Sad moment: R.E.M member Peter Buck has officially parted ways with REM following…

It’s always interesting when an artist declares that they don’t like one of their albums. To many, it feels like a parent disowning their child. It feels scandalous to decide that despite all the time and effort that went into creating the thing, all the nurturing and care, they hate the outcome. But that’s the position Peter Buck landed on when it came to one R.E.M record.

While it always feels shocking, the various reasons why an artist might get to that point are understandable. Sometimes, it’s a simple case of overexposure. After decades, anyone would be bored of doing the same task over again, just as musicians end up bound to do as they play their hits again and again. They likely grow weary of the songs long before their fans do, having had a lengthy period before writing, rehearsing, recording, and then listening to hundreds of drafts until they are mixed to perfection.

Sometimes, it’s a case that the artist either outgrew their old sound or strayed too far away from their comfort zone. Both stagnation and drastic change feel like common reasons why certain releases don’t hold up in their creator’s eyes. That makes sense, of course. It must be a delicate and tricky line to walk as they attempt to mature and evolve but not stray so far off the path that they lose where they were going.

For Buck, his reasoning behind hate on R.E.M album is a mix of all of the above. It seems that at once overexposure, stagnation and a misguided attempt to make a change all hit at once, making the record from hell in his mind. With all those things combined, the guitarist can’t bear to hit play.

The record in question is Around The Sun, the group’s 2004 effort. “[That] record, for me, just wasn’t really listenable,” Buck said. For him, the reasoning is right there in the sound and slaps him around the face whenever he attempts to return to it. He explained: “It sounds like what it is – a bunch of people that are so bored with the material that they can’t stand it anymore.”

Vocalist Michael Stipe agrees with the view: “The songs on Around the Sun are great. But, in the process of recording, we lost our focus as a band.” By all accounts, the sessions for the album, and the limp produce it left them with, was the first major sign that the salad days of the band were well and truly over.

To them, the album sounds like the beginning of the end. The record didn’t do as well as any of their prior ones had, receiving as middling of a reception as the band themselves gave it. Afterwards, there was a kind of nothing period for a few years as they recorded a few covers for compilation records here and there, they joined the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame but tainted with a feeling that they were passed their prime. And then, in 2008, when they released their next album, Accelerate, they’d officially finished their contractual obligation to their record label.

Buck’s summary of the situation feels so apt. The band had become weary, going from being one of the biggest rock acts around to simply feeling like a group of bored and tired musicians who had perhaps grown as much as they could together. Later that year, they announced that they were “calling it a day as a band”.

For Buck, and seemingly Stipe too, Around The Sun will forever sound like the start of that difficult decision, as if it captured the moment that they looked around at one another and realised the glory days were over.