f13.net

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/21/rem-breaks-up-michael-stipe_n_974144.html

 :heartbreak: :heartbreak: :heartbreak: :heartbreak: :heartbreak:


A long with The Smiths and The Cure one of my favorite all time bands.

See you in hell, Stipe.

They haven't been relevant since 1994. And arguably, Monster was a step back from Automatic for the People. So, like others here who probably forgot they were still a band -

Did we miss anything?

They quit being relevant right about when I quit listening to new music, or not long before. Lot of good tunes though. Top 5?

ITEOTWAWKI
WTF,K?
Orange Crush
Man on the Moon
Losing My Religion (goddamned internet illiterates made me type this Loosing first because I see it that way far more often than I should)

Special mention to Stand- a very silly song with a silly video, but which brings back a ton of hazy college memories for me.

Stand was awesome for also being the theme song for Get a Life.

However, I didn't even realize they were still together. I haven't heard anything from them in years.

Yeah... these guys were definitely one of the bands to stand out when I was in college, but like the schild said, they haven't been relevant since then. 

Yes! Criminally underrated, that show.

This sounds more like a retirement than a break up.

I thought they already had broken up / retired.

B52s (another Athens GA band) are still touring though.

They haven't really been relevant on the pop scene since 1991 with Losing my Religion.  But then again they were never a fully top 40 band anyway.  I can't see how you can dismiss a band that basically invented the whole "alternative" music movement though.  Their initial stuff from the early/mid '80s was simply amazing.

Green was their high-water mark for me. Their next 3 albums were all bigger commercial successes but there's only a few songs on those albums that I listen to regularly -- everything else is on Green or before. They had a good run, though. Murmur though Monster was 9 solid to excellent albums over 11 years.

Out Of Time, Automatic For The People and Monster were all 4x Platinum in the US.

It's the end of the world...as we know it, and I feel fine.

That means absolutely nothing. 

Actually, it means that they made a fuckload of money.

Peaked with Out of Time, charted great with Automatic for the People, mostly irrelevant after that.

Gotta see if the B-52s are coming anywhere close sometime soon.  They're a good live show.

Actually, they released Collapse Into Now in March 2011. It wasn't a shitty album. Accelerate came out a year or two earlier. Both pretty solid, a good return to the years prior to Automatic for the People.

Selling a lot of records is irrelevant?

I'm happy they did Shiny Happy People, but only because of the KOMPRESSOR cover of it.

Baby, baby, baby, oh.

I've never been a huge fan of REM, always found them a bit bland. Well crafted songs, just not overly interesting to me. However, since hearing the news that they're splitting I've had their bloody songs going round and round in my head all day.  :angryfist:

I met Mike Mills in Athens while I was in college. Very nice guy, but it's been obvious since 2004 that they were bored with the biz.

While I liked some of their music, I always thought they were a little overrated.

I would count the Backstreet Boys as irrelevant, and they had at least one album that was 10 times platinum.  I think that REM were done being influential by the time those albums came out.  They were riding the gravy train.  They were only truly innovative and influential with their first 3-5 albums. 

My feelings

I'm going to nitpick here.  Irrelevant, Influential, and Innovative are not really being used correctly here.   Selling a lot of records pretty much means they are relevant because they got a lot of people to like and buy their stuff (maybe not you, but that doesn't define relevance.)   Typically this leads to being infuential because the fact that they sold a lot and made money makes others say, "Hey, I want to do that too."  Thus they have "influenced" the industry.  Again, you probably didn't buy any of the following "boy bands'" music but a huge amount of people did.

Innovative?  Not much of that really from Pop Bands in general, but I'd agree that REM found a very innovative sound and stuck with it throughout their career.  There wasn't much innovative from the Backstreet Boys within the music, but they sure knew how to market themselves.  That part of their innovation was extremely influential even to this day.  (Ok, KISS had dolls of themselves too, but damn it that was different!  And, they were action figures man...action figures!)

I am with you on how you're using irrelevant and maybe innovative but I think you're wrong on influential. Influential when you're talking about a band is really down to how they've influenced the sound of other artists, and I think there's plenty of that with REM, although I'm not in particular a fan (and I really don't like Michael Stipe's voice, I never have grown into being able to appreciate it like say Neil Young's.)

So when you said "relevant on the pop scene", you actually meant "relevant to me".

They were here four years ago with Cindy Lauper and Joan Jett.  Should be about time if they haven't passed through again since then.