My relationship with R.E.M. started on the wrong foot. I was not doing well on school, my usual good grades plummeted and I couldn’t concentrate at all. Every time I had a bad result on an exam, Michael Stipe crooning “I thought that I heard you laughing” tormented me, again and again. An intrusive thought, chastising me for my lack of attention.

So I hated R.E.M. with a passion, although Shiny Happy People made me smile because it had Kate Pierson, and we all need her voice.

Fast forward to september of 1994. MTV Music Video awards were on. I was still reeling in excitement from the ’93 edition, as Neil Young and Pearl Jam’s duet was everything I wanted from a live show. R.E.M. wins an award for a song of theirs I’ve never heard, and their presentation gets stormed by a Nathaniel Hornblower, who rambles on and on about Spike Jonze, director of Beastie Boys’ Sabotage. It was Adam Yauch in disguise and I thought it was the fucking funniest thing ever.

A couple of days later, and What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? takes MTV by storm. I love the song and the energy. The regret that Losing my Religion infected my soul and body with was long gone. This made me feel good. “You said that irony was the shackles of youth” rocked my world.

As I saved for the album, a second single came out. Bang & Blame moved me in ways no song had before then. It was remorseful, with that delayed guitar feeling like an intrusive thought (or a bad memory from junior high school) echoing in my head. I was still in a bad place from junior high school in 94, daily bullying will lock you there, and my way out was writing every day on a diary, one I eventually had to get rid off. I couldn’t stomach what I wrote there.

Monster is a brutal album. If Automatic for the People is a deep meditation on how we deal with death, mourning, and acceptance of all pain, Monster is about relationships. And relationships aren’t always good. We are primed and brainwashed to think that it’ll be the end all of our worries, when it usually is the kindling of the fire that ravages our emotions and our sanity.

Stipe doesn’t hold back. Obsession, oral sex, jealousy, longing, losing yourself to your partner, going blind to all the red flags. It’s a dense album, not only due to Peter Buck’s granite solid guitar work, but because Mike Mills barely has lead vocals here. I usually find his voice soothing, like a grandpa that knows you’re hurting and comforts you. Don’t get me wrong, Stipe is never out of touch with how harsh he is painting himself here, but Mills is sorely missed, and his few contributions, especially in the dour, malefic You, the album closer, make the chilling track a little more palatable.

I’m terrible at picking up red flags and every time I need to lick my wounds, I come back to Monster. The older I get, the more I “get” the lyrical work. Never mind how sonically appealing this album will forever be for me, it’s the lyrics what haunts me forever.

-Sam J. Valdés López