Why REM sprinkled “indications” of their forthcoming split into their final album
A band’s final album will always adopt a certain level of poignancy. Whether their disbandment is known at the time or whether it comes as a surprise, their final material will always attract deeper analysis, with fans scrambling to find deeper meanings or hints towards their breakup. As their parting opus, REM was always going to give Collapse Into Now a sense of finality, even if it wasn’t immediately obvious.
As their unintentional farewell, Collapse Into Now was fated to be REM’s final curtain call, with Michael Stipe incorporating even deeper reflections than ever before. With the title, for instance, he wanted to exude an overt note of lamentation, looking at the human condition with a critical eye. As he explained: “In my head, I’m saying, ‘I come from a faraway place called the 20th century. And these are the values and these are the mistakes we’ve made and these are the triumphs. These are the things that we held in the highest esteem. These are the things to learn from.'”
While creating the album, the band knew they wouldn’t be looking back. In fact, they used it as an opportunity to drop hints in various ways—both as a means of processing what it all meant and as a way to signal their plans to fans. However, while these hints were hiding in plain sight, they were so subtle that many failed to notice them at first.
Reflecting on this, Mike Mills later noted the “indications” in the record that revealed they were on the verge of splitting, even though they hadn’t officially announced it. While they would be more forthcoming in the following months, their attempts to hint at their future were signalled both in the lyrical content and the cover, which featured the band for the first time, arms outstretched as if waving goodbye.
“That’s the record where we put ourselves on the cover for the first time and I’m waving goodbye, and nobody got it,” Stipe said in 2019. “We were saying, ‘This is it, sayonara, we’re out of here.'” While such a claim comes with suspicions about fiery disagreements and clashes behind the scenes, the recording process for Collapse Into Now was almost entirely the opposite. Instead of deciding the heat of the moment, they arrived at the decision mutually, choosing this record as an opportunity to end on a high.
Funnily enough, Peter Buck recalls the decision as a no-brainer, decided in momentary relief when Stipe said, “I need to be away from this for a long time,” to which Buck suggested, “How about forever?” Though it seems callous, REM’s disbandment was on the cards the moment they became disillusioned with the whole idea, which incidentally made Collapse Into Now an enthused effort to make it everything they had ever wanted.
Recorded across multiple cities, including Berlin, Nashville, and Louisiana, Collapse Into Now tackles farewell, nostalgia, and self-reflection head-on, with a more varied sonic palette than many of their previous records. This was likely due to the newfound sense of weightless freedom they each felt, knowing that the end was nigh and that this was their last party collaborating with one another.
Before that, however, Stipe had become endeared to ending the group on a cryptic note ever since he witnessed Patti Smith do the same. In his mind, Collapse Into Now needed to have its moment of poignancy, which could only be achieved if they dropped hints along the way, no matter how big or small. As he put it to Mojo: “Yeah, the clues were there. I placed them there intentionally. I took a chapter from Patti Smith, who released her first album, called Wave, and disappeared for years.”
