R.E.M. band members (L-R) Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Michael Stipe and Bill Berry attend the ... [+]
More than 15 years after they played their final concert, all four members of R.E.M. took the stage on June 13 in New York to perform their hit “Losing My Religion.”
The occasion that brought about the reunion even the most devoted fans didn’t see coming—and that the band members had categorically dismissed during an interview earlier in the week on CBS This Morning —was the Songwriters Hall of Fame gala, where Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry were inducted. The event is not televised.
The four accepted their award from singer/songwriter Jason Isbell after he covered “It's The End of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” Then Stipe stepped forward to the mic to speak for the band.
“Writing songs and having a catalog of work we’re all proud of that is out there for the world for the rest of time is hands down the most important aspect of what we did as a band. Second to that is that we managed to do so for all these decades and remain friends. And not just friends but dear friends, friends for life,” he said.
Noting how special is was to be inducted as a band, he continued, “We are four people who very early on decided that we would own our own masters and we would split our royalties and songwriting credits equally. We were all for one, and one for all. And so we set our to do our work accordingly. It turned out good, sometimes great. And what ride it has been.”
With that, they took center stage and launched into the song from their seventh album, Out Of Time, which spent 21 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2017 and reached 1 billion YouTube views in 2022.
R.E.M.’s last concert was on November 18, 2008 in Mexico City.
