They hated making it and have often dismissed it, but R.E.M.'s third record, a dark meditation on the soul of the South, has aged brilliantly. Recorded with producer Joe Boyd, Fables explored a craggy interiority they'd later smooth out; Peter Buck's moss-hung jangle and Michael Stipe's benedictive mumbling lent themselves to vague, spellbinding music that floats in the space between history and memory (this reissue adds a boring demos disc). There's a train song, a work song, two songs about sad old guys and "Can't Get There From Here," a poppy tune about not trusting maps that just missed being their first hit.

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.