REM Breaking Up

REM is calling it quits after 31 years of performing together, the band announced today, in what members insisted was an entirely amicable breakup. “We feel kind of like pioneers in this,” bassist Mike Mills wrote on REM’s website. “There’s no disharmony here, no falling-outs, no lawyers squaring off. We’ve made this decision together.” Frontman Michael Stipe added, “A wise man once said—'the skill in attending a party is knowing when it's time to leave.”

The band will have one last release later this year, a greatest hits collection that includes a few new tracks, according to Rolling Stone. “While making Collapse Into Now and putting together this greatest hits retrospective, we started asking ourselves, ‘What next?’” says Mills. “These songs seemed to draw a natural line under the last 31 years.” (More REM stories.)