Johnny Sharp

If it ain't broke, so the maxim goes, don't fix it. But no artist worth their garlands ever paid much heed to that way of thinking - with a few honourable exceptions such as The Ramones. Nonetheless, most musicians prefer evolution to revolution, letting their approach to their work develop naturally as the muse dictates, sudden changes in style only running the risk of alienating fans.

If you wanted to fill a compilation album with songs of adolescent angst, you wouldn't have too much trouble, particularly if you're a fan of guitar-based rock music. Call it 'Teenage Kicks', start with the title track, and off you go. But what would you pick for its album equivalent? Is there a long-playing record that sums up the experience of being a disaffected, angry and unloved teenager in the modern world, particularly the male of that particular species?

It's a malaise almost as old as pop music itself. Second album syndrome – the crisis faced by an artist writing the follow-up to a hit debut LP, when they realise that after having had their whole lives to come up with the contents of their first offering to the world, they now only have a few months to rustle up a fresh batch of equally strong material for the follow-up.

There comes a time in every band's career when the only way is pop. Having slowly built a loyal cult fanbase and a burgeoning critical reputation on the back of three albums (and an early EP) that intertwined artful post-punk and lopsided, Paisley Underground-adjacent guitar rock, by 1987 R.E.M. were ready to paint with broader strokes, albeit while retaining a pronounced polemical edge and one foot firmly in an angular, left-field musical lineage.