RIP R.E.M.

Billy Joels ruthlessness captured the entertainers predicament: Today I am your champion,I may have won your hearts,/ But I know the game,youll forget my name,/ And I wont be here in another year/ If I dont stay on the charts. By the time R.E.M.s original drummer,Bill Berry,quit in 1997,the bands sales slide had accelerated,after the commercial failure of New Adventures in Hi-Fi 1996. Throughout the last years of the 1990s,R.E.M. struggled to regain its chart dominance of the first half of the decade. It failed. So,its disbanding was expected for a long time. Yet,when it was finally announced on Wednesday,the bands staunchest loyalists frowned upon all who were sad. What,indeed,was there to regret? The band had 31 years,20 of international stardom,and leaves 15 albums to remember it by.

R.E.M.,in and outside the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,remained a colossus of the independent-minded,a pathmaker for alternative-rock groups that would explode into the robust indie-rock scene. And how did Messrs Stipe do it? By complete immersion in their music. Born in Athens,Georgia in 1980,R.E.M. built its identity and loyal following the hard and honest way: non-stop touring,patient waiting before signing a major recording contract. The 1981 single Radio Free Europe had already entered the critics ears,and when Losing my Religion 1991 brought the Grammys and superstardom,it actually came to be R.E.M.s cultural saturation point,having remade and surpassed college rock.

Michael Stipe said earlier this year that R.E.M. was a band with no goals. Not wanting to conquer the world,they did end up doing just that. They also knew when and how to quit. If you believed they had nothing up their sleeve,then nothing was ever cool.