February, 1996. My mother passed in 1996. Above I said 2006. Time sure flies. So much time, but I guess this music, sharing my story, makes it seem like it just happened. Thank you for letting me share.

Monica,

I am sitting here in tears, feeling sideswiped and sad -- but also unbelievably connected to your story. I am (a bit) shocked to hear your story and read a few others here that have powerfully connected the feelings of young grief to this album. I find it remarkable. I thought I was the only one.

When I was 19 living in Orlando, Florida -- my mother was diagnosed breast cancer for the second time in her life. Mastectomy, radiation, an intense three years of ups and downs lead to her death in February, 2006. Those years were filled with pain and doom -- and yet also with so much...life. Living. Awareness that things don't last forever. This album was the soundtrack.

"Try Not to Breathe" makes me think of this time. Brings me back there in a flash. All that youth, hopefulness, the wide expanse of my life right in front of me...and the deep deep pain of knowing, like you said, that nothing was going to be as I had thought.

I am not sure how I got all that from a song from my teenage "favorite band." But like you, the meaning of the lyrics have also grown and changed over the years for me.

The one thing I would add about this record (that I haven't thought about in ages) was that my mother and I shared a love of another song on it -- "Everybody Hurts." She had seen the video on MTV and fell in love with it. She had tried to never take her cancer too seriously. To be positive. To keep it in perspective. I heard the song and found hope for my 19 year old self. I even remember her calling me to tell me about it. She was happy to share a love of my favorite band. And maybe happy to find a middle ground to help talk about her illness. I am so proud and happy that she and I shared that.

Monica, I am positive that your father is proud of your love of art, your ability to articulate your connection to it, and how through the telling of your story you've touched others. I just needed you to know how much you have affected me. Love to you.

Monica's story speaks for a lot of other people, I imagine, who have been deeply affected by REM. Their music has been a key part of the soundtrack to my life since the early 80's. Songs such as "Driver 8", "Talk about the Passion", "Finest Worksong", "Be Mine," and others hold deeply personal meanings for me.

REM's music has always been evocative, not proscriptive. They provide a beautiful pallate of sounds which the listener uses to paint his own picture.

Because I hold my cards a little closer to the chest than Monica, I rarely tell people about how important REM's music has been to me. Often I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that they won't "get it." Thanks to Monica for having the courage to tell her story and articulate publicly a version of what many others feel privately.

I listened to the show yesterday evening via podcast. At the beginning of the segment when she mentioned both her father's death and 'Automatic for the People' I was pretty sure which song she was going to reference.

I first heard 'Try Not to Breathe' shortly after my father's death in the winter of '93. The first time I heard it I knew exactly what it was about (at least for me) and it hit me like an emotional ton of bricks, made even more poignant and relevant with my father having died from emphysema. I've had a lot of relevant 'soundtrack' songs in my middle aged life, but nothing has ever been quite as powerful and direct as that one.

I guess music and time have a way of illuminating the past and bringing a rush of memories/thoughts to the fore. This album(more than any other in R.E.M.'s catalog)transports me to a time and place that is fraught with those pivotal/seminal moments in life's arc; Those moments which point the direction our individual paths will take. AFTP came out just as my older brother died, the affects of which changed my family and myself forever.

The soundtrack of this album, and (subsequently) all of R.E.M.'s music has been the touchstone to so much of the rest of my life which followed since my brothers death.
I am happy to say that I have grown and aged with this band over the years and their music fits all parts of it. They ARE artists in the truest sense of the word. And they are also first class humans too. I am very grateful for REM which I know is a strange thing to say, but so be it. I hope to continue to have their musical journey fit into those spaces of time which occupy my time/life.

L’Shana Tovah and Eid Mubarak!

As a lifelong fan of REM, I have been inspired by the music they have created in many different ways. I have found their entire catalog to my personal therapist throughout life's journey. My father passed away two years ago this month, I lost my job six months and my life seems to be falling apart. I find some peace in listening to my favorite mix of REM songs and taking on the challenges of the day. Thank you for listening.

After hearing your segment on "Aha Moment: Automatic for The People" I was moved by some memories that had a "soundtrack" attached to them. My soundtrack is by Coldplay. There are so many songs with so many poignant lyrics that it's hard to truly pinpoint just one album. But I think I did.

I was living in New Jersey after deciding to further my career, and pursue a relationship that I was in. When I finally settled in to living in a strange place, the relationship that I put so much time and energy into started to collapse. I watched someone I truly love bury herself in depression and wither away despite my support and love.

The time I spent alone - and it was most of the time - was spent either at work overnight, or listening to music and thinking. I did other stuff, no hermit here, but the music of Coldplay seemed to say exactly what I was feeling.

The Album "X&Y" was full of the thoughts and feelings I wish she had heard and understood. Almost every song has a lyric that was a message I wanted her to listen to. One lyric that stands out, "if you never try, you'll never know" was something I've come to believe in my everyday life. "What If" suggests to "take a breath, jump over the side," something I wished she'd done and chose to pick the happier path in life.

"Fix You" still has the ability to conger up tears and memories. Although my life has moved on, I still have memories of watching her "drown" in her sorrow despite my best efforts. Recently, I saw the band live, and that was the song that brought me to my knees.

After hearing the story of how REM affected Monica Murphy, I dug out my "Automatic For The People" cd and listened. I saw how someone else had an emotional response to music and fitting lyrics. I shed tears and then thought how I'm not the only one moved by the power of music.

Great segment, please keep up the good work.

Thank you for the reflections.

I've always thought of my grandmother when I hear REM's Try not to breathe or Everybody hurts. She was a very independent woman who raised her two sons in Philadelphia after her husband died young. Those songs always remind me of when I would visit in her last year as her health declined when she was living in a nursing home.

I have to add that John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany changed my life significantly. I was working on Wall Street in the 80's, enjoying a post-college life, when I happen to spot it as I passed a bookstore. Irving had been our graduation commencement speaker in 1985.

After reading of Owen's beliefs and travails in the novel, I decided to act on a belief that I should go into medicine. I had tucked those aspirations away years before and discounted them as a college student's idealism.

I'm now an HIV/AIDS doctor in the South Bronx and never discount the beliefs, or aspirations, that I might hear.

Thanks again.

"Happiness" by Elliott Smith

I made a promise to a boy that I'd love him truly
But reality and time had made that pact unduly
This song explains how much I still care
and that i still don't know, it's all so unfair

A soon as I heard the into I dreaded that the music might be Automatic for the People. When it played, it hit me like a hammer. This is the music of my fathers death as well. I was a college student home for summer in 1994, and worked at night. In the day I would sit in my room reading fantasy novels while I could hear my father slowly dying in the his bed in the adjacent room. I would play Automatic for the People to hide the sound. Now, it is intimately linked to that time in my life, and I only rarely listen to it. It is a beautiful album, and I was pleased and moved to hear it discussed on your show. Thanks.

Thank you for sharing this experience with us. I dug out my copy of Automatic for the People last night after hearing how it struck a cathartic moment for you. I haven't listened to the CD since 1996. 13 years later, it's brilliant in a different way.

it was a british band and it was brinsley schwartz and the song was the ballad of the has been beauty queen and everything(well almost) changed one night (the eve of father's day) when god (something a lot bigger than my state of mind) said hello with this song....

I've had much beauty in my life.
I've had friends and love.
I've had two kids, which I have not seen for years.

A week ago I came home to an empty apartment, an empty fridge- an empty life.
I've been fighting with all my heart the desire to kill myself.

I heard the song "right where it belongs" from the album 'with teeth'
by nine inch nails.

To look at the lyrics alone, they would appear patrizing. Entwined
with the music, and Trent Reznor's nurturing voice; the song is not a
scold on the listener. It's a dare.

I reached inside and felt the courage to be involved with my life-
even if I am the only one in it.

I was at a Ben Folds concert during the '90s and he went into "Not the Same" a song from an album I knew pretty well. I started crying, realizing that life-changing transformations happen to young people, where their perceptions totally shift or change in a moment, with huge implications for the rest of their lives. My own transformation, which I guess I'd been repressing the implications of, was being molested by an older friend as a young teenager. I kind of realized it had really shaped my actions as an adult, and my ability to trust people. That song still has such a deep personal meaning for me now.

Thanks for such a perceptive little story about pop culture and it's sometimes deeper significance.

Thank you for that short piece. A little over a month ago someone very close to me died suddenly. I am on a search for music to soothe the soul, I've never listened to R.E.M. in this light. Thank you.

Wow! This was a great story. Really touching. Now I know why Kurt from Nirvana chose the album as his last request.

Thank you so much for filling in that blank. Have to pick up the CD ASAP.