R.E.M. Announce Spring Release for New Album

R.E.M. have completed work on their 15th studio album, the band has announced on their web site. The Georgia rockers put the finishing touches on the new disc in Nashville, after recording the bulk of it with producer Jacknife Lee at New Orleans' Music Shed and Berlin's Hansa Studios. "I will not report on the sound or the dimension of the recordings so far, to my ears it all sounds like quite a wonderful set of songs," R.E.M. manager Bertis Downs wrote in an update from the Berlin studio earlier this summer. R.E.M. say the album will be released in spring of next year.

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Song Stories

“I'm Yours”

Jason Mraz | 2008

Jason Mraz re-emerged after his disappointing second album with this lead single, a Jack Johnson-esque ditty about giving yourself fully to someone else. The success of the reggae-tinged song (it earned two Grammy nods and a spot on the Billboard singles chart for well over a year) was something the folk-pop singer never predicted when he wrote it in 15 minutes at home. "I played a happy-hippie chord progression that would probably work without 50 different Bob Marley songs," he told Rolling Stone. "I thought, 'It's too novelty. This is a nursery rhyme,'" concluding that "you can never guess what's gonna be a hit."

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