Anybody who took a peek at notable releases from 1992 won’t be surprised to see R.E.M.’s Automatic For the People at the top of my list of that year’s best new music. This is arguably the best album by one of my very favorite bands.

It also framed the summer I met my wife and became the unofficial soundtrack to our budding romance, so it has that going for it.

With the exception of ‘Ignoreland,’ which I didn’t even like at the time, this album has aged remarkably well. Tracks such as ‘Try Not to Breathe,’ ‘Nightswimming,’ ‘Man On the Moon’ and ‘Find the River’ have the same elegant sweep, the same ability to send my heart into my throat.

This music is like the warm glow of fireflies on a quiet summer night. It’s soothing in its sadness.

I’ve mentioned this before on the blog… no band anchors me to different times and places in my life more than R.E.M. And no R.E.M. album does it more effectively than this one.

That wraps up my personal list of the best 1992 albums. Over the next two weeks I’ll look at some records that showed up on most critics’ lists that year but somehow remained off my radar.