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Something that strikes me about the meteoric rise of REM is how little it seems to have with anything outside of the music. U2 and (to a lesser degree) Simple Minds absolutely resonated with a certain cultural turn in the mid-80s, as people began to question the values of the era (albeit in a way that it could be argued simply mirrored them). REM on the other hand seemed more like a band that simply became huge on the strength of a strong single that they were then able to follow up with a solid, if ultimately unremarkable, album. In this sense there was a kind of inevitability to the rise of U2, which definitely isn't something that I'd say about REM. In that way REM are one of the more mysterious bands, at least in terms of their success.
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