Michael Stipe

About Michael Stipe

John Michael Stipe (; born January 4, 1960) is an American singer, songwriter and artist, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the alternative rock band R.E.M. Around 1980, Stipe began attending the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, where he became involved in the local college rock and jangle pop scene. He formed R.E.M. after meeting his bandmates at the university and soon dropped out to pursue music with them. The band issued its debut single, "Radio Free Europe," and subsequently signed to I.R.S. Records, meeting wide acclaim and soon great commercial success. Possessing a distinctive voice, Stipe has been noted for the "mumbling" style of his early career. Since the mid-1980s, Stipe has sung in "wailing, keening, arching vocal figures" that R.E.M. biographer David Buckley compared to Celtic folk artists and Muslim muezzin. He was in charge of R.E.M.'s visual aspect, often selecting album artwork and directing many of the band's music videos. Outside the music industry, he owns and runs two film production studios, C-00 and Single Cell Pictures. As a member of R.E.M., Stipe was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. As a singer-songwriter, Stipe influenced...