This is 99% invisible.

Hey, I can't find that on the radio.

I'm Roman Mars.

Y'all turn to that station.

I went to graduate school in Athens, Georgia,

which is a great place to be from the ages of about 18 to 25.

And if you like going out to bars and listening to live music,

even though Athens is a fairly small college town, it's had a huge and important

music scene for decades and the most famous band to come out of the Athens scene, undoubtedly

was R-E.M.

When I got to the house and I called you out,

I could tell you she had been crying,

crying.

To be provocative right from the start, I'm going to say that REMs out of time is the most politically

important album in the history of the United States.

And this provocateur is reporter Whitney Jones, though I have to say, I don't think out of time

is even the most important album in the history of REM.

Actually my argument here has nothing to do with the music.

This isn't one of those, oh, it's a

soundtrack to a generation or anything like that. Out of time made such a huge

impact because of its packaging. The box that out of time originally came in led to a bill being passed in Congress and an actual concrete law

Let's go back to 1985 the pop charts were full of Prince and Sheena Easton and the Youth of America were being corrupted.

...