John Michael Stipe is an American singer-songwriter and artist, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the alternative rock band R.E.M. He is known for his vocal quality, poetic lyrics, and unique stage presence.
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.
What age is Michael Stipe?
Born on January 4, 1960 (age 63), At age 14, Stipe was turned on to punk rock by an article in Creem magazine by Lisa Robinson on the CBGB scene. The article featured a photo of Patti Smith, who Stipe came to idolize. He remembers buying her debut album, Horses, the day it came out. “Since then, I never looked back.
While attending the University of Georgia in Athens, Stipe frequented the Wuxtry record shop, where he met store clerk Peter Buck in 1980. “He was a striking-looking guy and he also bought weird records, which not everyone in the store did,” Buck recalled. The two became friends; they eventually decided to form a band and started writing music together, although at the time Stipe was also in a local group named Gangster.
