On Sept. 21, alternative rock band R.E.M. announced their breakup after 31 years together. The Georgia-based group’s decision – announced on their website – came as a shock to the music community.
“A wise man once said, ‘the skill in attending a party is knowing when it’s time to leave,’” wrote lead singer Michael Stipe on the band’s website. “We built something extraordinary together. We did this thing. And now we’re going to walk away from it … I hope our fans realize this wasn’t an easy decision; but all things must end, and we wanted to do it right, to do it our way.”
Mike Mills, the group’s bassist, assured fans on the band’s website that the breakup was amiable. “We have always been a band in the truest sense of the word,” wrote Mills. “There’s no disharmony here, no falling-outs, no lawyers squaring-off. We’ve made this decision together, amicably and with each other’s best interests at heart.”
The news came as a surprise to many other musicians, some of whom sought to speculate on the motive behind the band’s decision.
“The reason they probably stopped was because they went, ‘What can we do that’s going to be mind-blowingly vital and new to people now? We’ve done so much,’” said Stephen Malkmus, former lead singer of Pavement, in an interview with The Vancouver Sun. “That’s kind of a good reason to stop.”
R.E.M. has long been a pervasive presence in the rock world, influencing bands like Nirvana, Radiohead and The Strokes. The group leaves behind a remarkable legacy: 15 studio albums and over 85 million albums sold worldwide.
While the breakup comes now, R.E.M. struggled to stay together after the departure of their drummer Bill Berry in 1997. Berry left the band after deciding his priorities had shifted, withdrawing only after being assured by the remaining members that they would continue as a three-piece without him. The band, however, arguably never recovered, as the ensemble relied on session drummers to fill the void for the remaining 14 years they spent recording and touring.
The music changed after Berry’s departure, never reaching the commercial or artistic appeal that it did with earlier landmark albums such as Automatic for the People and Out of Time. Still, the group continued to produce music, releasing their final album Collapse into Now earlier this year.
As a farewell, R.E.M. plans to release a career-spanning greatest hits compilation on Nov. 15 titled Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982 – 2011, which will include a few songs recorded after the release of Collapse into Now.