That R.E.M. would open their first major-label effort with a track cynically titled "Pop Song 89" is evidence of their awareness of grouchier fans' complaints, and their ability to lampoon both those complaints and the corporate rock system, delivering a track that dismantles the machinery of the music industry while simultaneously giving it everything it requires. As album-openers go, it's a doozy, a hard-charger built on a classic Buck bent-wire guitar lead and a pitch-perfect smartass vocal from Stipe. The lyrics are essentially a rewrite of The Doors' odious "Hello, I Love You" but — as Stipe would later do with David Essex's "Rock On" in "Drive" — it subverts the original's superficiality, making a spectacle of its ludicrousness while redeploying its frivolous sentiment in the service of weightier inquiries (although, as they would quickly prove, the question "should we talk about the government?" was rhetorical). The back-to-back wallop of that song and the thrashing "Get Up" (which features the best Mike Mills backing vocal since "Fall On Me") start the record with a jolt, a call-to-arms for the alternative nation to push against the trickle-down dogma that was infecting America (it's not for nothing that the album was released… read more »