10 Rock Music Bands That Quit On Top
4. R.E.M.
By definition, very few groups can attain “biggest band in the world” status, but R.E.M. were certainly one of them. A band with an immense catalogue of 15 albums (containing only one outright dud, 2004’s Around The Sun), the Athens, Georgia act had gone from college radio darlings to stadium fillers before closing off a career in the most dignified way imaginable.
A major headline act quitting with so much cash on the table isn’t a common occurrence, let alone doing so with so little fanfare. In 2011. they announced that the end had come, and that was it - no lucrative goodbye tour, no major reissues campaign (there was a comprehensive Best Of release, but we’ll forgive them that).
More impressively, they called it quits without any obvious acrimony; they simply felt the project had run its course. If they were a way off their creative peak, their final two releases, especially swansong Collapse Into Now, are worthy additions to the R.E.M. canon, showing the spark of a band who still had ideas and things of importance to say.
Few bands can present a repertoire of the size and quality of R.E.M., and with no indication that they’ll go back on their split, it should remain unsullied.