History Trivia / Murmur

* OldShame: "Catapult", which due to the reasons listed in TroubledProduction below became hard for the band to perform or even ''hear'' again. They even stopped performing it regularly sometime after 1984 or so.

* TouristBump: The album gave an unexpected amount of publicity to the abandoned railway trestle in Georgia depicted on the back cover, to the point where it's become a popular tourist destination despite its dilapidation. So popular is "the ''Murmur'' trestle" that the local community has continuously pushed hard to preserve it as a landmark to this day.

* ColbertBump: The album gave an unexpected amount of publicity to the abandoned railway trestle in Georgia depicted on the back cover, to the point where it's become a popular tourist destination despite its dilapidation. So popular is "the ''Murmur'' trestle" that the local community has continuously pushed hard to preserve it as a landmark to this day.

* TroubledProduction: The band's "tryout" sessions for the album with Stephen Hague as a potential producer. During the recording session for "Catapult", Hague reportedly made the band perform an unnecessary amount of takes of the song, while trying to get the band to change their parts and claiming Bill Berry ''sucked at playing drums'', constantly trying to get him to "play better" each time (which demoralized Berry). To make matters worse, once the song was finished, Hague took it to a different studio (Synchro Sound in Boston, home of Music/TheCars) and added ''synthesizers'', which the band were explicitly dead-set against including in any of their songs at the time. This sent the band over the edge, pissing them off to such an extent that they refused to record the album without their prior producer Mitch Easter.

** The album's two singles, "Radio Free Europe" and "Talk About the Passion", were only given music videos after Creator/{{MTV}} requested R.E.M. to do so.

* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: Alongside their treatment of ''Reckoning'', the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab remaster of this album has never seen any re-releases since MoFi's initial limited-edition CD release of it in 1995. Both this remaster and the ''Reckoning'' one are somewhat divisive among fans because they both featured Mike Mills' bass-playing much higher in the mix than the original I.R.S. masters, but the fact that the band has gone on record stating that this alteration was closer to their original intentions for those albums has led to these specific versions becoming somewhat coveted.

** The album's two singles, "Radio Free Europe" and "Talk About the Passion", were only given music videos after Creator/{{MTV}} requested them to do so.

* CutSong: A CoverVersion of the Music/VelvetUnderground's [[Music/TheVelvetUndergroundAndNico "There She Goes Again"]] was recorded during the ''Murmur'' sessions with the intent of making it the closing track, and indeed the first cassette release includes it on the tracklist in this spot, but it was cut at the last minute (consequently hoisting album closer duties onto "West of the Fields") due to both a desire to have every track on the album be an original song and to reduce the amount of royalty cuts. The recording was ultimately released as the B-side to the re-recorded "Radio Free Europe", and was later included in the 1987 rarities compilation ''Dead Letter Office''.

* CutSong: A CoverVersion of the Music/VelvetUnderground's [[Music/TheVelvetUndergroundAndNico "There She Goes Again"]] was recorded during the ''Murmur'' sessions with the intent of making it the closing track, and the first cassette release includes it on the tracklist, but it was cut at the last minute (and consequently hoisting album closer duties onto "West of the Fields") due to both a desire to have every track on the album be an original song and to reduce the amount of royalty cuts. The recording was ultimately released as the B-side to the re-recorded "Radio Free Europe", and was later included in the 1987 rarities compilation ''Dead Letter Office''.

* TropeCodifier: The album cemented many of the tropes of American AlternativeRock in the '80s: moody artwork, '60s-inspired production and an explicitly non-commercial stance.

* TroubledProduction: The band's "tryout" sessions for the album with Stephen Hague as a potential producer. During the recording session, Hague reportedly made the band perform an unnecessary amount of takes of the song, while trying to get the band to change their parts and claiming Bill Berry ''sucked at playing drums'', constantly trying to get him to "play better" each time (which demoralized Berry). To make matters worse, once the song was finished, Hague took it to a different studio (Synchro Sound in Boston, home of Music/TheCars) and added ''synthesizers'', which the band were explicitly dead-set against including in any of their songs at the time. This sent the band over the edge, pissing them off to such an extent that they refused to record the album without their prior producer Mitch Easter.