Seminal alternative rock group R.E.M. , once arguably the biggest band in the world, called it quits Wednesday (Sept. 21) after 31 years and 15 albums together. In a simple statement on their website , the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers behind landmark albums including 'Document' and 'Automatic for the People' give thanks to fans for sticking with them through a career that saw its share of highs and lows.

'To our Fans and Friends: As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening.'

The remaining three members of the band, singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck and bassist Mike Mills, soon chimed in to expand on why they're breaking up now, just six months after releasing their fifteenth album. Mills said the group's latest series of projects helped them come to the decision.

"During our last tour, and while making 'Collapse Into Now' and putting together this greatest hits retrospective, we started asking ourselves, 'what next'?" Mills said. "Working through our music and memories from over three decades was a hell of a journey. We realized that these songs seemed to draw a natural line under the last 31 years of our working together."

Stipe added in a matter-of-fact way that it was just time to "walk away," though it wasn't an easy decision to come to.

"A wise man once said -- 'the skill in attending a party is knowing when it's time to leave.' We built something extraordinary together. We did this thing. And now we're going to walk away from it," he noted. "I hope our fans realize this wasn't an easy decision; but all things must end, and we wanted to do it right, to do it our way."

Buck noted that the members of the band (including long-departed drummer Bill Berry) may be breaking up but "walk away as great friends." He promises to see fans again, "Even if it's only in the vinyl aisle of your local record store, or standing at the back of the club: watching a group of 19 year olds trying to change the world."

Since forming as a quartet in 1980, R.E.M. released 15 studio albums, beginning with their seminal 1983 debut "Murmur." An acclaimed string of albums ("Lifes Rich Pageant," the band's fourth full-length, was given a 25th-anniversary reissue last July) and singles ("It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" highlighted 1987's "Document") followed before 1991's "Out of Time" yielded two of the band's biggest hits, "Shiny Happy People" and " Losing My Religion," the latter of which peaked at No. 4 on the Hot 100 and won Video of the Year at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards.

The band's eighth studio album, 1992's "Automatic for the People," arguably stands as R.E.M.'s most universally acclaimed full-length, with the ballad "Everybody Hurts" becoming a surprise hit and the Andy Kaufman tribute "Man on the Moon" inspiring the 1999 film of the same name. The band released two more albums, 1994's "Monster" and 1996's "New Adventures in Hi-Fi," before original drummer Bill Berry amicably departed the group in Oct. 1997, prior to the release of 1998's "Up."

Breakup Playlist: 10 Essential R.E.M. Songs

After two middling albums, 2001's "Reveal" and 2004's "Around the Sun," R.E.M. was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame upon its first year of eligibility in 2006. The band soon regrouped with producer Jacknife Lee and adopted a fiercer sound for 2008's "Accelerate," which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200.

The band's 15th studio album, "Collapse Into Now," was released last March, but the group opted not to tour behind the record. "It just doesn't feel right," Mills told Billboard in February. "We've always gone with our gut instinct on everything, and right now it just didn't feel like touring was the thing we needed to do."

"Collapse Into Now" has sold 142,000 copies, adding to the 19.3 million album sales the band has garnered since the SoundScan era began in 1991, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

The word 'Nirvana' has appeared 1,484 times in the pages of SPIN since 1991; Nevermind , 246 times. (Shout-out, bleary-eyed intern Carly!) Both of these numbers will spike considerably after this issue.

Sure, SPIN had been making serious mischief for six years before Nevermind 's release, but the cultural landscape that the album's success reflected (and SPIN had been anecdotally documenting) needed a full-blown soapbox, and we were in a unique position. As with many symbiotic, borderline codependent relationships, ours has gone from tentative entreaties to dizzying obsessions to marriages of convenience to tawdry betrayals. Back in 2001, when we published a tenth anniversary Nevermind issue, one letter-writing wag remarked, "So, still pickin' those bones, huh?"

With this retrospective, we tried to avoid that sort of queasy, pseudo-reverent exploitation, balancing the historical and personal with the playful and forward-thinking. But above all, we just want to say thanks for sticking around and sharing this. See, after all these years, most corporate magazines may still suck, but Nevermind still doesn't, and that's the real issue.

Here's what you can find in our August 2011 issue.

WHAT NEVERMIND MEANS TO ME
Luminaries reflect on Nevermind , from contemporaries like Eddie Vedder, the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne, Sleater-Kinney, and R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, to present-day rock heroes like the Black Keys, the Black Lips, and Against Me!, to Seattle scenesters of the time, to Dave Grohl himself. As you'll see, the effect the record had on music fans and artists alike is as raw and personal now as it was 20 years ago.

NEWERMIND: A TRIBUTE ALBUM
We tapped some of our favorite contemporary artists to cover Nevermind 's 13 songs, in their original order, from Kurt Cobain's personal faves -- the Meat Puppets and the Vaselines -- to up-and-comers like Telekinesis, EMA, and JEFF the Brotherhood. The download is called Newermind , and it's our gift to you.

THE RAP ON KURT: HOOD PASS 4 LIFE
SPIN hip-hop columnist Brandon Soderberg explores how Nirvana spoke to the rap scene, chronicling the songs inspired by Nevermind .

HOW THE NEVERMIND BOY WAS ALMOST A GIRL
Photographer Kirk Weddle tells the story of an alternate Nevermind album cover that featured a girl baby -- whose identity remains a mystery!

Album's reissue on September 20th.

With Nevermind anniversary weeks away, music's biggest bands reflect on the other indispensible albums from a great year for rock. On September 24, Nirvana's epochal Nevermind album turns 20, a milestone that will be marked with much coverage, celebration and consternation in the media ... not to mention a sundry of other events, including a high-profile benefit concert at Seattle's Experience Music Project and a Jon Stewart-hosted Q&A with Nirvana's surviving members.

And understandably so. After all, Nevermind was a game-changer in every sense of the term — the kind of album that brought about seismic shifts in music, fashion and culture in general, one that defined a generation and, as such, deserves to be mythologized. And, in the coming weeks, we suspect you'll see no shortage of stories that do just that.

And while Nevermind casts an indelibly lengthy shadow, it bears mention that there was no shortage of other magical, massive and equally mythological albums that hit stores in 1991 ... ones that, had Nirvana never broken through, would probably be getting the royal treatment right now. In 1991, rock truly rocked, so, in celebration of that fact, we've asked some of today's biggest bands to discuss their favorite albums from that rather amazing year.

Don't worry, we'll give Nevermind its due ... but right now, we're paying tribute to 1991's other indispensible albums, in the words of their biggest fans.

Dinosaur Jr., Green Mind
  Sludgy, somnambulant fourth album from Amherst, Massachusetts' premier purveyors of bad-posture rock, Green Mind represents Dino Jr. at a great divide: Not only is it their first album without original member Lou Barlow, it's also their first for major label Sire Records. Still, neither of those factors managed to sap its power, as mastermind J Mascis shouldered the load (it's basically a solo album) on tracks like the squalling "The Wagon" and the roiling "Puke & Cry." Of course, the band would later reconcile, but Green Mind still stands as a high-water mark, one that, from its iconic cover image to its shambolic moments of pure grandiosity, still stands the test of time.

As remembered by Mark Hoppus, Blink-182 : "I got it when it came out and I just loved it, from the second that I listened to it. And I remember going to watch them at the Hollywood Palladium, and I think, actually, Nirvana opened that show maybe, or maybe not. [ Editor's note: Nirvana did, in fact, open for Dino Jr. at the Palladium in June 1991. ] But they played the Palladium, and it was the loudest show that I'd ever been to and my ears rang for three days afterwards and I was deathly afraid that I'd permanently ruined my hearing, which I probably did, but it was well worth it."

My Bloody Valentine, Loveless
  The rare album that can be summarized entirely by its cover, MBV's Loveless is 48-odd minutes of guitars slowly corroding, collapsing and combusting into a gloriously woozy, decidedly pink hue. Then again, you should probably listen to it, if only to marvel at the sheer size of the thing: an epic sonic collage that echoes for days, full of ringing, winging chords, ruddy drum loops and ethereal, barely there vocals. It sounded like nothing else at the time and, really, that's still true today. Recorded in 19 different studios over the course of two years, it brought the band and its label, Creation, to the brink and was so huge an endeavor (in every regard) that, 20 years later, MBV have yet to record the follow-up. But that hasn't stopped an entire generation of musicians from taking cues from Kevin Shields' masterful din, most notably, the rather tricky art of learning how not to play guitar.

As remembered by Brian Oblivion, Cults : "In the same vein as Nevermind, Loveless is another game-changing album. There's that clichéd saying about the Velvet Underground, that they didn't have many fans, but all their fans started bands, and that's definitely the same thing with My Bloody Valentine. Like, every single one of my friends who heard that record immediately went out and bought a delay pedal and ... I'm not very good at guitar at this point in my life, and that's mostly because of My Bloody Valentine, because I'd just sit around in my basement and just make noise with loops and pedals and never learned how to actually play, like, 'Kevin Shields can't play, he's an artist. ' To me, that album is all about texture, it's not about notes or melody or lyrics even ... the sound of a guitar became the sound of a cello, the sound of an orchestra, anything, and it kind of opened up the possibilities for everybody to do different kinds of music."

Slint, Spiderland
  How is it possible that four kids from Louisville, Kentucky, could sound so preternaturally old ? That's just one of the questions raised after listening to Spiderland, the second (and last) album from Slint, a band whose legacy far outweighs their actual output. A creaking, claustrophobic collection of songs that practically seethe tension (which sort of lends credence to the rumors that, following its recording, at least one member underwent psychiatric treatment), Spiderland crashes and coils in ways few other albums do: in a downright terrifying manner. Just give "Good Morning, Captain" a spin and try to say otherwise. And they looked like such nice young men on the cover.

As remembered by Ben Gibbard and Chris Walla, Death Cab for Cutie
    Gibbard : "Kids, when they kind of get into music that they think is big and powerful and scary and loud, they gravitate towards hardcore, they gravitate towards punk rock, [because] to that point, that was the biggest, scariest, most aggressive kind of sounding thing that I had heard. But when I first heard Spiderland, it was the juxtaposition between the quiet and the loud that made it even a more powerful listening experience than listening to a hardcore band, because it was so quiet and it was so loud, and kind of feeling the dynamics between the loud and the quiet ... the scope between those things was really powerful."

Walla : " Spiderland is in a handful of records from the early '90s that are sort of recording-geek go-to's. And that was a record, for me, that was really a testament of how you can put together and structure a rock and roll recording in a way that didn't sound like Stone Temple Pilots. Rock and roll had gotten pretty big and pretty produced by that point and, for me, there were a handful of records that kids like me, who had a couple of microphones and an 8-track, sort of felt like, 'Oh, maybe I can do this and I should do this.' "

Musicians usually included in the 27 Club.

The impetus for the club's creation were the deaths of Jones, Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison. Cobain, who died in 1994, was later added by some. With the exception of Joplin, there is controversy surrounding their deaths. According to the book Heavier Than Heaven , when Cobain died, his sister claimed that as a kid he would talk about how he wanted to join the 27 Club. On the fifteenth anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death, National Public Radio 's Robert Smith said, "The deaths of these rock stars at the age of 27 really changed the way we look at rock music."The 27s: The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll details the history of the phenomenon.

	Brian Jones	July 3, 1969	Drowned in a swimming pool. The coroner's report stated "death by misadventure."	Rolling Stones founder and guitarist/multi-instrumentalist.	27 years and 125 days
	Jimi Hendrix	September 18, 1970	Autopsy showed he asphyxiated on vomit after combining sleeping pills with wine.	Pioneering electric guitarist, singer and songwriter for The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Band of Gypsys .	27 years and 295 days
	Janis Joplin	October 4, 1970	Probable heroin overdose.	Lead vocalist and songwriter for Big Brother and the Holding Company , The Kozmic Blues Band and Full Tilt Boogie Band.	27 years and 258 days
	Jim Morrison	July 3, 1971	Cause of death listed as "heart failure"; however, no autopsy was performed.	Lead singer, songwriter and video director for The Doors .	27 years and 207 days
	Kurt Cobain	April 5, 1994	Ruled as suicide by shotgun.	Founding member, lead singer, guitarist and songwriter for Nirvana .	27 years and 44 days

Other musicians who died at 27

Some lists include other musicians who died at age 27. Cobain and Hendrix biographer Charles R. Cross  writes, "The number of musicians who died at 27 is truly remarkable by any standard. [Although] humans die regularly at all ages, there is a statistical spike for musicians who die at 27."