R.E.M. Answers Your Lifelong Question

Which Rockville was Mikey Mills singing about in Don't Go Back To Rockville? Old-school R.E.M. fans have wondered since Reckoning was released. He finally answers the question at the Vote for Change after-party:

For years we've wondered whether the great R.E.M. song "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" referred to the historic town that serves as Montgomery County's seat of government. "Yes, that's right," band member Mike Mills, who penned the lyrics, confirmed to us while partying after the Vote for Change concert rocked the rafters of MCI Center

DNC finance staffer Collette Tomayko, 31, who grew up in Silver Spring, broached the Rockville topic. Mills told her he wrote the song (from R.E.M.'s 1984 "Reckoning" album) about a girl at college he had a crush on who'd moved back to Rockville to spend the summer with her parents.

R.E.M. fans are now free to "move on" to "What is the meaning of life" and "Is there a god."