“These Days” by R.E.M.

"These Days" turns up on Lifes Rich Pageant, R.E.M.'s fourth album, released by I.R.S. on July 28, 1986, and the writing credit is split four ways between Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe, with Stipe singing lead, Buck on guitar, Mills on bass and Berry on drums.

Don Gehman produced it, the only time the band worked with him. They had come off the road in the first half of 1986 wanting to shake off the murk of Fables of the Reconstruction, made with Joe Boyd in London, and they went for Gehman because they were fans of the acoustic feel of his work for John Mellencamp. The sessions ran at Mellencamp's Belmont Mall Studio in Belmont, Indiana, and Gehman steered them out of the dense, obscure fog of their early records toward something more accessible, with hard rock in its bones.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.