After R.E.M. ignited the blogosphere on September 21st with the news that they had decided to "call it a day as a band" via a statement on their website, the beloved band have announced that they will release their final album, R.E.M., Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage, 1982 - 2011, on Warner Bros. Records on November 15th, 2011. The album is a 40-song career-spanning retrospective that collects, for the first time ever, songs from R.E.M.'s entire back catalog, including the pioneering American band's years on both the IRS label (1982 to 1987) and Warner Bros. Records (1988 to 2011). The album is currently available for pre-order on Amazon here. A brand-new song, "We All Go Back To Where We Belong," goes to radio and will be available for sale on October 18th.
R.E.M. formed in 1980 when singer Michael Stipe met guitarist Peter Buck in an Athens, GA, record store where Buck worked. After recruiting bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry, R.E.M. released its first single, "Radio Free Europe," in 1981, followed by 1982's Chronic Town EP, capturing the imagination of a new generation of music lovers and bringing "guitar pop back into the underground lexicon," as All-Music put it. Widely credited with inventing the college-rock genre, R.E.M. became the most influential American alternative rock band in history -- inspiring such artists as Sonic Youth, Pavement, Nirvana, and Radiohead -- for achieving multi-platinum mainstream success while maintaining their distinct identity.Over the course of its career, the band has released 15 studio albums: Murmur (1983), Reckoning (1984), Fables of the Reconstruction (1985), Lifes Rich Pageant (1986), Document (1987), Green (1988), Out of Time (1991), Automatic For The People (1992), Monster (1994), New Adventures in Hi-Fi (1996), Up (1998), Reveal (2001), Around the Sun (2004), Accelerate (2008), and Collapse Into Now (2011). They have sold more than 85 million albums worldwide.Videos