This song is about Ingrid Schorr, R.E.M. bass player Mike Mills' girlfriend at the University of Georgia in 1980 when the band formed. She was having a great time on the campus in Athens and wanted to stay there for the summer, but her parents insisted she return home to Rockville, Maryland. The song is Mills trying to convince her to stay.
According to Ingrid Schorr, Mike Mills came up with the idea for the song when they were hanging out at a local club called Tyrone's and they were talking about how she was leaving. "I finally meet a girl I like and she's got to go back to Rockville," he said. "The lyrics, like their author, are endearingly straightforward," Schorr explained in the magazine Hermenaut. "The song isn't so much about me as about my taking off for some other place, leaving him behind: 'I know it might sound strange but I believe you'll be coming back before too long.'"
The song was released as a single from R.E.M.'s second album, Reckoning. It didn't chart but became a fan favorite and got a good amount of airplay after the band became really popular a few years later.
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