The records that made REM call it a day: “A really good stopping point”
When you’re in a successful band, one of the biggest struggles is knowing when you’ve reached your creative peak. Whether you’re REM or Led Zeppelin, there comes a moment when you have to accept that the annals of rock music have run out of space for your new material. You have to pass the baton to the next generation.
Of course, some bands feel they have to stop because there’s too much friction within the group, and the frayed relationships between members would mean that it simply isn’t feasible to continue. Yes, The Beatles are a perfect example of this, where the band simply couldn’t stand working together in the same room after a certain point, and they were forced to draw proceedings to a close.
Others stubbornly choose not to break up even when it might be a good time to do so, and keep releasing music of sub-par quality out of a determination to keep going, feeling as though they’re going to make a comeback against all odds. It might seem like bands are breaking up on a near-constant basis, but in truth, some are going far beyond their expiry dates and reaching a point of no return.
However, in the case of REM, they fit into neither of these camps. They are a much rarer example of a band that seemed to instinctively know when the time was right. Their early career was full of highs, virtually all the way up to their eighth album, Automatic For The People, released in 1992, and while nothing that followed this landmark release managed to live up to the same heights, there weren’t exactly many glaringly obvious low points.
It was clear that this trend of constantly managing to outperform themselves, or at least coming close, with every subsequent release, was going to be harder to overcome with an album like Automatic For The People entering their catalogue. Monster was the unfortunate record given the impossible task of living up to its predecessor, regardless of what approach it chose to take.
Bill Berry’s departure from the band in 1997 may well have been a good time to call it a day, although they carried on and released more records without him, and while some from this period divide opinions, it’s only really Around the Sun that gets given the ignominy of being called a dud. With two more albums to offer up after this disappointment, the three remaining members finally saw fit to declare REM defunct.
But was this the right time to end everything, or could they have continued to rally again after this upturn in quality… Peter Buck reflected upon the decision to end things in 2011 during a 2022 interview with Classic Rock, and as far as the guitarist was concerned, they had reached the most logical conclusion.
“The last two records were really strong,” he argued, referring to Accelerate and Collapse Into Now, released in 2008 and 2011, respectively. “But I just felt like no matter how good our last record was, it wasn’t really our time any more.” The zeitgeist had shifted, and the college radio vitality that launched the band wasn’t landing with the same vigour.
Buck didn’t bemoan this. ”And that’s fair, I understand that,” he continued. ”And we were lucky. The last tour we did, we were still playing to huge amounts of people. We went to South America, which was like being The Beatles. So everyone felt like, yeah, this is a really good stopping point.”
It might be an overwhelming shame for fans of the band that REM chose to end things after 30 years, but at least they never let it slide to a point where it was no longer satisfying to hear new material from the group. What fans have now is a discography that, while possessing some below-par moments, is largely cause for celebration, and won’t ever be tarnished by finishing on the wrong note.
