covered Europe, North America, and Latin America. Release and reception Accelerate was the band's highest-charting release since 1996's New Adventures in Hi-Fi. It debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 with first week sales of 115,000 copies, went on to sell more than 353,000 copies in the United States and became the band's eighth album to top the British album charts. "Supernatural Superserious" was released as the album's first single. The second single "Hollow Man" was released in June 2008, with "Man-Sized Wreath" following in August. According to Billboard, Accelerate stayed 18 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart. Rolling Stone gave the album four out of five stars, with critic David Fricke praising the group's aggressive sound, writing, "Stipe has not sounded this viscerally engaged in his singing and poetically lethal in his writing since the twilight of the Reagan administration." NME reviewer Alan Woodhouse, similarly applauding the group's return to its previous sound, gave Accelerate an eight out of 10 rating, concluding "Accelerate is by some considerable distance R.E.M.'s best and most cohesive album since [former drummer] Bill Berry left, and crucially echoes a time when they made their best music, if not necessarily their biggest-selling." Q reviewer Keith Cameron wrote that unlike Around the Sun, "Accelerate is the sound of a band having enjoyed a good word with themselves—and us." Cameron described the album's first three songs as "powerful as the first half of 1986's Lifes Rich Pageant," but commented that the album suffers through a "midway dip that afflicts even the best R.E.M. album." Time reviewer Josh Tyrangiel praised guitarist Buck's "resurgence" and "propulsive riffs," but also wrote, "R.E.M.'s 14th album never quite generates the moody atmospherics of their first 10; it's a little hard to lose yourself in something that doesn't pause long enough for you to get lost." Uncut gave the album 1.5 out of five stars. Reviewer John Mulvey stated, "Accelerate is a simple, pragmatic record built on an uncomfortable truth: sometimes, even the best bands have to retrace their steps, if only to remind themselves what they're really good at." Accolades In 2009, Consequence of Sound ranked the album at number 37 in its list of the top 100 albums of the decade, and Under the Radar ranked it at number 193 in its list of the "Top 200 Albums of the 2000s." In 2010, the Kitsap Sun placed it at number