Musicians And Bands That Will Retire Or Split Up In 2025

It's probably a pretty good life being a major musical act. Not only do the artists get to do what they love to do, of which they're preternaturally skilled at to boot, but they can get paid unbelievable sums of money, too. This goes on for years, even decades, if all goes well, for musicians of any style. And yet, being a rock star, pop sensation, or beloved country crooner can be a grind; coming up with good material, promoting it, and playing it in front of crowds night after night can grow tedious and tiring.

But good or bad, all things come to an end, even the illustrious careers of music superstars. While it feels like some of them would stick around indefinitely, reliably hitting the road each year to perform their greatest hits and still release new albums, they can't go on like that forever. As of 2025, here are all the bands and solo artists that are in the midst of retiring, pulling themselves out of the touring game, breaking up their bands, and/or ceasing to record music.

Ian McDonald and Mick Jones of Britain teamed up with American singer Lou Gramm in 1976 to create Foreigner. Within a year, it was one of the biggest bands on Earth, its eponymous debut album moving 5 million copies on the strength of loud and hooky riff-driven arena rock classics like "Cold as Ice" and "Feels Like the First Time." Then Foreigner segued from hard rock to soft rock, scoring huge pop hits with ballads like "Waiting for a Girl Like You" and "I Want to Know What Love Is." Those heady days came to an end after Gramm left for a solo career in 1990.

As of 2022, Foreigner was a band with none of its original members left for most of the time. Health issues allowed guitarist Mick Jones to play with Foreigner only sometimes, and longtime singer Lou Gramm kept a similar schedule. After semi-retiring from solo work in 2018 and announcing a more permanent departure from performance for 2025, he still occasionally joined Foreigner on stage, such as during its induction performance at the sometimes controversial Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. What remains of Foreigner — now populated by musicians who joined well after the band's hit-making heyday in the '70s and '80s — will go out for one last tour in 2025, and the original members will join them during certain shows.

Power ballads changed rock forever in the 1970s and 1980s, and those soaring, guitar-driven love songs proved very beneficial to REO Speedwagon. At first an arena rock band, REO Speedwagon became radio and MTV superstars when lead singer Kevin Cronin started coming up with songs about his feelings and his heart. The band's "Keep On Loving You" went all the way to No. 1 in 1980, and four years later, "Can't Fight This Feeling" repeated the feat. After the hits tapered off, REO Speedwagon remained a touring draw.

Bassist Bruce Hall, a member of REO Speedwagon since 1977, underwent major back surgery in 2023, which required Matt Bissonette to replace him on tour dates on what seemed to be a temporary basis. In September 2024, the band announced that Hall's ongoing medical issues would prevent REO Speedwagon from touring at all anymore. "Bruce never had any intention of retiring or walking away from the band, fans, and crew he has loved for almost 50 years," band members wrote in a joint statement on Instagram. "For Kevin's part, he too has never had any intention of leaving the band, and the fans and crew mean the world to him, as well. Due to this complex situation, irreconcilable differences arose between Bruce and Kevin." 

As a result, REO Speedwagon — which hasn't recorded an album since 2009 — declared itself defunct as far as being a live band was concerned as of January 1, 2025.

Coldplay became one of the most important rock bands of the 2000s by merging two styles — the transcendent, inviting, and almost spiritual rock of U2 in the '80s, with the hooky Britpop that took hold of its native U.K. in the 1990s. The sweet and gently pleading voice of Chris Martin turned many Coldplay songs into contemporary standards, including "Clocks," "The Scientist," "In My Place," and the No. 1 hit "Viva La Vida."

Back in December 2021, Coldplay pledged to stop making new music in four years' time. "Our last proper record will come out in 2025, and after that I think we will only tour," front man Chris Martin told the BBC's "Christmas Show with Jo Whiley." "And maybe we'll do some collaborative things but the Coldplay catalogue, as it were, finishes then." It looks like that's all coming to fruition, as Coldplay will spend most of the first nine months of 2025 on its "Music of the Spheres World Tour," taking the band through Asia, North America, and Europe, capping everything with a residency of 10 shows at London's massive Wembley Stadium. That could mark the end of Coldplay altogether, right on schedule.

After the intentionally sloppy and confrontational style of punk started to get stale, in came post-punk, which kept the disaffection and politics but adopted a sparse, tight, percussive rock-meets-dance sound. Post-punk was perpetuated by several British bands, particularly Gang of Four, which found some mainstream success in the early 1980s with songs like "Is It Love" and "I Love a Man in Uniform."

Gang of Four is set to say goodbye to fans in 2025 via "The Long Goodbye," purportedly its final tour after nearly 50 years as a band and 45 years following the release of its seminal album "Entertainment!" At each tour stop, the band will play that record in its entirety. "It's been wonderful, but all things must end. We want to go out with a bang and celebrate with our fans and friends," Gang of Four said in a statement in October 2024 (via Brooklyn Vegan). The band's history will come to an end after a series of shows in California in May 2025.

Rick Wakeman was an important figure in the untold truth of Yes as well as progressive rock as a whole. Making a welcome spectacle of himself on stage, he stationed himself behind banks of futuristic-looking synthesizers, his musical wizardry all the more transfixing with his elaborate, cape-topped costumes. In addition to giving Yes its signature introspective, futuristic sound, Wakeman pioneered the concept album, recording well-received solo LPs like "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and "The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table."

Wakeman had seemingly retired in 2024 with spring and fall portions of a farewell tour hitting the U.S. Instead, he'll keep playing live, booking a dozen solo shows in the northeast and upper South, with one last show in upstate New York. "I have thoroughly enjoyed performing the various one-man shows, but it's time to call it a day," Wakeman said at the outset of the original last tour (via Syracuse.com). "I intend to throw in the best of what I have done in the past, plus a few new surprises on the way, and possibly even the odd guest joining me on the odd occasion."

When punk made a comeback in the 1990s, it was thanks in part to Refused, a particularly aggressive but forward-thinking outfit out of Sweden. After incorporating lots of metal on its first album, "This Just Might Be... The Truth," Refused released the musically diverse and experimental "The Shape of Punk to Come" and received accolades from around the world. It was all too much, however, and the group broke up, but then tentatively got back together in the 2010s for some live shows and occasional recordings.

After releasing an album in 2019 and playing live in 2020, Refused ended a four-year break with the announcement that it would play its last festival show in Sweden, the Rosendal Garden Party in Stockholm, followed by some other one-off gigs before breaking up at the end of 2024. On the day before the Rosendal Garden Party, singer Dennis Lyxzén had a heart attack, and his recovery pushed back what would be the band's last shows. That run of last-ever Refused shows subsequently got pushed back to 2025.

Somehow, Electric Light Orchestra combined synthesizers with symphonic structures and a love of the Beatles to create some of the catchiest rock ever recorded. Jeff Lynne developed, directed, and fine-tuned the band's thundering space-age sound, writing, producing, and singing on classic rock staples of the 1970s like "Don't Bring Me Down," "Evil Woman," and "Mr. Blue Sky." In the '80s, Lynne brought the ELO style to other artists, creating the soundtrack for the rock musical "Xanadu" and shepherding the Traveling Wilburys supergroup.

Lynne was a founding member of Electric Light Orchestra as well as its only permanent and consistent member, and 2025 is when he'll retire from the band. Having last released an album in 2019, ELO will conclude with a farewell concert at Hyde Park in London as part of the BST Summertime festival in July 2025. "My return to touring began at Hyde Park in 2014," Lynne said in a statement (via Billboard). "It seems like the perfect place to do our final show."

The Oak Ridge Boys is easily one of the most enduring acts in music history. It started off in the mid-1940s as a gospel group from Tennessee called the Oak Ridge Quartet. After numerous personnel changes and profile-elevating appearances on 1970s singles. such as Johnny Cash's "Praise the Lord and Pass the Soup" and Paul Simon's "Slip Slidin' Away," the Oak Ridge Boys became a pop-country act and a hit machine. Between 1977 and 1991, the four-man group took 34 songs into the country music Top 10, and half of those made it to No. 1, including the 1981 crossover pop smash "Elvira."

The group's 2024 album "Mama's Boys" was intended to be the centerpiece of a career-ending concert series, the "American Made Farewell Tour." But then the Oak Ridge Boys decided to keep going, planning to record one more album and extend the tour. Following four dates at the Grand Ole Opry theater in Nashville, the Oak Ridge Boys will say goodbye with shows around the eastern U.S., finishing with a show in the Wisconsin Dells in December 2025.

Emerging in 2019 and still a rising star in Spanish-language urban and dance pop, El Alfa has already been declared the "King of Dembow," mastering a variant of reggaeton that pulls from multiple other traditional Latin American styles. In his six-year career, El Alfa has placed several hits on multiple Billboard Latin charts, often working with superstar collaborators like J Balvin, Bad Bunny, and Daddy Yankee.

Shortly after completing his "El Mejor Del Planeta" tour in 2024 and releasing the single "Este," El Alfa announced his retirement from music, effective immediately. In an Instagram post dated January 7, 2025, and translated from Spanish (via Billboard), the rapper explained that after the death of his grandmother in December, he was too wracked with grief to make music ever again. "My grandmother taught me to love God above all things, therefore I will mourn in her memory," El Alfa wrote. "I could have spent more time with her but my work didn't allow it."

A bunch of Ontario teenagers convened in 1996 to form the band that would become Sum 41, having started as a NOFX cover band. Soon after, they started writing their own songs and signed with Island Records right before pop-punk enjoyed a major cultural moment. In the early 2000s, Sum 41 scored a string of alternative rock hits like "Fat Lip," "Still Waiting," and "We're All to Blame."

In May 2023, Sum 41 announced the beginning of a slow and systematic break up that would take two years to realize. The band claimed that its recorded but still unreleased double album "Heaven x Hell" would be its last. The LP was finally made available in 2024, after which Sum 41 set out on its conclusive "Tour of the Setting Sum" slate. Following dates in Asia, Europe, and North America throughout 2024, Sum 41's last hurrah was to be a concert in its origin point of Toronto at the end of January 2025.

Sepultura factored into the bizarre history of heavy metal music by helping to make Brazil a gracious avenue for the loudest and heaviest of musical genres. Finding its songcraft in a destructive cacophony of aggressive and speedy guitar noise, Sepultura released seminal metal albums throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including "Schizophrenia," "Beneath the Remains," and "Chaos A.D."

After more than four decades together, the band is breaking up. Sepultura (that's "grave" in Brazil's language of Portuguese) began "Celebrating Life Through Death," its 40th anniversary and last tour ever in March 2024. Also a promotional stint for what will likely be its last studio album, "Quadra," it will wind through Brazil, South and Central America, and the U.S., keeping Sepultura on the road through the fall of 2025. At that point, the band will finish out its recording career with a live album of 40 tracks culled from its farewell concerts.

A definitive, foundational band in the Los Angeles punk scene of the 1970s, X teamed up John Doe with Exene Cervenka and Billy Zoom to make noisy, psychedelic, free-wheeling rock. The influences of Americana, blues, and '60s rock could all be found in X's music, like the unexpected hit single "Burning House of Love" and its paean to its hometown, the acclaimed 1980 album "Los Angeles."

X reunited in 2020 to record "Alphabetland," its first since 1993, and then in 2024 its ninth studio album, "Smoke & Fiction," along with the proclamation that it would be its last record, too. After promoting the album with 14 shows on the limited "The End is Near — Smoke 7 Fiction Tour" in the summer of 2024, it added dates in the fall and over Christmas. X signed on to play the Sick New World festival in Las Vegas in April 2025, which looks to be its swan song.

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band has lasted for more than 50 years, evolving throughout several distinct eras. A folk-pop act in the '60s, a soft rock band in the '70s (under the truncated name of The Dirt Band), and a top-selling country group from the '80s on, the group helped propel the careers of collaborators like Jackson Browne, Nicolette Larson, and Steve Martin (they backed up the comic on his 1978 novelty hit "King Tut"). Regardless of form, the long-running band is best known for its cover of the standard "Mr. Bojangles," as well as hits like "An American Dream" and "Long Hard Road."

In January 2024, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band announced a final road trip called "All the Good Times: The Farewell Tour." It was initially supposed to wind down in September 2024, but at that point, the group added a slew of dates that would keep it traveling and playing for crowds through the summer of 2025. After its show in Salt Lake City in June, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band will be all done.

While still plying his craft in the traditional country musical milieu, Alan Jackson became one of the genre's biggest superstars in its pop sheen-outfitted phase in the 1990s. His list of hits includes some of the biggest country radio hits ever, including "Don't Rock the Jukebox," "Here in the Real World," and "Chattahoochee," while his ballad "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning) became a post-9/11 anthem. He took 35 songs to No. 1 on the country chart (most of which he wrote himself) en route to two Grammys, 16 Country Music Association Awards, and a membership in the Grand Ole Opry.

In 2021, Jackson announced that he'd been diagnosed with Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease, a degenerative nerve condition that erodes the body's nerves and leads to diminished control over the extremities. That makes performing very difficult for the country star, and he began his final tour, "Last Call: One More for the Road," back in 2022, which will finally conclude with a concert in Milwaukee in May 2025. "I've been touring for over 30 years, you know, played everywhere in the country and parts of the world and had a wonderful career," the 65-year-old Jackson said in a video on X, formerly known as Twitter. "I'm getting into my twilight years."