Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982–2011

Creation and compilation

In addition to previously recorded music that spans the band's entire career, three new songs are included. Their final studio album—Collapse into Now—fulfilled the band's contractual obligations to Warner Bros. and they began recording material without a contract a few months later with producer Jacknife Lee in Athens, Georgia with the possible intention of self-releasing the work. Rather than completing an album's worth of material, the band elected to take what they had completed from those sessions and release them on this compilation. The new songs "Hallelujah" and "A Month of Saturdays" were demoed in the Collapse into Now sessions and the lead single "We All Go Back to Where We Belong" was recorded entirely after that album.

The band compiled the contents themselves, attempting to capture different periods of their songwriting. Vocalist Michael Stipe has explained that the inspiration for his approach to compiling the songs was the David Bowie compilation Changesonebowie. The title of the album comes from a quip that guitarist Peter Buck made about the band during an interview in 1988, "R.E.M is part lies, part heart, part truth and part garbage."

Promotion

"We All Go Back to Where We Belong" was made available over the Internet on October 17, 2011. Early reviews of the song considered it a "low-key, string-drenched ballad" (Stereogum) and compared it to the pop styling of Burt Bacharach and R.E.M.'s 2001 album Reveal.

In the weeks leading up to the release of the compilation, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe did a brief span of promotional appearances in British media, ruling out the option of ever reuniting; while Buck went on tour with John Wesley Harding and The Minus 5. The band previewed the new songs through NPR's web site starting November 6, 2011.

Reception

Writing for BBC Music, Paul Whitelaw has called the retrospective "definitive", rendering all the band's other compilations "all but obsolete." He goes on to say that the arc of the band's career shows them becoming increasingly mild and irrelevant, but this album captures that chronology. Andy Gill of The Independent disagreed and gave the album a perfect five-star rating, saying that the arc of the band's songwriting had "inspired creativity" including the "Bacharach-esque touches of the final unreleased tracks."

Track listing

All tracks written by Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe unless otherwise noted.

1. "Gardening at Night" – 3:29 (from Chronic Town, 1982)
2. "Radio Free Europe" – 4:03 (from Murmur, 1983)
3. "Talk About the Passion" – 3:21 (from Murmur)
4. "Sitting Still" – 3:17 (from Murmur)
5. "So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)" – 3:15 (from Reckoning, 1984)
6. "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville" (Edited version) – 4:32 (from Reckoning)
7. "Driver 8" – 3:23 (from Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985)
8. "Life and How to Live It" – 4:06 (from Fables of the Reconstruction)
9. "Begin the Begin" – 3:28 (from Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986)
10. "Fall on Me" – 2:50 (from Lifes Rich Pageant)
11. "Finest Worksong" – 3:48 (from Document, 1987)
12. "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" – 4:05 (from Document)
13. "The One I Love" – 3:17 (from Document)
14. "Stand" – 3:12 (from Green, 1988)
15. "Pop Song 89" – 3:04 (from Green)
16. "Get Up" – 2:39 (from Green)
17. "Orange Crush" – 3:52 (from Green)
18. "Losing My Religion" – 4:28 (from Out of Time, 1991)
19. "Country Feedback" – 4:09 (from Out of Time)
20. "Shiny Happy People" – 3:46 (from Out of Time)
21. "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" – 4:07 (from Automatic for the People, 1992)

22. "Everybody Hurts" – 5:17 (from Automatic for the People)
23. "Man on the Moon" – 5:13 (from Automatic for the People)
24. "Nightswimming" – 4:16 (from Automatic for the People)
25. "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" – 4:00 (from Monster, 1994)
26. "New Test Leper" – 5:26 (from New Adventures in Hi-Fi, 1996)
27. "Electrolite" – 4:05 (from New Adventures in Hi-Fi)
28. "At My Most Beautiful" (Buck, Mills, Stipe) – 3:35 (from Up, 1998)
29. "The Great Beyond" (Buck, Mills, Stipe) – 5:06 (from Man on the Moon, 1999)
30. "Imitation of Life" (Buck, Mills, Stipe) – 3:57 (from Reveal, 2001)
31. "Bad Day" – 4:05 (from In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988–2003, 2003)
32. "Leaving New York" (Buck, Mills, Stipe) – 4:49 (from Around the Sun, 2004)
33. "Living Well Is the Best Revenge" (Buck, Mills, Stipe) – 3:11 (from Accelerate, 2008)
34. "Supernatural Superserious" (Buck, Mills, Stipe) – 3:23 (from Accelerate)
35. "Überlin" (Buck, Mills, Stipe) – 4:15 (from Collapse into Now, 2011)
36. "Oh My Heart" (Buck, Mills, Stipe, Scott McCaughey) – 3:21 (from Collapse into Now)
37. "Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter" (Buck, Mills, Stipe) – 2:45 (from Collapse into Now)
38. "A Month of Saturdays" (Buck, Mills, Stipe) – 1:40 (previously unreleased)
39. "We All Go Back to Where We Belong" (Buck, Mills, Stipe)  – 3:35 (previously unreleased)
40. "Hallelujah" (Buck, Mills, Stipe) – 3:42 (previously unreleased)

41. "Radio Free Europe" – 3:11
42. "Talk About the Passion" – 3:21
43. "Fall On Me" – 2:59
44. "The One I Love" – 3:17
45. "Orange Crush" – 3:50
46. "Losing My Religion" – 4:45
47. "Man on the Moon" – 4:46
48. "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" – 4:01
49. "All the Way to Reno (You're Gonna Be a Star)" – 4:22
50. "Leaving New York" – 4:43
51. "Supernatural Superserious" – 3:39
52. "Überlin" – 3:53

Personnel