MOG

I almost always have my iTunes playing on random while I am at home doing mundane things about my apartment. Recently I heard R.E.M.'s "Drive" for the first time in about forever. I couldn't help but think to myself, "wow, what a horribly mediocre song this is". Soon I was asking myself, did R.E.M. basically get a free pass artistically through the 90s? It seemed like anything they released was universally praised and sold like hot cakes. Sure, they had some great songs ("Electrolite", "Try Not to Breathe", to name a couple) in the 90s, but there was hardly the level of consistency like they had in the 80s. Am I just being bitter in the classic "cult favorite becomes wildly popular" sense, or did the quality of R.E.M.'s material really begin to drop off in the 90s?