Click to listen to R.E.M.'s 'We All Go Back To Where We Belong'

No better time than a breakup for a long goodbye: R.E.M.'s eighth compilation LP is a 40-song blowout. Chronological evenhandedness short-shrifts their vaunted 1980s but shows that their confused past 15 years did produce some Georgia peaches – see "Leaving New York" and "Überlin," which give the dreaminess of their early days a mournful cast. There are also three songs recorded after 2011's Collapse Into Now: "A Month of Saturdays" is Green-like dance rock; "We All Go Back to Where We Belong" goes to breakup-ballad heaven; and "Hallelujah" is a forlorn art-pop meltdown with Michael Stipe and Mike Mills sharing one last golden yodel before receding into the great beyond.  

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“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.