''Collapse into Now'' is the fifteenth and final studio album by the American

alternative rock Alternative rock (also known as alternative music, alt-rock or simply alternative) is a category of rock music that evolved from the independent music underground of the 1970s. Alternative rock acts achieved mainstream success in the 1990s w ...

band R.E.M., released on March 7, 2011, on Warner Bros. Produced by

Jacknife Lee Garret "Jacknife" Lee is an Irish music producer and mixer. He has worked with a variety of artists, including the Cars, U2, R.E.M., the Killers, Robbie Williams, Snow Patrol, Bloc Party, Two Door Cinema Club, AFI, the Hives, Weezer, One Dire ...

, who previously worked with the band on ''

Accelerate In mechanics, acceleration is the rate of change of the velocity of an object with respect to time. Accelerations are vector quantities (in that they have magnitude and direction). The orientation of an object's acceleration is given by the ...

'' (2008), the album was preceded by the singles "It Happened Today," "Mine Smell Like Honey", " Überlin" and " Oh My Heart". Regarding the album's title, lead singer

Michael Stipe John Michael Stipe (; born January 4, 1960) is an American singer-songwriter and artist, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of alternative rock band R.E.M. He is known for his vocal quality, poetic lyrics and unique stage presence. Po ...

noted, "It's the final thing I sing, the last song on the record before the record goes into a coda and reprises the first song. In my head, it's like I'm addressing a nine-year-old and I'm saying, 'I come from a faraway place called the 20th century. And these are the values and these are the mistakes we've made and these are the triumphs. These are the things that we held in the highest esteem. These are the things to learn from."Interview with Michael Stipe
Interview Magazine. 2011. As of September 2011, the album had sold 142,000 copies in the United States. At the time of the band's breakup, bassist

Mike Mills Michael Edward Mills (born December 17, 1958) is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, and composer who was a founding member of the alternative rock band R.E.M. Though known primarily as the bass guitarist and backing vocalist of R.E.M., ...

noted that the album's lyrical content contained "indications" that the band were planning to split. In 2019, the band was more forthright on the hints they were making via the album: "That's the record where we put ourselves on the cover for the first time and I'm waving goodbye, and ''nobody'' got it," said Stipe in 2019. "We were saying, 'This is it, sayonara, we're out of here.'" The band did not tour to support the album and therefore never performed any of the songs in concert, although Michael Stipe did play "Every Day Is Yours to Win" without R.E.M. for the Tibethouse Annual Benefit Concert.

Background and recording

In 2008, while touring in support of ''

'', R.E.M. discussed the possibility of ending the band in the near future. Entering the studio with producer

, the band began recording a final studio album, with the intention of "going out on a high note." Regarding these initial discussions, bassist

stated, "We knew we had some decisions to make regarding our contract with Warner Bros. We had to make some decision about how to continue going forward as a recording unit, and if we still wanted to tour together. Oddly enough, I think that independently, we all arrived at the conclusion that this was such a great opportunity to walk away on our own terms, that we thought, 'Why not take advantage of it?'" Buck later would state that the final decision to end the band came when Stipe remarked that "I need to be away from this for a long time." Buck suggested "How about forever?" and they thus decided to break up. ''Collapse into Now'' was recorded in four different cities:

Berlin Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...

, Germany;

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and t ...

; and

New Orleans, Louisiana New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

demoing taking place at Jackpot Studios, in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populou ...

. Regarding the recording process, and the fact that it marked the conception of their final studio album, Mills noted, "We tried to enjoy it as much as possible and make it as fun as possible, but we’re not super-sentimental people in that sense. The only time we got really poignant was when we were working in Berlin, and they have a beautiful room there, Meistersaal, where we recorded seven or eight songs. There was no one there really except some friends, family, and significant others, and we knew that was probably the last time we would ever play together as R.E.M. That was a pretty fraught day. But it was fun." In comparing the record to the band's previous release, ''

'', Mills noted that the band, "wanted this new one to be more expansive. We wanted to put more variety into it and not limit ourselves to any one type of song. There are some really slow, beautiful songs; there are some nice, mid-tempo ones; and then there are three or four rockers." He has spoken about the album's theme, saying: "It's more of a personal record than a political one. Current events do come into our mind when we write, but the themes here are more universal." The album features guest appearances by

Patti Smith Patricia Lee Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer, songwriter, poet, painter and author who became an influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album ''Horses''. Called the "punk poet ...

Pearl Jam Pearl Jam is an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1990. The band's lineup consists of founding members Jeff Ament (bass guitar), Stone Gossard (rhythm guitar), Mike McCready (lead guitar), and Eddie Vedder (lead vocals, ...

Eddie Vedder Eddie Jerome Vedder (born Edward Louis Severson III; December 23, 1964) is an American singer, musician, and songwriter best known as the lead vocalist and one of four guitarists of the Rock music, rock band Pearl Jam. He also appeared as a guest ...

Peaches The peach (''Prunus persica'') is a deciduous tree first domesticated and cultivated in Zhejiang province of Eastern China. It bears edible juicy fruits with various characteristics, most called peaches and others (the glossy-skinned, non-fu ...

Lenny Kaye Lenny Kaye (''né'' Kusikoff; born December 27, 1946) is an American guitarist, composer, and writer who is best known as a member of the Patti Smith Group. Early life Kaye was born to Jewish parents in the Washington Heights area of upper M ...

and Joel Gibb. According to Michael Stipe, the album contains "one of the only

autobiographical An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English p ...

songs of my entire career as a songwriter, in the opening track, 'Discoverer'. It's a song of discovery. It's about realizing that the city offers you this unbelievable potential and opportunity; all the things you are looking for in your teens and your twenties. That's what New York offered me."

Release and promotion

To promote the album, the band released

music video A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing devi ...

s for each song on the album, featuring directors such as

James Franco James Edward Franco (born April 19, 1978) is an American actor and filmmaker. For his role in '' 127 Hours'' (2010), he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. Franco is known for his roles in films, such as Sam Raimi's ''Spider- ...

Sam Taylor-Wood Samantha Louise Taylor-Johnson OBE (née Taylor-Wood; 4 March 1967) is a British filmmaker and photographer. Her directorial feature film debut was 2009's '' Nowhere Boy'', a film based on the childhood experiences of The Beatles songwriter a ...

, Jim Herbert, and lead singer

. Stipe notes that: "The idea was to present a 21st-century version of an album. What does an album mean in the year 2011, especially to generations of people for whom the word album is an archaic term? An album for me as a teenager in the '70s was a fully formed concept. It was a body of work from an artist I liked or trusted or who excited me.. ..I wanted to present an idea of what an album could be in the age of

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most ...

and the Internet. Not from

Kanye West Ye ( ; born Kanye Omari West ; June 8, 1977) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and fashion designer. Born in Atlanta and raised in Chicago, West gained recognition as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records in the ea ...

, not from

Lady Gaga Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta ( ; born March 28, 1986), known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She is known for her image reinventions and musical versatility. Gaga began performing as a teenag ...

, not from Beyoncé; they've got their place. This is what we do. We put together and sequenced the strongest body of work that we could possibly come up with in this moment in time and put it onto this record." During promotion, the band stated that it had no intention of touring to support the album, with

Peter Buck Peter Lawrence Buck (born December 6, 1956) is an American musician and songwriter. He was a co-founder and the lead guitarist of the alternative rock band R.E.M. He also plays the banjo and mandolin on several R.E.M. songs. Throughout his c ...

citing in an interview with NME that "it does seem like we've toured a lot in the last eight or ten years. To some degree it felt like we'd just been doing kind of the same thing we did last time. You just don't really want to repeat yourself in that way." He also stated that touring doesn't help album sales and concluded, "It seems like less and less people are buying albums, so do what you want." Complying with their resolution of not engaging in a new tour, R.E.M. officially disbanded as a group in September 2011, six months after the album was released. For 2011's

Record Store Day Record Store Day is an annual event inaugurated in 2007 and held on one Saturday (typically the third) every April and every Black Friday in November to "celebrate the culture of the independently owned record store". The day brings together fa ...

, the band released ''R.E.M. Three''—a package of three 7"s containing each of the commercial singles for the album.

Critical reception

''Pitchfork''s Matt LeMay stated that "''Collapse into Now'' also hosts some unlikely successes of its own; in spite of its discouraging title, "Mine Smell Like Honey" overcomes a water-treading verse and ascends to a truly a majestic classic R.E.M. chorus, complete with soaring Mike Mills backing vocals and jangling Peter Buck guitars. "Walk It Back" alone is worth the price of admission here, a gorgeous and enveloping song that takes a step back from the album's dense arrangements and gives Michael Stipe's vocals room to resonate. . . This album is host to more such complexity than anything since 1998's ''Up'', but ''Collapse Into Now'' still sounds like the work of a band caught between old habits and new adventures." Josh Modell of ''Spin'' wrote that "(h)ere . . . they discover the glow of middle age, warmly acknowledging the past—hello again, Peter Buck's mandolin—while realizing that the present can feel just as comforting... ''Collapse'' mostly sounds like a familiar friend—reliable in all the best ways, but still capable of quietly insinuating surprises.

Track listing

All songs written by Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe, except as noted. ;X-Axis #"Discoverer" – 3:31 #"All the Best" – 2:48 #" Überlin" – 4:15 #" Oh My Heart" (Buck, Mills, Stipe, Scott McCaughey) – 3:21 #"It Happened Today" – 3:49 #"Every Day Is Yours to Win" – 3:26 ;Y-Axis #

" Mine Smell Like Honey" – 3:13 #"Walk It Back" – 3:24 #"Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter" – 2:45 #"That Someone Is You" – 1:44 #"Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I" – 3:03 #"Blue" (Buck, Mills, Stipe,

) – 5:46 ;Amazon MP3 Downloads and iTunes bonus tracks #

"Discoverer" (Live in the Studio) – 3:31 #"Oh My Heart" (Live in the Studio) – 3:28 ;iTunes bonus track #

"Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter" (Live in the Studio) – 2:44

Chart positions and certifications

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications

Personnel

–

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected string ...

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and s ...

mandolin A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 ...

, production *

– bass guitar, guitar, backing

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or witho ...

, keyboards, production *

–

lead vocals The lead vocalist in popular music is typically the member of a group or band whose voice is the most prominent melody in a performance where multiple voices may be heard. The lead singer sets their voice against the accompaniment parts of th ...

, production, packaging

Additional musicians

*Shamarr Allen –

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standar ...

on "Discoverer", "It Happened Today", and "Oh My Heart" *Greg Hicks –

trombone The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrat ...

*Craig Klein – trombone *Mark Mullins – trombone and horn

arrangement In music, an arrangement is a musical adaptation of an existing composition. Differences from the original composition may include reharmonization, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or formal development. Arranging differs from orchestr ...

s * Joel Gibb – vocals on "It Happened Today" *

– guitar solo on "Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter",

guitar solo A guitar solo is a melodic passage, instrumental section, or entire piece of music, pre-written (or improvised) to be played on a classical guitar, electric guitar or an acoustic guitar. In 20th and 21st century traditional music and popular ...

on "Blue" *

– production, mixing, keyboards, guitar *Leroy Jones – trumpet on "Discoverer", "It Happened Today", and "Oh My Heart" *Kirk M. Joseph, Sr. –

sousaphone The sousaphone ( ) is a brass instrument in the tuba family. Created around 1893 by J. W. Pepper at the direction of American bandleader John Philip Sousa (after whom the instrument was then named), it was designed to be easier to play than t ...

on "Discoverer", "It Happened Today", and "Oh My Heart" * Scott McCaughey – guitar, keyboards, backing vocals, accordion *

– vocals on "Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter" *

Bill Rieflin William Frederick Rieflin (September 30, 1960 – March 24, 2020) was an American musician. Rieflin came to prominence in the 1990s mainly for his work as a drummer with groups (particularly in the industrial rock and industrial metal scene ...

–

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair of matching drumsticks ...

bouzouki The bouzouki (, also ; el, μπουζούκι ; alt. pl. ''bouzoukia'', from Greek ), also spelled buzuki or buzuci, is a musical instrument popular in Greece. It is a member of the long-necked lute family, with a round body with a flat top and ...

, keyboards, guitar *

– vocals on "Blue" *

– vocals on "It Happened Today"

Technical and design

*Sam Bell –

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...

and mix engineering *Chris Bilheimer and Michael Stipe – packaging *

Anton Corbijn Anton Johannes Gerrit Corbijn van Willenswaard (; born 20 May 1955) is a Dutch photographer, film director and music video director. He is the creative director behind the visual output of Depeche Mode and U2,Pitman, Joanna"The silent partner"' ...

– photography *

Stephen Marcussen Stephen Marcussen is the founder and chief mastering engineer at Marcussen Mastering in Hollywood, California, United States. He has been mastering music since 1979. Biography Marcussen's introduction to music recording happened in 1976 when, at ...

– mastering *Tom McFall – engineering

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Collapse Into Now Albums produced by Jacknife Lee Albums produced by Michael Stipe Albums produced by Mike Mills Albums produced by Peter Buck R.E.M. albums Warner Records albums 2011 albums