to remain the same on a second and third seasons. These subsequent seasons depicted their development as a pop group, following tours, performances, etc. Such events included the development of their second CD, O2, their transition to a new record label (Clive Davis' J Records), and an ongoing struggle to "prove themselves" as legitimate artists. The third season of Making the Band was broadcasted on MTV, instead of the original network, ABC.
Despite the popularity of the television show and with no guarantee of a record deal, O-Town would enjoy only temporary success as television personalities. Clive Davis, however, believed in O-Town and signed them to his new label, J Records, and Davis scheduled O-town to be his debut act under the label. Their first album, the self-titled O-Town, boosted by the publicity of the weekly television series, sold more than two million copies. Their first single, "Liquid Dreams," was the first single to reach #1 on the Billboard singles sales chart without making the Airplay chart. The single managed to peak at #10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
The band also recorded the theme "Comin' to the Rescue" and the song "One Heart" for the soundtrack of the film Pokémon: The Movie 2000.
However, their novelty as television personalities soon wore off. Jacob Underwood even commented, on a Making the Band recap of seasons 1 and 2, that after "Liquid Dreams", they alone had to prove themselves to the public that they weren't a "flash-in-the-pan" success. Luckily, in the late spring of 2001, O-town released "All or Nothing", and the song became their biggest hit of their career as a group. "All or Nothing" reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the song was nominated for numerous awards, including "Song of the Year" during the 2001 Radio Music Awards. The success of "All or Nothing" granted them the ability to air another season of Making the Band. Near the end of the third season, O-town fans and television viewers watched as they tried to take their careers to the next level by writing their own music, earn the respect of their industry peers, and market themselves beyond being labeled as a "boy band". Unfortunately, they never really found the market acceptance they sought. Their second album, O2, originally scheduled for the summer of 2002 (and planned debut single "I Showed Her" a few weeks before release), was delayed numerous times, and as time between their last U.S. single, the moderately successful "We Fit Together", and the anticipation of "O2", without any new singles to put on radio and no more new episodes of Making the Band, the notoriety of O-town in the media began to wade. Making matters even more difficult was the fact that O-Town burst onto the scene when boy bands and other types of bubblegum pop were beginning to decline and lose their influence. Sales of O-Town's second album, O2, were below expectations. Their debut single for O2, "These are the Days" eventually broke into the Billboard Top 40 at #40, and critics, such as those from Billboard.com, praised their second single, "I Showed Her" for being a well developed song. Despite this moderate success, "O2" was no where near the commercial success of their first album, O-Town, and the band went on tour in the summer of 2003 to promote the album. Unfortunately, J Records dropped the band from the label in November 2003.
Though fans tried to organize campaigns to get O-Town signed to a new label, these efforts were met with little success. As a result, the group disbanded in late 2003, and O-Town sent a personal e-mail to all their fans, via O-town.com [defunct], thanking them for the great memories and experience they shared with them. Within the personal e-mail to their fans, O-Town, themselves stated that they disbanded due to the changing of times (in the music industry) and financial problems, which had a hint to some fans that Lou Pearlman and Pearlman's company, Trans Continental, perhaps may have had some involvement with O-town's financial issues (Pearlman has already had many legal problems with previous acts associated to his company, Trans Continental, such as the Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync, and Aaron Carter).
The members of O-town have moved on to solo careers. The most successful of the group has been Ashley Angel, who signed on to Universal's Blackground Records, and was also given his own reality show with MTV, There and Back. Ashley's debut solo album was released in 2006 to much publicity, but did not achieve solid sales numbers. In January 2007, he began playing the role of Link Larkin in the Broadway production of Hairspray. Ex-bandmate, Trevor Penick, now professionally known as "Tre Scott", has been signed to Trilogy Productions, working with industry top producer Eddie Galan. The other band members have had success in their own rights as can be viewed under their Myspace profiles.
Nearly three years after O-Town ceased to exist, the Japanese group w-inds. covered O-Town's "All or Nothing," calling it "Kazeuta" or "Wind Poem"/"Wind Song". "Kazeuta" was released on May 25, 2006 on w-inds' single for the song "Trial." While the melody was retained, the lyrics were completely reworked by Takamitsu Shimazaki, and are predominantly in Japanese with a less repetitive chorus. In 2006, Irish boyband Westlife, also covered "All or Nothing" on their eighth studio album The Love Album. The American punk band Fake ID also covered it in an upbeat, pop-punk fashion for the compilation album Punk Goes Pop.
Despite the popularity of the television show and with no guarantee of a record deal, O-Town would enjoy only temporary success as television personalities. Clive Davis, however, believed in O-Town and signed them to his new label, J Records, and Davis scheduled O-town to be his debut act under the label. Their first album, the self-titled O-Town, boosted by the publicity of the weekly television series, sold more than two million copies. Their first single, "Liquid Dreams," was the first single to reach #1 on the Billboard singles sales chart without making the Airplay chart. The single managed to peak at #10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
The band also recorded the theme "Comin' to the Rescue" and the song "One Heart" for the soundtrack of the film Pokémon: The Movie 2000.
However, their novelty as television personalities soon wore off. Jacob Underwood even commented, on a Making the Band recap of seasons 1 and 2, that after "Liquid Dreams", they alone had to prove themselves to the public that they weren't a "flash-in-the-pan" success. Luckily, in the late spring of 2001, O-town released "All or Nothing", and the song became their biggest hit of their career as a group. "All or Nothing" reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the song was nominated for numerous awards, including "Song of the Year" during the 2001 Radio Music Awards. The success of "All or Nothing" granted them the ability to air another season of Making the Band. Near the end of the third season, O-town fans and television viewers watched as they tried to take their careers to the next level by writing their own music, earn the respect of their industry peers, and market themselves beyond being labeled as a "boy band". Unfortunately, they never really found the market acceptance they sought. Their second album, O2, originally scheduled for the summer of 2002 (and planned debut single "I Showed Her" a few weeks before release), was delayed numerous times, and as time between their last U.S. single, the moderately successful "We Fit Together", and the anticipation of "O2", without any new singles to put on radio and no more new episodes of Making the Band, the notoriety of O-town in the media began to wade. Making matters even more difficult was the fact that O-Town burst onto the scene when boy bands and other types of bubblegum pop were beginning to decline and lose their influence. Sales of O-Town's second album, O2, were below expectations. Their debut single for O2, "These are the Days" eventually broke into the Billboard Top 40 at #40, and critics, such as those from Billboard.com, praised their second single, "I Showed Her" for being a well developed song. Despite this moderate success, "O2" was no where near the commercial success of their first album, O-Town, and the band went on tour in the summer of 2003 to promote the album. Unfortunately, J Records dropped the band from the label in November 2003.
Though fans tried to organize campaigns to get O-Town signed to a new label, these efforts were met with little success. As a result, the group disbanded in late 2003, and O-Town sent a personal e-mail to all their fans, via O-town.com [defunct], thanking them for the great memories and experience they shared with them. Within the personal e-mail to their fans, O-Town, themselves stated that they disbanded due to the changing of times (in the music industry) and financial problems, which had a hint to some fans that Lou Pearlman and Pearlman's company, Trans Continental, perhaps may have had some involvement with O-town's financial issues (Pearlman has already had many legal problems with previous acts associated to his company, Trans Continental, such as the Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync, and Aaron Carter).
The members of O-town have moved on to solo careers. The most successful of the group has been Ashley Angel, who signed on to Universal's Blackground Records, and was also given his own reality show with MTV, There and Back. Ashley's debut solo album was released in 2006 to much publicity, but did not achieve solid sales numbers. In January 2007, he began playing the role of Link Larkin in the Broadway production of Hairspray. Ex-bandmate, Trevor Penick, now professionally known as "Tre Scott", has been signed to Trilogy Productions, working with industry top producer Eddie Galan. The other band members have had success in their own rights as can be viewed under their Myspace profiles.
Nearly three years after O-Town ceased to exist, the Japanese group w-inds. covered O-Town's "All or Nothing," calling it "Kazeuta" or "Wind Poem"/"Wind Song". "Kazeuta" was released on May 25, 2006 on w-inds' single for the song "Trial." While the melody was retained, the lyrics were completely reworked by Takamitsu Shimazaki, and are predominantly in Japanese with a less repetitive chorus. In 2006, Irish boyband Westlife, also covered "All or Nothing" on their eighth studio album The Love Album. The American punk band Fake ID also covered it in an upbeat, pop-punk fashion for the compilation album Punk Goes Pop.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
'N Sync
'N Sync formed in Orlando, Florida in 1995. After being the first runner-up for a spot in the Backstreet Boys, Chris Kirkpatrick approached music manager Lou Pearlman about forming another pop group. Pearlman suggested that Kirkpatrick find other young male singers, which prompted Kirkpatrick to call Justin Timberlake, whom he had befriended in the Orlando music scene. When Kirkpatrick told Timberlake of his efforts to form a pop group, Timberlake agreed to join and suggested they call his friend and former Mickey Mouse Club castmate JC Chasez. Kirkpatrick, Timberlake, and Chasez soon approached Joey Fatone, whom they had known through mutual friends.
The quartet began rehearsing together, but soon decided to even out their sound by finding a bass singer. Fatone approached classmate Jason Galasso to invite into the group, and the group decided to name themselves *NSYNC , after Timberlake's mother, Lynn Harless, commented on how "in sync" their voices were. The group's name was also a play on the letters of each member's first names - Justin, Chris, Joey, Jason and Jc. After several weeks of rehearsals, the group set up a showcase and began planning to officially sign with Pearlman's Trans Continental label. However, at the last minute, Galasso decided he was displeased with the direction of the group and dropped out,In need of a replacement, the group auditioned several people without fruition. Timberlake soon called his vocal coach, who suggested a 16-year-old singer bass singer from Mississippi named Lance Bass. Bass flew to Orlando to audition and was immediately accepted into the group. (The bandmembers later nicknamed Bass "Lansten", so as not to throw off the last-letter theme of the band's name).
From there, Pearlman set the five boys up in a house in Orlando, where they rehearsed constantly, learning dance routines and vocal parts, and working on promotion for their first public performance at Pleasure Island on October 22, 1995. After the showcase, the Marketing Consultant Michael Schweiger was recruited to shop the group to all of the major record labels in New York. None were interested; they felt the group was too similar to the Backstreet Boys to be successful. Pearlman hired Johnny Wright, manager of the Backstreet Boys, to manage the group. 'N Sync sent him a two-song demo, which impressed him. The group performed for him and a group of BMG executives. Although the record company had some concerns with the name and Bass's dancing abilities, they eventually agreed to sign the group to BMG Ariola Munich with Wright as their manager.
With a record deal finally secured, the boys began touring around Europe, simultaneously recording their first album, entitled *NSYNC which would be released on May 26, 1997. The album was preceded by the single "I Want You Back", which became a top 10 hit in Germany in late 1996. Subsequent releases "Tearin' Up My Heart" and "Here We Go" solidified the act's success in Europe.
This garnered the attention of Vincent DeGiorgio, an A&R rep for RCA Records. After seeing the group perform in Budapest he signed them to RCA in early 1998. The label had the group record some new tracks to adjust their album for the US market.
The group released their American first single, "I Want You Back" in January 1998. The song became a moderate success, peaking at #13 on the Billboard Hot 100. They followed up with their self-titled album on March 24, 1998. Initially album sales were sluggish, debuting at #82 on the Billboard 200. Sales began to pick up when Disney Channel aired an original Concert on July 18, 1998. The concert sent the album rocketing up the charts: three weeks preceding the concert, the album sat at #85 on the albums chart. Three weeks after the concert, the album had reached #9. The group released their second single, "Tearin' Up My Heart", that same month. It shot to the top of radio airplay charts and got regular play on MTV (especially on a new show called Total Request Live). This further increasing the group's visibility and sales for the album, which eventually peaked at #2 in October of 1998. Constant touring, including an opening spot on Janet Jackson's Velvet Rope Tour, helped maintain the group's momentum. Eventually, the album went on to be certified for sales of over 11 million by the RIAA.
The group appeared in the TV series Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (TV series) on February 5, 1999 at the height of their popularity, performing "Tearin' Up My Heart" and "(God Must Have Spent) A Little More Time On You" in an episode where Sabrina acquires a magical fake ID to attend their concert.
On November 10, 1998, the group released a holiday album, Home for Christmas. The album peaked at #7 and sold over 2 million copies. The group scored their first top 10 on the Hot 100 with their third single, (God Must Have Spent) A Little More Time on You, which peaked #8 in February of 1999. Country group Alabama later re-recorded the song and released it as a single that featured vocals from 'N Sync. The fourth and final single from the album, I Drive Myself Crazy, was a modest chart hit but a mainstay on TRL.
In September 1999 the group collaborated with Gloria Estefan on a song for the soundtrack for her movie, Music of the Heart. The track, "Music of My Heart", reached #2 on the strength of its single sales, and served as a stopgap between album releases.
In 1998, 'N Sync experienced a highly publicized legal battle with Lou Pearlman, due to what the group believed were illicit business practices on his part. 'N Sync sued Pearlman and his record company, Trans Continental, for defrauding the group of more than 50% of their earnings, rather than his original promise of only receiving one-sixth of the profits. The group threatened to leave and sign with Jive Records, which prompted Pearlman and RCA to countersue *NSYNC for $150 million US, citing breach of contract. The injunction was thrown out of court and, after winning back their earnings, *NSYNC signed with Jive.
With their legal woes behind them, 'N Sync refocused and worked on tracks for their second album. In January 2000, the group released "Bye Bye Bye", an upbeat dance track, which shot into the top 5 of the Hot 100 and would spend 5 weeks atop the Hot 100 Airplay chart. The song is often considered the group's signature song.They also sang a song in the Latin Grammy in 2001 singing their spanish song Yo te voy a amar.The accompanying album, No Strings Attached, was released on March 21, 2000. It sold a still-record 2.4 million copies in its first week of release, shattering the previous record for first week sales (The Backstreet Boys' Millennium album sold 1.1 million copies in its first week). An estimated 1.1 million of those sales were attributed to the first day of release, another record. By the end of 2000, it had sold over 9.9 million copies, a record for most albums ever sold in a single year. No Strings Attached is currently the eighth best selling album of the SoundScan era, with sales of over 11,099,000. The album also broke the Amazon sales records.Their second single, "It's Gonna Be Me", became the group's first #1 single. The third and final single, "This I Promise You." also reached the top 5. It also became the groups first #1 on the AC chart. All 3 singles from the album reached the top 5The group also embarked on a World No Strings Attached Tour that year. Tickets for the first leg sold an amazing 1 million in the first day on sale, and all venues except one stadium sold out the first day. The stage was a third bigger than their previous tour, and featured a moving platform to allow the group to get closer to the crowd. The adventures of preparing for the tour were featured on an MTV special "Making the Tour". The tour was then featured on a HBO special, that aired the same week the group's song "It's Gonna Be Me" hit #1 on the charts. The group then went on the second leg of the tour in the fall and performed one last show in 2001 for the "Rock in Rio" concert. The group also performed The Bee Gees Medley in 2001.
The group also released Live! From Madison Square Garden, a home video release of the group's HBO Special.
The group's third album, Celebrity, released on July 24, 2001, holds the record for the second-highest first full week of sales. The album produced three singles: Pop (#19 US), Gone (#11 US) and Girlfriend(#5 US). The album featured much more creative involvement from the group, especially Chasez and Timberlake, who wrote and produced several of the tracks. The album was also notably more heavily influenced by hip-hop than the groups' previous releases. As such, rapper Nelly contributed a verse to a remix of the single Girlfriend. The album was generally well-received, but album sales were substantially less than previous releases.To help support the Celebrity album, the group embarked on a four-month stadium tour entitled the Pop Odyssey Tour. The outing began in May, two months before the CD's release. It was the largest tour in the history of the music business, it took over 90 trucks to haul all the pieces. The stage took three days to put together, so the group had three sets of steel stages, so crews could put that together while the group was performing at another venue. Together, they could have two full stages set up. The stage featured a catwalk which led to a second, satellite stage, in the middle of the stadium. The stage also featured many other trapdoors, stair cases coming out of the video screens, harnesses to allow the guys to fly over the audience and many other features. It was also the group's first tour to feature dancers. Over two million fans attended the concerts, and the tour grossed over 90 million US dollars. A video of the concert was later released on home video, "Pop Odyssey Live".
After the group's 2002 Celebrity tour, they went on hiatus. The group still went to award shows and events together, and regrouped at the 2003 Grammy Awards to sing the Bee Gees Melody in tribute to the Bee Gees. It was the group's last televised performance. The last public performance for 'N Sync was at the group's 2004 Annual Challenge for the Children, where the group performed the Star Spangled Banner. It was a fitting final performance considering the Star Spangled Banner was the first song the group ever sang together.In 2005, the five regrouped one last time for the last *NSYNC Challenge For The Children, but the group did not perform. In the fall of 2005, *NSYNC released a greatest hits album. It included one song, I'll Never Stop, that had previously not been released in America.
The group licensed their likenesses on large number of merchandise, including board games, microphones, lip balm, marionettes, books, key chains, bedding, clothing, video games, and various other articles. The group also had a deal alongside Britney Spears with McDonald's, which included commercials featuring the group and Spears, along with a CD and a video that featured behind-the-scenes footage from the making of NSYNC's music video. The vocal group also had a deal with Chili's Grill & Bar in which the members appeared in commercials for the restaurant, while Chili's helped sponsor the group's tour.
The group has multiple RIAA awards. These include three Diamond Awards, four platinum home video releases, and multiple platinum awards for the group's records.The group went on an extended hiatus in 2002, as Timberlake released his solo album Justified on November 4, 2002; Chasez then proceeded to release Schizophrenic, on February 24, 2004. Timberlake released his second album, FutureSex/LoveSounds on September 12, 2006. Chasez has a follow-up album in the works. Chasez also helped co-write songs for a few other artists, notably the song "Treat Me Right" for former rival boy band, the Backstreet Boys, on their 2007 album "Unbreakable".Chris Kirkpatrick closed his clothing business, FuManSkeeto, and has become involved with several indie/punk rock bands on a business level, including Hawaii-based National Product. He has also recorded as a solo artist as well as with his other band, Nigels 11. He has also done voice work for the Nickelodeon show The Fairly Oddparents as teen heart-throb Chip Skylark. Kirkpatrick's latest project is involvement in a reality television show named "Mission: Man Band" aired on VH1. The show features a cast of former boy band members which includes Rich Cronin of LFO, Jeff Timmons of 98 Degrees and Bryan Abrams of Color Me Badd. The premise of the show: to form a boyband with various members of successful pop acts from the past. The four named their group Sureshot and are currently shopping around for a record deal, and a possible second season of the show.Lance Bass became a NASA-certified cosmonaut after months of training in Russia in 2002, but has yet to realize his goal of heading into outer space due to lack of funding from financial backers. He opened a film production company, Bacon and Eggs, which produced several films including 2007's Lovewrecked. He also starred in his own movie, On the Line, with fellow bandmember Joey Fatone. In 2006, after months of media speculation, Bass confirmed that he is gay in a front page cover story for People magazine. Following the revelation, Bass's love life has become fodder for many American blogs and tabloids. In 2007, he took over the role of Corny Collins in the Broadway musical Hairspray. His autobiography, Out of Sync, was released on October 23, 2007.Joey Fatone has appeared in films such as My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The Cooler, an experimental musical version of Red Riding Hood, and Homie Spumoni. On Broadway, Fatone starred in Rent and Little Shop Of Horrors. In September 2004, Fatone married his long-time girlfriend, Kelly Baldwin, at a chateau on Long Island. The couple has a daughter together named Briahna. He was the 2007 runner-up on Dancing with the Stars. He then starred as a retired baseball player, Joey Vitolo, on the Disney Channel series Hannah Montana, and is currently hosting NBC's The Singing Bee as well TV Guide Hetworks' Red Carpet for awards shows such as the 2008 Screen Actors Guild awards and the 2008 Academy Awards.
According to Jive Records, 'N Sync signed a contract guaranteeing a minimum of five albums. As of 2008, they have delivered three (No Strings Attached, Celebrity and a greatest hits album). The band is still contractually obligated to deliver two more records, though there is no specific deadline on when they must be delivered.Plans for the group to work on their fifth album have been discussed, but never realized. One of the first signs that the group's future was in jeopardy was in 2006, the first year in which the group did not reunite for Challenge for the Children, its annual charity event.In 2006, Timberlake was interviewed on an episode of MTV's All Eyes On series and said that he was responsible for 'N Sync's extended break. He also mentioned that even if the band were to re-unite now, he was unsure of what they would be able to accomplish, as the music they were once famous for has since decreased in popularity.Although there are currently no plans set for a reunion in the near future, members of the group have continued to work together on occasion. On August 31, 2006, Timberlake reunited with former bandmate Chasez on his SexyBack tour at the Roseland Ballroom. Chasez performed "Until Yesterday", a single off of his upcoming album.Several members of the group have been vocal about their hopes that the band will come together for another album. In an interview with WIHT on September 7, 2007, Kirkpatrick said, "We're all friends. [The band] didn't officially ever "break-up", you know, and there will always be room for [a reunion]. As much as a lot of people are going to hate that, it will be great! To the people that hate it, we'll be like, 'Hahaha! There ya go! Back again! We told you it was coming back!'"
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Maroon 5
Maroon 5 is a soul-influenced American band originating from Los Angeles, California. Comprising five members: Adam Levine (lead vocals, guitar), James Valentine (guitar, backing vocals), Jesse Carmichael (keyboards, backing vocals), Mickey Madden (bass guitar) and Matt Flynn (drums), the band is best known for hit songs including "Harder to Breathe", "This Love" and "She Will Be Loved".
Maroon 5 has won several awards for its debut album Songs About Jane. Released in June 2002, the album enjoyed major chart success, going gold, platinum, and triple platinum in many countries around the world. In support of Songs About Jane, Maroon 5 toured extensively throughout 2003 – 2005, in which a live album was released, entitled Live - Friday the 13th. Original member Ryan Dusick left the band in September 2006, due to injuries sustained by the constant touring, and was replaced by Matt Flynn.
After a hiatus from the music scene, Maroon 5 released their second studio album, It Won't Be Soon Before Long in May 2007, five years after Songs About Jane. The second set debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 with first week sales of nearly half a million. The band performed in various performances throughout the summer of 2007, in support of the album, and will be touring North America in Fall 2007 with The Hives as openers.
Controversy has surrounded both of Maroon 5's albums. Misogynistic lyrics, explicitly sexual videos, and explicit lyrics without a Parental Advisory label have all been issues.
Three members of Maroon 5 have known each other since attending junior high school together in Los Angeles. While attending Brentwood School, Adam Levine and Jesse Carmichael joined up with Mickey Madden and Ryan Dusick to form Kara's Flowers a garage/grunge band that played its first gig at the Whisky a Go Go on September 16, 1995. At that time, Levine sang with a deeper "grunge" voice as opposed to the high-pitched vocals he is known for now.
The band signed with Reprise Records while still in high school and released its only album The Fourth World in the middle of 1997, just as three of the four members were about to graduate . A video was made for the opening track "Soap Disco", but it did not find success. Despite support slots on tours with Reel Big Fish and Goldfinger, the album failed to take off commercially and, in 1999, the band parted company with Reprise Records.
The four attended different colleges across the United States, experiences that would greatly influence the style and sound of Maroon 5. The four original members of Kara's Flowers remained in touch and started playing together again in 2001. Jesse Carmichael switched from guitar to keyboards, so a need arose for an additional guitarist. James Valentine, formerly with the band Square, joined them to fill that void.
When Valentine joined Kara's Flowers in 2001, the band adopted the name Maroon 5. The band played showcase gigs in New York City and Los Angeles.
The band signed with Octone Records, an independent record label in New York. They also signed a global music publishing deal with BMG Music Publishing.
The band recorded Songs About Jane at Rumbo Recorders in Los Angeles with record producer Matt Wallace. Most of the material on Maroon 5's debut album was directly inspired by Levine's tumultuous relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Jane.
The first single "Harder to Breathe" slowly started to pick up airplay which helped spur sales of the album. By March 2004, the album had reached the Top 20 of the Billboard 200 and "Harder to Breathe" had made the Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles charts. The album peaked at #6 on the Billboard 200 in August 2004, 26 months after its release; this was the longest period between an album's release and its initial Top 10 appearance since SoundScan results were included in the Billboard 200 in 1991.
Songs About Jane eventually reached #2 on the Australian albums charts while "Harder to Breathe" made the Top 20 singles charts in the U.S. and UK, and Top 40 in Australia and New Zealand. The album also eventually climbed to #1 in the UK and #2 in Australia. The second single, "This Love", reached #5 in the U.S., #3 in the UK, and #8 in Australian The third single, "She Will Be Loved", reached the Top 5 in both the U.S. and the UK, and went to #1 in Australia. The fourth single, "Sunday Morning", reached the Top 40 in the U.S., UK, and Australia.
Maroon 5 was constantly on tour after releasing their album in mid-2002. During this time, the band toured with Michelle Branch, Nikka Costa, Vanessa Carlton, Graham Colton, John Mayer, and The Rolling Stones. Maroon 5 also played Live 8 in Philadelphia in 2005. Their set included a cover of Neil Young's "Rockin' In The Free World" and frontman Levine performed with one of his heroes, and the closing act, Stevie Wonder.
Over the years of touring with the band, percussionist and back-up vocalist Ryan Dusick had been suffering from the touring life. His arms were injured and, for a part of some tours, he was not able to drum. In his section of Midnight Miles, Dusick detailed his pain and its progression through their tours. It was during the band's early tour that he took his first break with Ryland Steen taking his place for a few shows. He returned for the next tour but was forced to take another break because, as he writes, "I deteriorated to such a degree that both of my arms were pretty much useless." Josh Day was to be his replacement for a few shows while Dusick underwent tests to determine the cause of his pain. Nine months passed and Matt Flynn, assumed the position of what was initially a temporary replacement, but Dusick officially left Maroon 5 in September 2006 with Flynn replacing him permanently.
On May 22, 2007, Maroon 5's second album, It Won't Be Soon Before Long, was released worldwide by A&M/Octone Records. According to Levine, the follow-up to Songs About Jane is "sexier and stronger", gaining inspiration from iconic 80s artists such as Prince, Shabba Ranks, Michael Jackson and Talking Heads. Before its release, "Makes Me Wonder" was the #1 selling single and video on iTunes.It was also the #1 selling album, with more than 50,000 digital pre-sales. After its release, the album broke iTunes sales records its week of release, selling over 101,000 albums.
The first single, "Makes Me Wonder", was released to radio March 27, 2007. The making of the music video was previewed on MTV's Total Request Live, and premiered on the show March 29. The song debuted at number 84 on the Billboard Hot 100, the lowest debuting single of the group's five chart entries. In the first week of May, the single skyrocketed from a lowly position of 64 to #1, the biggest jump in Billboard history."Makes Me Wonder" has also achieved #1 on Billboard's Hot Digital Songs, Pop 100, and Hot Dance Club Play charts.
To support the album, the band performed on a "six-date club tour" in which they visited small venues in Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Miami, and New York City in early June 2007. They followed with a concert that streamed live via MSN Music in mid-June. Then, on July 9, the band announced plans for their 2007 It Won't Be Soon Before Long world tour set to begin September 29 in Detroit and conclude November 10 in Las Vegas. On July 10, they opened for The Police, in Miami,and followed with an acoustic performance at the Miami club, Studio A, the next day.
In the song "Harder to Breathe", parts of the lyrics could be interpreted by some as misogynistic. After accusing his lover of being "condescending and unnecessarily critical", Levine sings, "I have a tendency of getting very physical/So watch your step, 'cause if I do you'll need a miracle." Although the lyrics seem to imply that he will physically strike the woman to whom he is speaking, Levine has said that the song was written in response to the record company pressuring the band into writing more material, because none of the tracks were a single.
The music video for "This Love" featured lead singer Adam Levine and his then-girlfriend, model Kelly McKee, in extended sex scenes. The video used creative camera angles to show as much as possible without actually revealing any of the couple's genitalia, thereby avoiding possible FCC action. A version of the video where a stream of computer-generated flowers cover up more was created for more conservative markets. When asked about his feelings on this, Levine commented, "That was ridiculous."Bass player Madden said that it was "an absurd over-reaction."
More steamy scenes appeared in the video for "She Will Be Loved", which featured a love triangle and sexual imagery involving Levine and actress Kelly Preston, the wife of actor John Travolta. Their newest video for Wake Up Call, also contains such material, and in addition the video is also presented as a tralier for a fictional NC-17 rated movie.
Neither Songs About Jane nor It Won't Be Soon Before Long bears a Parental Advisory label, in spite of the strong language and explicit nature of lines in the singles "Harder to Breathe" and "Makes Me Wonder" respectively.
Maroon 5 has won several awards for its debut album Songs About Jane. Released in June 2002, the album enjoyed major chart success, going gold, platinum, and triple platinum in many countries around the world. In support of Songs About Jane, Maroon 5 toured extensively throughout 2003 – 2005, in which a live album was released, entitled Live - Friday the 13th. Original member Ryan Dusick left the band in September 2006, due to injuries sustained by the constant touring, and was replaced by Matt Flynn.
After a hiatus from the music scene, Maroon 5 released their second studio album, It Won't Be Soon Before Long in May 2007, five years after Songs About Jane. The second set debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 with first week sales of nearly half a million. The band performed in various performances throughout the summer of 2007, in support of the album, and will be touring North America in Fall 2007 with The Hives as openers.
Controversy has surrounded both of Maroon 5's albums. Misogynistic lyrics, explicitly sexual videos, and explicit lyrics without a Parental Advisory label have all been issues.
Three members of Maroon 5 have known each other since attending junior high school together in Los Angeles. While attending Brentwood School, Adam Levine and Jesse Carmichael joined up with Mickey Madden and Ryan Dusick to form Kara's Flowers a garage/grunge band that played its first gig at the Whisky a Go Go on September 16, 1995. At that time, Levine sang with a deeper "grunge" voice as opposed to the high-pitched vocals he is known for now.
The band signed with Reprise Records while still in high school and released its only album The Fourth World in the middle of 1997, just as three of the four members were about to graduate . A video was made for the opening track "Soap Disco", but it did not find success. Despite support slots on tours with Reel Big Fish and Goldfinger, the album failed to take off commercially and, in 1999, the band parted company with Reprise Records.
The four attended different colleges across the United States, experiences that would greatly influence the style and sound of Maroon 5. The four original members of Kara's Flowers remained in touch and started playing together again in 2001. Jesse Carmichael switched from guitar to keyboards, so a need arose for an additional guitarist. James Valentine, formerly with the band Square, joined them to fill that void.
When Valentine joined Kara's Flowers in 2001, the band adopted the name Maroon 5. The band played showcase gigs in New York City and Los Angeles.
The band signed with Octone Records, an independent record label in New York. They also signed a global music publishing deal with BMG Music Publishing.
The band recorded Songs About Jane at Rumbo Recorders in Los Angeles with record producer Matt Wallace. Most of the material on Maroon 5's debut album was directly inspired by Levine's tumultuous relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Jane.
The first single "Harder to Breathe" slowly started to pick up airplay which helped spur sales of the album. By March 2004, the album had reached the Top 20 of the Billboard 200 and "Harder to Breathe" had made the Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles charts. The album peaked at #6 on the Billboard 200 in August 2004, 26 months after its release; this was the longest period between an album's release and its initial Top 10 appearance since SoundScan results were included in the Billboard 200 in 1991.
Songs About Jane eventually reached #2 on the Australian albums charts while "Harder to Breathe" made the Top 20 singles charts in the U.S. and UK, and Top 40 in Australia and New Zealand. The album also eventually climbed to #1 in the UK and #2 in Australia. The second single, "This Love", reached #5 in the U.S., #3 in the UK, and #8 in Australian The third single, "She Will Be Loved", reached the Top 5 in both the U.S. and the UK, and went to #1 in Australia. The fourth single, "Sunday Morning", reached the Top 40 in the U.S., UK, and Australia.
Maroon 5 was constantly on tour after releasing their album in mid-2002. During this time, the band toured with Michelle Branch, Nikka Costa, Vanessa Carlton, Graham Colton, John Mayer, and The Rolling Stones. Maroon 5 also played Live 8 in Philadelphia in 2005. Their set included a cover of Neil Young's "Rockin' In The Free World" and frontman Levine performed with one of his heroes, and the closing act, Stevie Wonder.
Over the years of touring with the band, percussionist and back-up vocalist Ryan Dusick had been suffering from the touring life. His arms were injured and, for a part of some tours, he was not able to drum. In his section of Midnight Miles, Dusick detailed his pain and its progression through their tours. It was during the band's early tour that he took his first break with Ryland Steen taking his place for a few shows. He returned for the next tour but was forced to take another break because, as he writes, "I deteriorated to such a degree that both of my arms were pretty much useless." Josh Day was to be his replacement for a few shows while Dusick underwent tests to determine the cause of his pain. Nine months passed and Matt Flynn, assumed the position of what was initially a temporary replacement, but Dusick officially left Maroon 5 in September 2006 with Flynn replacing him permanently.
On May 22, 2007, Maroon 5's second album, It Won't Be Soon Before Long, was released worldwide by A&M/Octone Records. According to Levine, the follow-up to Songs About Jane is "sexier and stronger", gaining inspiration from iconic 80s artists such as Prince, Shabba Ranks, Michael Jackson and Talking Heads. Before its release, "Makes Me Wonder" was the #1 selling single and video on iTunes.It was also the #1 selling album, with more than 50,000 digital pre-sales. After its release, the album broke iTunes sales records its week of release, selling over 101,000 albums.
The first single, "Makes Me Wonder", was released to radio March 27, 2007. The making of the music video was previewed on MTV's Total Request Live, and premiered on the show March 29. The song debuted at number 84 on the Billboard Hot 100, the lowest debuting single of the group's five chart entries. In the first week of May, the single skyrocketed from a lowly position of 64 to #1, the biggest jump in Billboard history."Makes Me Wonder" has also achieved #1 on Billboard's Hot Digital Songs, Pop 100, and Hot Dance Club Play charts.
To support the album, the band performed on a "six-date club tour" in which they visited small venues in Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Miami, and New York City in early June 2007. They followed with a concert that streamed live via MSN Music in mid-June. Then, on July 9, the band announced plans for their 2007 It Won't Be Soon Before Long world tour set to begin September 29 in Detroit and conclude November 10 in Las Vegas. On July 10, they opened for The Police, in Miami,and followed with an acoustic performance at the Miami club, Studio A, the next day.
In the song "Harder to Breathe", parts of the lyrics could be interpreted by some as misogynistic. After accusing his lover of being "condescending and unnecessarily critical", Levine sings, "I have a tendency of getting very physical/So watch your step, 'cause if I do you'll need a miracle." Although the lyrics seem to imply that he will physically strike the woman to whom he is speaking, Levine has said that the song was written in response to the record company pressuring the band into writing more material, because none of the tracks were a single.
The music video for "This Love" featured lead singer Adam Levine and his then-girlfriend, model Kelly McKee, in extended sex scenes. The video used creative camera angles to show as much as possible without actually revealing any of the couple's genitalia, thereby avoiding possible FCC action. A version of the video where a stream of computer-generated flowers cover up more was created for more conservative markets. When asked about his feelings on this, Levine commented, "That was ridiculous."Bass player Madden said that it was "an absurd over-reaction."
More steamy scenes appeared in the video for "She Will Be Loved", which featured a love triangle and sexual imagery involving Levine and actress Kelly Preston, the wife of actor John Travolta. Their newest video for Wake Up Call, also contains such material, and in addition the video is also presented as a tralier for a fictional NC-17 rated movie.
Neither Songs About Jane nor It Won't Be Soon Before Long bears a Parental Advisory label, in spite of the strong language and explicit nature of lines in the singles "Harder to Breathe" and "Makes Me Wonder" respectively.
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