History YMMV / REM

** To be fair, there are other iconic and well-remembered songs by them, such as their BreakthroughHit "The One I Love", "Man on the Moon" and "Nightswimming".

** "Everybody Hurts" performed [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yIw46SSR9U live in Lima]].

** "Ignoreland" from ''Automatic For The People'' was written in response to the UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan and UsefulNotes/GeorgeHWBush's presidencies and their neoconservative policies. The line "marched into the capital" used to compare the rise of the Reagan-led Neoconservative Revolution to a coup, became frighteningly more prescient after ''an actual coup attempt'' in January 2021 that featured mobs of UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump supporters quite literally marching into the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. (the capital of the United States) to try and overturn the results of the 2020 election.

* FandomRivalry: With fans of Music/TheSmiths, on account of the fact that both bands were pioneering jangle-pop artists from the 80's, yet at the same time the two of them had radically different sounds from one another (R.E.M. specializing in arpeggio-based guitars and tangy, reedy vocals, and the Smiths specializing in riff-based guitars and ethereal, crooning vocals).

* {{Misblamed}}: Fans, critics, and analysts tend to erroneously point fingers at Bill Berry's departure as being the reason for the band's much-contested incorporation of electronic elements in the late 90's and early 2000's. However, the band themselves stated that the shift was already planned before Berry left, and indeed "Leave" on ''Music/NewAdventuresInHiFi'' was an early hint at that.

** "Stand" from the album prior also garners this type of appeal, being based on cheesy bubblegum pop songs from the 1960's. The fact that Music/WeirdAlYankovic parodied it (as "[[Music/UHFOriginalMotionPictureSoundtrackAndOtherStuff Spam]]") certainly helps.

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: While R.E.M. were often considered by the abrasive side of the 80's alternative movement to be rather not abrasive enough, the band's various shifts in sound have all saw backlash from some of its fans, most notoriously the shift to a more polished sound on ''Music/{{Green}}'', the one-off {{grunge}} experiment on ''Music/{{Monster|REMAlbum}}'', and the electronic soundscapes on ''Music/{{Up|REMAlbum}}''.

* VindicatedByHistory: ''Monster'' and ''Up'' are probably the band's most dramatic examples of this, but this applies to some extent to almost all of the band's post-''Automatic'' output, which was often downgraded until the band broke up, at which point people went back and began reconsidering. ''Monster'' in particular was aided by people becoming more aware of the actual intent behind it (a critique of mainstream celebrity culture), while ''Up'' was in part aided by electronic music becoming more widely accepted again in the 2010's, allowing people to see that the songwriting on the album was still pretty good at that point.

* RecycledTheme:
** An unreleased early song known as "Ha (We Get Paid For It)" contains the riffs for "Burning Hell", "Old Man Kensey" and "Oddfellows Local 151".
** Another unreleased song known as "Fall Above" has a lyric that was reused in "Pilgrimage".
** The music for "Catapult" is so similar to the slightly earlier "Romance" that this may have contributed to the latter being cut from "Murmur". "Romance" was eventually remade for a movie soundtrack in 1987 and then included on "Eponymous" the next year.
** "Bad Day" was reworked into "It's The End Of The World As We Know It", before eventually being rerecorded in its own right 17 years later. The new version has a different intro to differentiate the two songs.
** "Animal" is based on an instrumental Reveal outtake.

* FaceOfTheBand: Michael Stipe, although he isn't the main creative force as every member contributes to the final product.

* NightmareFuel: The album cover for ''Monster'' is an out-of-focus marker drawn of a bobcat-cougar-lynx...thing's disembodied head. Worse is that there's a drawing of a headless bear on the back of the CD, implying that what you're looking at is the monster's ''decapitated head.''

* "So Central Rain" is not called "Sorry".

** While their appeal varies, the first three albums without Berry (''Up'', ''Reveal'', ''Around the Sun'') are often considered a DorkAge that was ended by ''Accelerate''; consequently, any number of fans will try to pretend that any one, two, or even all three of those albums don't exist (though much less commonly with ''Up'' after it got VindicatedByHistory).

* FriendlyFandoms: With Music/TenThousandManiacs, due to both bands having a similar style, as well as Michael Stipe and Natalie Merchant being romantically linked for a while. Both lead singers made contributions to the other bands' albums.

** "Stand" from the album prior also garners this type of appeal, being based on cheesy bubblegum pop songs from the 1960's. The fact that Music/WeirdAlYankovic parodied it (as "Spam") certainly helps.

* ValuesResonance: Originally written in reaction to the UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan and UsefulNotes/GeorgeHWBush administrations, "Ignoreland" from 1992's ''Automatic For The People'' still remains relevant all the way into TheNewTens.

** "Ignoreland" from ''Automatic For The People" was written in response to the UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan and UsefulNotes/GeorgeHWBush's presidencies and their neoconservative policies. The line "marched into the capital" used to compare the rise of the Reagan-led Neoconservative Revolution to a coup, became frighteningly more prescient after ''an actual coup attempt'' in January 2021 that featured mobs of UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump supporters quite literally marching into the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. (the capital of the United States) to try and overturn the results of the 2020 election.