R.E.M.

R.E.M. formed in 1980 in Athens, Georgia as four University of Georgia students — Michael Stipe on vocals, Peter Buck on guitar, Mike Mills on bass, and Bill Berry on drums. Their first single, "Radio Free Europe," recorded in April 1981 and released that July, came out on the tiny Hib-Tone label in a first pressing of only 1,000 copies. The debut album Murmur arrived in 1983 on I.R.S. Records, and through the 1980s the band became the defining act of American college radio — influential, respected, but still operating in the FM underground.

The mainstream earthquake came in March 1991 with Out of Time, which hit number one in both the US and UK and eventually sold 4.2 million copies in America alone and roughly 12 million worldwide by 1996. The album's lead single, "Losing My Religion" — built on a mandolin riff and structured as a confession — peaked at number four on the Hot 100, and R.E.M. took home three Grammys at the 1992 ceremony. "Shiny Happy People," its improbably chipper companion single, became the flip side everyone knew. Automatic for the People followed in October 1992, darker and even more expansive: it sold over 15 million copies worldwide and carried "Everybody Hurts" and "Man on the Moon" into the cultural bloodstream. Monster (1994) cranked the amplification back up and solidified R.E.M. as the thinking kid's arena band.

The decade's latter half brought turbulence. Bill Berry suffered a brain aneurysm onstage in Lausanne, Switzerland on March 1, 1995, and survived — but the incident shadowed the band's sense of invulnerability. In 1996, R.E.M. re-signed with Warner Bros. for a reported $80 million, described at the time as possibly the most expensive recording contract ever made. Berry departed in October 1997, and the remaining trio continued as R.E.M. until the band amicably disbanded on September 21, 2011. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, cementing a legacy that had moved from college-radio prophets to the center of American rock and roll.