R.E.M. were one of the biggest bands in the world as they arrived at their ninth studio album Monster. Two early 90s records, 1991’s Out Of Time and quickfire follow-up Automatic For The People (released just a year later) had sent the Athens, Georgia stratospheric. But Michael Stipe, Mike Mills, Peter Buck and Bill Berry were always very much a band programmed to wriggle out of anything resembling a comfort zone and they mixed things up on Monster, moving away from the rustic, acoustic-heavy stylings of its predecessors and into something rockier and more electrified. The record was heralded with the fuzzy riffs and hollered vocals of lead single What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?, which turns 30 at the beginning of September.
As well as being one of the band’s most memorable hits, it also has an intriguing backstory, its title coming from a line that was repeatedly shouted at US TV reporter Dan Rather when he was attacked in New York in 1986. Looking back at the song with Rather himself in an interview a few years ago, frontman and lyricist Stipe said the song was a generational gap.
