Synopsis

Filmed at Howard Finster's Paradise Garden in Summerville, Georgia, the video places R.E.M. inside an eccentric outdoor environment filled with handmade sculptures, painted objects, and religious folk-art imagery. The band members wander through the grounds in a loose, dreamlike performance rather than following a conventional narrative. Their movements are intercut with staged tableaux and playful performance scenes, creating a homespun, surreal atmosphere that matches the song's urgent energy and cryptic lyrics.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was made at MTV's request to accompany the 1983 re-recording of "Radio Free Europe," released as the lead single from *Murmur*. It is separate from the original 1981 Hib-Tone recording.

• Filming took place on May 13 and 14, 1983, at Paradise Garden in Summerville, Georgia.

• Paradise Garden was the home and art environment of Howard Finster, a Baptist minister and self-taught artist whose grounds contained thousands of handmade artworks, sculptures, signs, and found-object constructions.

• Finster appears in the video, helping connect R.E.M.'s emerging alternative-rock identity with the visual language of Southern outsider art.

• The exposure from the video introduced Finster's work to a much wider MTV audience. He later collaborated with Michael Stipe on the artwork for R.E.M.'s 1984 album *Reckoning*.

• The video is preserved on R.E.M.'s *When the Light Is Mine: The Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982-1987* collection.