This is the first R.E.M. album that I ever bought. Actually, my dad bought it but that's not important. What IS important is that this album was enough to get me interested in R.E.M. I now own a lot of their CD's and several concerts and music video collections. While I think that R.E.M. could have picked better tracks to put on "The Best of" (i.e. Drive, Strange Currencies), this is still a great collection. It has popular songs like "Everybody Hurts" and "Losing My Religion", but it also has obscure and previously unreleased songs like "Animal" and "Bad Day." While it was an odd choice to put these songs on a best of album, I am still very glad that we got to hear them at all. I know that this review was very long and rambling and it probably didn't make a lot of sense, but I love R.E.M. and I wanted to encourage other people to start listening to them, as well. I'm not sure if I succeeded or not, but I certainly tried. So please, go out and buy this album and stop worrying if it's appropriate, which it is by the way. Trust me, music doesn't get any better than this.