We’ve seen it too many times to count: a group of talented young musicians come together with big dreams and great songs, breaking big but never being able to sustain it.
Rare groups like U2 or The Rolling Stones can keep the partnerships together for extended periods of time, but more often than not, a band will stop making hits or someone will want to go out solo or the members can’t stand each other anymore, forcing the group to dissolve or go on the dreaded “indefinite hiatus.”
Yet if we’re lucky, the cards might be just right for things to realign. Maybe some hatchets are buried, an anniversary reunion tour brings people out of hiding, or the love of music (and royalties) clears up all the bad blood. No matter the case, here are the extraordinary tales of bands who reunited after breaking up in a big way.
In the world of K-pop, male idol groups must always be mindful of the government statute that requires every South Korean male to serve in the military for at least two years.
As this must be completed before a certain age, sometimes groups will promote a record while certain members are absent, or all the members will volunteer to go at a similar time.
BIG BANG, one of the biggest and most influential hip-hop-oriented boy bands in modern K-pop history, opted for the latter route, with multiple members signing up for service in 2017 and 2018, leaving their fans with a “goodbye single” before they left.
Before the core members of T.O.P., Taeyang, Daesung, and perpetual bad boy G-Dragon returned from service, member Seungri retired from the entertainment industry following his involvement in the horrific Burning Sun nightclub scandal.
Upon return, the remaining quartet planned to continue and envisioned a 2020 reunion at Coachella before COVID-19 upended their plans.
As much as generation-defining songs like “Fantastic Baby” and “Bang Bang Bang” are best heard in huge crowds, the boys had to be patient.
Lucky for fans, in April 2022, their long-awaited comeback ballad “Still Life” dropped and instantly shot to the top of the Korean charts. Almost two decades into their career, they’re as BIG as ever.
For some, the 2018 revelation that Canadian post-rock icons Frog Eyes were breaking up was devastating (especially for the writers at Cokemachineglow).
After all, Carey Mercer’s unique brand of yelping chaos and wincing pathos felt elevated above his scene peers. Even though Mercer formed new band Soft Plastics with other members of Frog Eyes, the audience retention wasn’t the same.
Thus, many were shocked that out of nowhere, following all the exit interviews where Mercer claimed that having eight albums was a perfect way to leave his legacy, it was announced in February 2022 that the band was back and had already completed their ninth full-length record “The Bees”, which showed signs of the group happy to be back to their rocking old selves.
Regardless of the circumstances for both the breakup and rebirth, it’s clear that the loyalty of the Frog Eyes fandom has been richly rewarded.
In the mid-2000s, emo rock was all the rage, and My Chemical Romance stood out from the back with their tight hooks, inventive music videos, and the wild appearance of frontman Gerard Way.
Yet one thing about MCR is that they never stayed in the same place: each album had a new twist to their sound, ranging from the rock opera of 2006’s “The Black Parade” to the odd electro concept record that was 2010’s “Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys”.
Yet while recording a new album, the group announced in 2013 that they were heading their separate ways, Way indicating because they had too many disagreements.
Every member engaged in some sort of solo venture in the intervening years, including Way seeing his “Umbrella Academy” graphic novel turned into a popular TV show.
Yet in 2019, the group announced a reunion show and revealed they had been working as a unit a full two years prior.
They had a full North American reunion tour slated for 2020 that was pushed back twice due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the band is still adamant about fulfilling those dates. They may be famous last words, but we still believe they’re trying to do the right thing.
A Tribe Called Quest’s influence on hip-hop is incalculable, and throughout the early ’90s, their streak of game-changing, groundbreaking albums was close to unmatched.
Yet when 1996’s “Beats, Rhymes and Life” dropped, Phife Dawg noted how members Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Q-Tip converting to Islam left him feeling like an outsider when it came to determining the group’s sound.
When 1998’s “The Love Movement” was released, the group announced it would be their last, with all members going on to pursue solo projects.
While Q-Tip and Phife managed to set aside their differences for some occasional guest verses, the group managed to start touring in 2006 onward, partially reuniting to help find a way to pay for Phife’s burgeoning medical expenses.
They began recording a new album in secrecy in 2015, but the record was incomplete following Phife Dawg’s passing the following year.
With a literal who’s-who of rap superstars coming in to help complete the vision of the record, “We Got It from Here…
Thank You 4 Your Service” was finally released shortly after the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, and it was immediately heralded as a modern-day masterpiece. It’s a fitting swan song for one of the greatest rap groups to ever exist.
The first few years of The Go-Go’s existence can best be described as a whirlwind. Their 1981 debut “Beauty and the Beat” and their 1982 follow-up record “Vacation” were both sizable New Wave hits, cementing this all-female group as a huge new player on rock radio.
Yet that “classic lineup” of Belinda Carlisle, Jane Wiedlin, Charlotte Caffey, Gina Schock, and Kathy Valentine was full of strong personalities, and by the time 1984’s “Talk Show” hit, the group was in constant conflict with each other.
While The Go-Go’s tried to move on following a split with Wiedlin, the result was that the girls were growing increasingly disinterested in the project, so they decided to disband.
The group, somewhat amazingly, has reunited and broken up a few times over now, going on two different farewell tours while members came, went, sued the band, and then rejoined.
It’s been a wild journey, but we’ve been happy to still have them around; they even recorded a new song as recently as 2020 to go along with their documentary about their career. They nailed the sentiments of how we feel with the title of their final studio album: 2001’s “God Bless The Go-Go’s”.
You can’t talk about famous band breakups without talking about The Pixies, full stop. The Boston-bred indie-rock all-stars helped popularize a soft-loud style of songwriting that was addictive as it was abrasive and influenced people like Kurt Cobain, who publicly declared his love of the band often.
Following the group’s opening slot for a U2 tour in 1992, coupled with the fact that the band’s output was increasingly becoming a showcase for frontman Black Francis and no one else, the group disbanded, with Francis infamously informing members Kim Deal and Dave Lovering of the news via fax.
For the next decade, they all pursued various solo projects, with Deal becoming an alt-rock star in her own right with her new band, The Breeders.
Yet in 2003 and per their own admission of doing it for the money, the band reunited for a tour that sold out nearly instantaneously.
The tour was lucrative enough that they kept making festival appearances and doing album-oriented anniversary runs around the country.
In 2013, Kim Deal left the band permanently, and soon new music came flowing out of the group, even if all three “post-reunion” records have met a muted reception.
Technically, Fall Out Boy never broke up — but you couldn’t tell the fans otherwise. Following the decidedly mixed reception to 2008’s “Folie à Deux”, the members of Fall Out Boy needed a break from each other, each pursuing music in their own way, forming bands and getting studio and songwriting work for a few years.
None of their projects proved successful, and after singer Patrick Stump put out a blog post detailing the cruel comments he received from fans as he tried to go solo, bassist/lyricist Pete Wentz reached out with empathy.
Soon the quartet decided to give it another ago. What’s different about Fall Out Boy’s reuniting is that they did it in secret, sneaking into studios and crafting new songs without the public or press knowing, largely because if it didn’t work out, they could walk away from it without letting anyone down.
Fortunately, it did work out, and when they announced they were back and had a new album ready to go in early 2013, it lit their fanbase on fire.
“Save Rock and Roll” was a commercial and critical comeback for the group, who has put out two more studio full-lengths since then, each topping the U.S. charts. Guess they really did save rock and roll after all …
The Smashing Pumpkins knew how to end their trailblazing alternative-rock career: by putting out their last major studio album (2000’s “Machina/The Machines of God”), putting out a secret sequel record to their fans on the down-low, and then playing their epic four-hour final show at the first major venue to ever house them: Chicago’s Metro.
It was perfect, for a spell, but frontman Billy Corgan’s post-Pumpkins career didn’t immediately have the same level of success he was accustomed to.
His first new venture, a more pop-rock-minded group called Zwan, fractured quickly as members weren’t taking it as seriously as he would like.
Then, the day that his dark electro solo album “TheFutureEmbrace” came out in 2005, he put out a full-page ad in the Chicago Tribune that bluntly said, “I want my band back.”
He did reform The Smashing Pumpkins, but there was only one problem: the only returning members were Corgan and ace drummer Jimmy Chamberlin.
Everyone else was a new hire, and the albums the “nu-Pumpkins” put out didn’t strike fans in the same way as their peak ’90s output.
While original guitarist James Iha eventually rejoined the group around 2016, it was too little too late, as most fans had largely decided to pass on Corgan’s new material (which was a shame, given that their live shows were garnering sensational reviews). You know what they say: the end is the beginning is the end.
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