So R.E.M. has decided to call it a day! Thirty-one years after getting together, the trio have reached the end of the road. The split was announced via the band’s website, with a statement from the lead singer, Michael Stipe. The frontman was philosophical about the decision and maintained that it was time to go:
“A wise man once said - 'the skill in attending a party is knowing when it's time to leave. We built something extraordinary together. We did this thing. And now we're going to walk away from it.”
The Grammy award winning group, who has sold more than 85 million albums globally, released its first album ‘Murmur’ in 1983. The first of 15 albums, 'Murmur’, although not ground-breaking, was relatively new and the distinctive sound of Stipe on lead vocals, Peter Buck on guitar and Mike Mills on bass was to become one of the most recognisable of the 1980s and 1990s.
Since their debut album, the band has released 14 studio albums: Reckoning (1984), Fables of the Reconstruction (1985), Life’s Rich Pageant (1986), Document (1987), Green (1988), Out of Time (1991), Automatic For The People (1992), Monster (1994), New Adventures in Hi-Fi (1996), Up (1998), Reveal (2001), Around the Sun (2004), Accelerate (2008), and Collapse Into Now (2011).
REM has also impressed the critics over the years, winning three Grammy awards in 1992, and the Brit award’s Best International Group in 1993 and 1995. In 2007, REM deservedly got its place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Their break-up will be hard to take for their many fans. Never has Everybody Hurts been more appropriate.