This album marked the beginning of my love for R.E.M. I can’t remember whether it was on the radio or on MTV when I first heard “The One I Love”. But I liked it. Finally, a new band with a (back then) fresh sound that really grabbed me. I remained loyal to the band right up until they split up, even though my enthusiasm gradually cooled. At some point, they perhaps became too big for me, and all the albums after the excellent ‘Up’ left me cold (even before that, I’d struggled with ‘Monster’, which I considered a failure). Today I listen to it with more distance; even on this album, not all that glitters is gold. But the raw urgency of R.E.M.’s music and Stipe’s cryptic yet somehow hypnotic lyrics were good companions to me for a long time as I was growing up.