Upon further review: R.E.M.’s “Out of Time”

Buck's face says it all.

Why the Athens, Ga.-bred band’s seventh full-length album is a dried-up pile of vom on the side of the road and not a breakthrough Grammy Award-winning classic:

Because “Losing My Religion” is the only good song on the album; it’s timeless, actually.

Because “Shiny Happy People” is the second-most well-crafted pop song on the album.

Best album cover ever?

Because on three of the songs there are little or no lyrics, so therefore little or no thought given to the songs by one Michael Stipe: “Endgame,” “Low” and “Belong.”

Because the aforementioned songs give weight to the argument that Stipe was the one who caused R.E.M. to be “Out of Time” with the record label because he couldn’t come up with any lyrics or vocal melodies to match the otherwise lush melodies that Berry, Buck and Mills came up with.

Because “Near Wild Heaven,” one of two tracks where the unable-to-sing Mills was allowed to take or share lead vocal duties, is in the crucial clean-up spot on the album; there’s a faster, cooler version of "Texarkana" out there with Stipe on lead vocals that is actually kind of sublime.

What happened to you?

Because “Radio Song,” an experiment on par with Dennis Miller as color commentator on “Monday Night Football,” is the leadoff track, undoubtedly one of the sources of the eventual departure of Berry (yeah, the aneurysm, but …); can’t imagine the mega-cool Unibrow King going for this mess of a marriage of limp chamber pop and watered-down rap; on behalf of white people everywhere, I apologize to KRS-1.