Judge me for it if you will, but this song and this video were a big part of who I was at sixteen: a bookish, depressed Catholic kid in a new town. All that nightmare religious imagery and Vermeer light blew my tiny mind, accompanied by that spine-chilling mandolin and Stipe’s nearly affectless vocals (so much more effective than some mass of emoting).
Reading the chapter on R.E.M. in Dorian Lynskey’s 33 Revolutions Per Minute has given me a fresher appreciation of their early work, and, well, “Shiny Happy People” aside, Out of Time will be a key part of my high school soundtrack. I admit, I had a bit of a “what, they were still alive?” reaction to the breakup news. Still, they had a good run, didn’t they?
