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5.31.10 Accessibility statementSkip to main content Democracy Dies in Darkness SubscribeSign in OpinionsEditorials Columns Guest Opinions Cartoons Letters to the Editor Submit a Guest Opinion Submit a Letter Opinion HOW THE BIGGEST ROCK BAND IN THE WORLD DISAPPEARED By Will Leitch January 15, 2025 at 6:30 a.m. ESTToday at 6:30 a.m. EST (Michelle Kondrich/The Washington Post) Warning: This graphic requires JavaScript. Please enable JavaScript for the best experience. 6 min 548 Will Leitch is the author of the forthcoming “Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride,” a contributing editor at New York magazine and founder of Deadspin. Michael Stipe turned 65 right after New Year’s. Every generation has their “our childhood heroes are how old now?” moment — jaws surely dropped when Rita Hayworth turned 65, which is the precise age she became soon after Stipe’s band, R.E.M., released “Murmur,” its first album — but there is something about this particular rock star becoming eligible for Medicare that sticks in one’s gullet. Kurt Cobain, were he still here, would be just a couple of years from turning 60 himself. So you know. It will have been 14 years this March since R.E.M. — an Athens, Georgia, foursome that for a stretch of about five years in the 1990s was arguably the biggest rock band on the planet — released its final album, “Collapse into Now.” Six months later, the band retired, with Stipe saying, “the skill in attending a party is knowing when it’s time to leave. We built something extraordinary together. We did this thing. And now we’re going to walk away from it.” Story continues below advertisement Advertisement And then R.E.M. did something more or less no other band has ever done: It stopped playing. Berry, Buck, Mills and Stipe walked away. They have played one song together in the last 14 years, “Losing My Religion,” at their induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and they are explicit about it not happening again. When CBS’s Anthony Mason asked them, on a rare media appearance on “CBS This Morning” last year, what it would take for them to reunite, bassist Mike Mills said, “a comet.” Reaching your mid-60s is something fortunate rock stars get to do, and they usually spend their golden years making certain the world still cares about them. Mick Jagger and Bruce Springsteen do world tours; Bono plays the Sphere and gets Joe Biden to put a Presidential Medal of Freedom around his neck; Bob Dylan gets a movie made about him. But you haven’t heard a word from Stipe or the other members of R.E.M. this month. You rarely do. OPINIONS ON CULTURE PreviousNext Opinion The 10 best shows I saw in 2024 Opinion The off-screen wonders of ‘Wicked’ Opinion Don’t think twice, Dylan fans. ‘A Complete Unknown’ is all right. Opinion What ‘brain rot’ — 2024’s word of the year — looks like Opinion The intensifying ‘Wicked’ promo Opinion People are used to seeing death. Why were TMZ’s Liam Payne photos too much? Opinion How not to play Donald Trump Opinion The unstoppable rise of Moo Deng, the internet’s favorite hippo Opinion The new ‘Matlock’ is for old people. That’s why Gen X loves it. Opinion Keeping up with fall jean styles Opinion Will Ferrell’s new film showcases a richer, riskier kind of humor Opinion The new Reagan movie has an anti-MAGA message Opinion HBO’s ‘Succession’ has its anxiety-inducing successor. It’s addictive. Opinion Accounts on X Opinion Heinz’s new carbonara in a can — and low-effort meals of the future Opinion Oasis, Prince, Harry Styles: Match the singer to their hairdo Opinion Behind the scenes of ‘Emily in Paris’ Opinion Unattainable beauty standards (for dogs) Opinion For Dungeons & Dragons, the magic is in the memories Stipe occasionally does solo appearances, including singing at a Kamala Harris rally in Pennsylvania, and he put out a photography book last year, but on the whole, he just quietly goes about his life like the rest of us. The rest of the band is the same way. The other three members of R.E.M. still live in Athens, something I know for certain because I also live in Athens, and I regularly see them walking around, shopping for groceries, getting coffee, watching a baseball game, blending into the architecture. How unassuming are the members of R.E.M.? I ran into drummer Bill Berry at an event once, and when I told him my name was Will, his face lit up: “Our names are so close! My name is Bill!” Yes, sir: I do know who you are. At the height of its popularity, R.E.M. regularly played before more than 100,000 fans. It was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. But because the band is so self-effacing and because it has resisted nearly every temptation to do the sort of nostalgia maneuvers that keep retired rock acts in the public mind, if you weren’t around to listen to R.E.M. during its prime, it’s quite possible you’ve never heard of it. The band has, essentially, disappeared from American culture. R.E.M. in 1981. (Hank Grebe) There was a boomlet of interest last year because of the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction, a wide-ranging interview Stipe gave to the New York Times and, mostly, the appearance of the song “Strange Currencies” on the television show “The Bear.” But you see kids wearing Nirvana T-shirts they got from Urban Outfitters, not R.E.M. ones. Today’s kids have no idea who R.E.M. is, and how could they? Honestly, the only time my kids come across R.E.M. is if they run into one of its members in the supermarket and wonder why their dad just fainted. Part of this retreat from center stage is the uncommon sanity of the band members themselves; the ever-tortured Cobain marveled at how they “dealt with their success like saints.” There is so much more money to be made from being R.E.M., but, as guitarist Peter Buck said, the band will not reunite because “it would never be as good.” If you happened to see the Rolling Stones on their American tour last year, you know that “it” not being as good as it used to be certainly didn’t stop Jagger and Keith Richards from continuing to perform for their fans’ money, nor has it stopped hundreds of other bands. There is something very Generation X about this most Generation X of bands refusing to take a payday just for the sake of reminiscence. There are shades of Lloyd Dobler’s “I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed” in their insistence on not doing anything their hearts aren’t deeply invested in. They made the music. Then they stopped. What more would we want than that? That every Spotify user isn’t constantly listening to R.E.M. songs is our fault, not the band’s. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement In retrospect, it is kind of crazy that a group of four indie rockers from a college town in Georgia who wrote jangly wistful songs and were forever obsessed (and successful!) with keeping their indie credibility became the biggest rock band in the world. The band had its moment, it made some truly beautiful, often downright perfect songs, and then it moved on. When Michael Stipe turned 65, he handled it the way we all hope we will when we turn 65: with grace and calm. Cobain may live on in myth. But R.E.M. lives on in life. And the good news: The songs haven’t changed at all. They are there, whenever you need them. Or even if you don’t. How did you know when it was time to stop doing something, whether that meant deciding to retire, kicking a habit, or ending a relationship or friendship? Share your responses with Post Opinions, and they might be published as Letters to the Editor. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement ABOUT GUEST OPINION SUBMISSIONS The Washington Post accepts opinion articles on any topic. We welcome submissions on local, national and international issues. We publish work that varies in length and format, including multimedia. Submit a guest opinion or read our guide to writing an opinion article. Post Opinions also thrives on lively dialogue. If you have thoughts about this article, or about anything The Post publishes, please submit a letter to the editor. Popular opinions articles Hand-curated I was born liberal. The ‘adults in the room’ still have a lot to learn.January 14, 2025 On Kansas back roads, I found people who are solving problemsJanuary 13, 2025 I talked to Meta’s Black AI character. 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