Michael Stipe

John Michael Stipe (/ˈstaɪp/; 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 a wide range of artists, including Kurt Cobain of Nirvana and Thom Yorke of Radiohead. Bono of U2 has described his voice as "extraordinary", and Yorke told The Guardian that Stipe is his favorite lyricist, saying "I loved the way he would take an emotion and then take a step back from it and in doing so make it so much more powerful".

Stipe was born on January 4, 1960, in Decatur, Georgia, to Marianne and John Stipe. He was a military brat; his father was a serviceman in the United States Army, having served in Korea as a helicopter pilot. The elder Stipe's career resulted in frequent relocations for his family. His younger sister, Lynda Stipe, was born in 1962 and became the vocalist of Hetch Hetchy. Stipe and his family moved to various locales during his childhood, including West Germany, Texas, Illinois, and Alabama. In 1978, he graduated from high school in Collinsville, Illinois, in suburban St. Louis. His senior photo is pictured in the album art work of Eponymous. Stipe also worked at the local Waffle House. Previous generations of his family were Methodist ministers.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.