Mike Mills of R.E.M reveals the band have "plenty of vault songs" yet to be released

During the podcast episode, Mills reflects on tracks such as "Airportman", "Daysleeper", and "Hope", and the decision as to why the band moved into more of an electronic sound.

"It was made under such difficult circumstances – the story is told and known that Bill had left the band. We were already leaning towards making a more electronic, machine-driven record, and Bill's leaving accelerated that process," Mills reveals. He goes on to add that most bands would've taken some time away to process their feelings on losing a member, but R.E.M were "a stubborn bunch", and because they'd already had the demos in place, they decided to go ahead with it. "We made a really remarkable record under remarkable circumstances," he says.

Meredith asks Mills about the '60s kind of sound that ran beneath the electronic elements they were leaning into, which makes Mills admit that "we didn't know what was there, we were just winging it," before adding that the process always begins with live instruments: "There is usually one guy with a guitar and one guy with a piano at the core of most of them, so even though these songs are very electrified or mechanised – however you wish to describe it – there's still a real organic song at the core of almost all of it. That makes a difference."

The 25th anniversary box-set of Up contains a previously unreleased, 11-song live set from the band’s ’99 taping for the TV series, Party of Five, instead of bonus songs or b-sides. Mills enjoys "juxtaposition of putting a live show with our least live record. It gives a little humanity and organic feel that might not have been there if we had just put out the demos."

"I'll be honest with you, it wasn't my idea. I like putting the demos on there," Mills says, "but it seemed like this was such a departure record for us that continuing to put demos and outtakes seemed a little out of character with this record. Because we had thrown out literally every rule we had when we made it, we just said there are no rules, so the other rules we were going to break were to fill it up with outtakes and demos – we're gonna give something completely different to our most different record."

Following this, he reveals that there are many vault songs waiting to be released, but "there's a reason you haven't heard most of it," he laughs. "As a fan, I'm always curious about outtakes and demos and things like that but you have to decide if it enhances the knowledge of a song or if it diminishes it."