1986: R.E.M.
Life's Rich Pageant
It was a great year for jangle across the pond: Swindon, England's XTC perfected a sunny retro-pop blend with Skylarking, while up in Manchester the Smiths reached a disarmingly catchy peak of their own on The Queen Is Dead. But 1986's jauntiest chords belonged to Athens, Georgia's own R.E.M. Already stars on the college circuit since 1983's murky Murmur, the quartet used their fourth LP as an opportunity to clarify and enrich their sound. Suddenly you could hear every word Michael Stipe was singing (oblique musings about environmentalism, mostly) over Mills, Buck, and Berry's delicately rocking backup. Life's Rich Pageant yielded a pair of sing-along hits (''Fall on Me,'' ''Superman'') and a clutch of darker fan favorites (''Begin the Begin,'' ''Swan Swan H''). Taken as a whole, it captured R.E.M. after they crawled out of the sonic swamp, but well before they conquered the world or, ultimately, lost their focus — a Rich moment indeed.
ESSENTIAL TRACK ''Fall on Me''
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