I went back and listened to REM’s final album Collapse Into Now over the weekend. Post break up some of the lyrics did strike me now as a precursor to their split that followed the release. Now Mike Mills and Michael Stipe have shed some light on their reasons to dissolve the band and on their final album:
“It seems amicable because it is,” Mills told The Daily Beast. “We are not creatively out of gas. We are not pissed off at each other. There are no issues. The whole point of it is, we’re walking away on a creative high and on our own terms.”
“The first song I wrote [on the latest album] was ‘All the Best,’” Stipe said. “If you look at the lyrics, it’s basically saying, ‘We had our moment, it was great. Thanks, everyone. And we hope someone else will pick up the mantle and run with it.’”
