Sept. 21 may be a great day for Earth Wind & Fire fans, but for R.E.M. fans it kinda sucks. Ten years ago today, the band announced that they were calling it a day. And on this Sept. 21, Michael Stipe insisted that the breakup was permanent.

At the end of an interview with WNYC centered on the new Velvet Underground tribute album I’ll Be Your Mirror, Stipe fielded a question about a 2019 Rolling Stone article that put the chances of an R.E.M. reunion at about 30%. He called the speculation “wishful thinking at best.”

Stipe continued:

We will never reunite. We decided when we split up that that would just be really tacky and probably money-grabbing, which might be the impetus for a lot of bands to get back together. We don’t really need that, and I’m really happy that we just have the legacy of the 32 years of work that we have.

Today on Instagram, R.E.M. reposted their original farewell message from a decade ago, which you can see below.