One of the nice things about the smaller portable music devices is that they force you to think about which songs are your favorites and why — I take this type of reflection to be a good thing.  I know that many of my readers are R.E.M. fans, so I thought I’d share my personal R.E.M. “Best of” list.  It consists of nothing more than a list of the songs that I thought I would enjoy listening to if they came up as I played through this list on random play or if they were thrown in a “Genius” playlist on my iPhone.  I deliberately tried not to overthink it.  My list is below the line.

Accelerate:

  1. Supernatural Superserious
  2. Until the Day is Done
  3. Mr. Richards

Around the Sun:

  1. Leaving New York
  2. Electron Blue
  3. The Ascent of Man

Automatic for the People:

  1. Drive
  2. The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight
  3. Everybody Hurts
  4. Man on the Moon
  5. Nightswimming
  6. Find the River

Dead Letter Office:

  1. Gardening at Night
  2. Carnival of Sorts

Document:

  1. Finest Worksong
  2. Exhuming McCarthy
  3. Disturbance at the Heron House
  4. ITEOTWAWKI (And I Feel Fine)
  5. The One I Love

Fables of Reconstruction:

  1. Driver 8
  2. Can’t Get There from Here

Green:

  1. You are the Everything
  2. Stand
  3. World Leader Pretend
  4. Orange Crush
  5. Turn You Inside Out

Life’s Rich Pageant:

  1. Begin the Begin
  2. These Days
  3. Fall on Me
  4. Cuyahoga
  5. I Believe
  6. Just a Touch
  7. Swan Swan H
  8. I am Superman

Monster:

  1. What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?
  2. Star 69
  3. Strange Currencies
  4. Bang and Blame
  5. I Took Your Name
  6. Let Me in
  7. You

Murmur:

  1. Radio Free Europe

New Adventures in HiFi:

  1. How the West was Won and Where it Got Us
  2. Undertow
  3. E-Bow the Letter
  4. So Fast, So Numb
  5. Low Desert
  6. Electrolite

Out of Time:

  1. Radio Song
  2. Losing my Religion
  3. Low
  4. Near Wild Heaven
  5. Shiny Happy People
  6. Country Feedback
  7. Me in Honey

Reckoning:

  1. So. Central Rain
  2. Time After Time
  3. (Don’t Go Back to) Rockville

Reveal:

  1. The Lifting
  2. I’ve Been High
  3. She Just Wants
  4. I’ll Take the Rain

Until the End of the World:

  1. Fretless

Up:

  1. Lotus
  2. Hope
  3. At My Most Beautiful

This turns out to be a fairly representative quantification of which REM albums are my favorites compared to other ones.  Any thoughts on the playlist?