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

The last R.E.M. song (for now?), from the band's upcoming greatest-hits LP, sounds like an extra cut from the Collapse Into Now sessions – but it suits their breakup perfectly. Michael Stipe sings about missing the taste of the ocean on your skin over gentle, orchestral folk rock that recalls the shady-margined utopianism of mid- Sixties California pop (and their own Out of Time). Stipe sounds appropriately frayed, but beautifully so, as he pushes toward that emotional Maginot line where memories dissolve into dreams; it's where they always did their best work.

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• Rob Sheffield Says Goodbye to R.E.M.
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• R.E.M. in the Real World – Rolling Stone's 1987 Cover Story
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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.