10 Songs That Are Impossible To Understand

R.E.M. have really come a long way from being just your average college rock band coming out of Georgia. Despite not really having that much in common with the other pop acts of the world, their run of classics at the turn of the '90s made for some of the most thoughtful songs ever created during the decade, from the pure pain of Everybody Hurts to the loss of humanity in Losing My Religion. Quite a feat for a band who's first single was borderline gibberish.

During the first few years of R.E.M.'s career, it was virtually impossible to decipher anything that Michael Stipe was actually saying, with most of his words sounding like nothing but mumbles from one track to the next. That makes it all the more intriguing why something like Radio Free Europe even got popular in the first place, considering you could barely even sing along to it whenever it came on the radio.

If you asked Stipe about it though, he has no idea either, saying that most of the band's first few shows and rehearsals were made up of him just making words up to fit the melody. That actually might be a form meta art in and of itself. I mean, why would you even bother writing lyrics when the pure emotion of the tracks can give the audience the opportunity to fill in the gaps?