Lifes Rich Pageant is the fourth studio album by the American alternative rock band R.E.M., released on July 28, 1986.

At the end of "Just a Touch" frontman Michael Stipe can be heard screaming the line "I'm so young, I'm so goddamn young", quoting longtime influence Patti Smith's live cover version of The Who's "My Generation" released on the B-side of her 1976 single "Gloria",[3][4] which she also uses at the end of her cover version of "Privilege (Set Me Free)" from her 1978 album Easter.

[5] The recording studio was larger and had newer technology than they were used to, and they enjoyed the area, attending many concerts in nearby Bloomington while there.

[12] The ecologically conscious "Fall on Me" (a personal favorite of Michael Stipe) and a cover of the Clique's "Superman", sung by Mike Mills, were the only singles released from the album (the single version of the latter removed the sample from one of the Godzilla movies that began the album version).

[25] Anthony DeCurtis, writing a contemporary review for Rolling Stone, called it "brilliant and groundbreaking, if modestly flawed", praising it as "the most outward looking record R.E.M.

He found that it "carries on...  the dark Southern folk artistry of last year's Fables of the Reconstruction" and "paints a swirling, impressionistic portrait of a country at the moral crossroads".

[9] Alexis Petridis of The Guardian says it "may represent the band at their absolute zenith... imbued with a swaggering confidence absent from its murky predecessor".

embracing the mainstream: "For the first time, it had occurred to REM that they had a constituency – and, indeed, that it might be possible and desirable to build on that" with an album where "Every note... fizzes and crackles with the urgency of people who’ve made their minds up".

[21] Both DeCurtis and Deusner praise the production work of Don Gehman, comparing it favorably to their previous album Fables of the Reconstruction.

[9][26] All songs written by Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe, except "Superman" by Mitchell Bottler and Gary Zekley.