Yesterday, one of longest-lived, most influential bands in rock called it quits. R.E.M., one of the defining acts of the Alternative movement in the 80's and 90's, announced an amicable break-up after more than 30 years in the business. They leave behind 15 full-length studio albums, scads of singles, collections and other rarities, a library of memorable music videos and a legacy the likes of which few bands ever achieve.

R.E.M. is something of a personal band for me, as I'm sure they are for many people. Though the band had been around for about 15 years before I really started to get into music, I was already familiar with their most popular work from the 90's thanks to being the youngest of three in a family of voracious pop culture consumers. The music video for "Losing My Religion" was in heavy rotation in my formative years and Monster was a constant in both my sister's and brother's musical diets. By the time I started building my own CD collection (ya know, when kids still bought CDs), R.E.M. was one of the first bands on the rack.

I can't claim to have come at R.E.M. from a chronological point of view. I jumped into the middle of their canon, mostly their work from the early 90's. For a period of time in my teens, I more or less lost my taste for rock, so the folky, unplugged style of Out of Time and Automatic For The People suited me like nothing else on the charts. To this day, Automatic rates among my favorite albums of all time. After that, I got my hands on Up the week it came out and though it's typically seen as a low point for the band (it being their first album without drummer Bill Berry), I'm a staunch defender of its innovation and emotional sharpness.

A few years ago on this very blog, I did a three part series on R.E.M. for the old (and soon to return) feature Artists Condensed. Through that project, I came to the opinion that R.E.M., for all their much-deserved accolades, didn't really find their voice until the late 80's, specifically with Green. Don't get me wrong, everything from Murmur to Document is still great music that's worth a thorough listen, but there was a lot of borrowing and fooling around on those early records compared to the artistic zenith of the band's run in the 90's.

Over the past decade, R.E.M.'s output has slowed and grown less relevant. 2001's Reveal continued with some of the concepts from Up but in a brighter, more highly produced presentation that stripped away the dreamy haze that made Up work as an art piece. Around The Sun  from 2004 barely registered, though the band saw something of a comeback with Accelerate. Just this year R.E.M. released Collapse into Now, which plays like an appropriate retrospective of the band's styles. It's a fitting swan song for a band that thankfully avoided the pitfalls of rock stardom. R.E.M. leaves the stage a well traveled, very talented act that contributed more than just about any band to the musical landscape of the past 50 years. They'll be missed.