10 Bands Who Quit Music At The Peak Of Their Success

4. My Chemical Romance

It’s no secret that the number of rock bands who have managed to infiltrate the mainstream eye since the turn of the millennium has been unsettlingly low. Names such as Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit and Evanescence are a few quickfire names which most music fans beyond the confines of rock will recognise, but My Chemical Romance must surely rank as one of the biggest 21st century bands alongside (maybe even above) them.

Forming in 2001, the New Jersey-based emo figureheads released their first studio album, ‘I Brought You My Bullets…’, in 2002. To date, 285,000 copies of this album have been sold worldwide, but it was the band’s second record which truly kicked them into gear. ‘Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge’ (2004) gave the band their first UK top 20 single in ‘I’m Not Okay’, which was followed into the charts by ‘Helena’ in 2005. 2006’s ‘The Black Parade’ became the group’s crowning achievement though, selling four million copies worldwide, reaching the top ten in fourteen albums charts around the world and giving them their only UK number one single.

Flying high, MCR spent four years working on their next record and finally revealed ‘Danger Days’ to the world in 2010. Although the album represented a harsh shift in direction in terms of both style and sound, it was well received by most fans. In 2012, the band announced they were building their own studio to record their fifth album, but it was never released. Less than a year later, the band abruptly announced their split, but would later reform in 2019.

Earlier this year, MCR released their first single in eight years titled ‘The Foundations of Decay’, but are yet to announce any plans for a new full length album.