Music writers have revisited REM's uneasy relationship with 'Shiny Happy People', the band's biggest US chart hit, which was pointedly left off their second best-of compilation, In Time: The Best of REM 1988–2003. The 1991 single from Out of Time reached its highest-ever position on the Billboard Hot 100, yet frontman Michael Stipe has long expressed disdain for the song, once bluntly declaring "I hate that song" during a 1995 television appearance. The disconnect is notable because it arrived just as REM, previously stalwarts of underground college rock alongside acts like Hüsker Dü and The Replacements, were being embraced as figureheads of the mainstream alternative boom.

The song's cheerful, sing-along style, featuring Kate Pierson of The B-52s and a video of Stipe dancing in a backwards cap, sat oddly against the grunge-dominated charts of the era, fuelling theories that Stipe's discomfort stemmed from the track's unfashionable tone or even a misread political subtext linked to Tiananmen Square. However, Stipe has downplayed such interpretations, telling The Quietus two decades later that he was "always at peace with it" and only found it "a little bit embarrassing" that it became such a huge hit. The band did revisit the song humorously, including a 'Furry Happy Monsters' version for Sesame Street, but have rarely performed it live since.