September 30, 2026—This year marks the 25th anniversary of R.E.M.’s Reveal, the richly layered 2001 album featuring favorites like “Imitation of Life,” “All the Way to Reno (You’re Gonna Be a Star)” and “I’ll Take the Rain.” To celebrate, Craft Recordings will release Reveal (25th Anniversary Edition) on November 20, expanding the original album with The Black Sessions Revealed, a previously unreleased 17-song performance recorded for Radio France in Paris on May 7, 2001.
Available as a deluxe 2-CD/Blu-ray set and expanded digital edition, Reveal (25th Anniversary Edition) pairs the original 12-track album with the complete Radio France performance, which finds R.E.M. moving between then-new Reveal material and classics spanning their catalog, including “The One I Love,” “Losing My Religion” and “Man on the Moon.” All formats feature reimagined cover art by longtime R.E.M. designer Chris Billheimer. The physical set’s accompanying Blu-ray presents Reveal in high-resolution audio and 5.1 surround sound, alongside the music videos for “Imitation of Life,” “All the Way to Reno (You’re Gonna Be a Star)” and “I’ll Take the Rain,” plus the album’s original EPK. Housed in a 32-page hardcover book featuring archival photographs, the deluxe set also includes new liner notes by journalist Birgit Fuss, with fresh reflections from Michael Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills.
The Black Sessions Revealed will also be available separately as a 2-LP set, bringing the intimate 2001 performance to vinyl for the first time. Additionally, REMHQ.com will offer exclusive Neon Orange vinyl of the original Reveal album and Neon Pink vinyl of The Black Sessions Revealed, alongside new anniversary merchandise. Pre-orders for all formats are available today, while the first single—the live version of “Imitation of Life” from The Black Sessions—is available now to stream/share.
Released in May 2001, Reveal was R.E.M.’s 12th studio album. Working again with producer Pat McCarthy, who had previously co-produced Up and would later reunite with the band for Around the Sun, R.E.M. recorded across Athens (GA), Vancouver, Dublin and Miami (FL), building a lush, atmospheric collection that paired expansive pop melodies with layers of guitars, keyboards and electronic textures. The result was a record with a distinctly luminous character—an atmosphere that emerged organically during the sessions.
“We were not thinking about a buoyant summertime record, but that is certainly what it turned into,” recalls Mills in Fuss’ new liner notes. “It’s very happy, and also kind of wistful in some ways. It looks at summers present and summers past.” That feeling carries throughout Reveal. “I’ve always said it’s our most underrated record,” Mills adds. “Not only are the songs and the performances good, but it captures a feeling that holds throughout the entire record.”
For Fuss, who first heard Reveal as a journalist at Rolling Stone Germany, the album’s defining character was apparent from the beginning. “It was hard to believe that, after so many autumn records, this band had suddenly made a summer album,” she writes in the new liner notes.
The album’s sunlit quality was sometimes quite literally chased down. After struggling with writer’s block during a cold, damp stretch in Dublin, Stipe boarded a plane in search of warmer weather. “I jumped on a plane and chased the sun,” he recalls. “I wrote ‘Disappear’ and ‘I’ve Been High.’ And finished ‘Imitation of Life’ on a beach.”
Released as the album’s lead single, “Imitation of Life” became one of Reveal’s signature songs and a fixture of R.E.M.’s live sets through the end of the band’s career. It was followed by “All the Way to Reno (You’re Gonna Be a Star)” and “I’ll Take the Rain.” Reveal was a major international success, reaching No. 1 in the UK and No. 6 on the Billboard 200, as well as topping album charts across Europe.
Reveal also produced an imaginative run of music videos. Garth Jennings transformed just 20 seconds from a spirited pool party into the constantly shifting four-minute tableau for “Imitation of Life;” Michael Moore directed “All the Way to Reno (You’re Gonna Be a Star),” filmed at a Brooklyn high school with local students participating behind the cameras; while “I’ll Take the Rain” became the band’s first entirely animated music video. All three are included on the anniversary edition’s Blu-ray.
Reveal marked a more settled creative period for R.E.M. following the departure of founding drummer Bill Berry and the more experimental terrain of 1998’s Up. “Everyone was in a pretty relaxed mood,” remembers Mills. “We had come to terms with all of the complications from Bill leaving the band, with all of the complexities of being a three-piece. Just finding the balance between us. We were in a good space.”
Unlike most R.E.M. albums, however, Reveal was not followed by a traditional tour. Instead, the band played a limited series of promotional performances around its release, making those shows rare live documents of the era.
Among them was The Black Sessions. Performed in an intimate setting just days before the album’s release, the session captures R.E.M. in the earliest days of bringing Reveal to the stage. Joined by guitarist Scott McCaughey, keyboardist Ken Stringfellow and drummer Joey Waronker, Michael Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills moved between then-new Reveal material and songs spanning the band’s catalog.
“We were having a good time,” Mills recalls. Buck adds, “It’s a cool performance of a lot of songs that we didn’t really play live that much, so it’s nice to have that out there. Something a little different.”
Twenty-five years later, Reveal (25th Anniversary Edition) offers a fresh look at that distinctive chapter in R.E.M.’s catalog, while The Black Sessions Revealed brings one of the era’s rare live performances to listeners for the first time.
Click here to pre-order/pre-save Reveal (25th Anniversary Edition) and The Black Sessions Revealed.
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