Document

It was this album, with its monstrous breakout hits “The One I Love” and “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine),” that finally turned R.E.M. from beloved college-rock weirdos into global superstars. We had gotten a preview of Document’s more rockish sound on the previous year’s Lifes Rich Pageant, but that album still looked back to their earlier Byrds-y jangle-pop approach. Here they embrace the wall of sound, riding waves of multilayered, distorted guitars on tracks like “The One I Love,” “Exhuming McCarthy,” and “Welcome to the Occupation.” They haven’t left their cockeyed alt-rock sensibilities behind entirely, of course: “Oddfellows Local 151” is both heartbreaking and deeply weird, and “King of Birds” is just plain weird (and also weirdly lovely). But Document was a pivot point in R.E.M.’s career, for good reason.