The song Michael Stipe wrote as a birthday present to himself: “I’m an instinctual”
Michael Stipe turned 60 on the fourth day of 2020, and since Covid-19 was only a whisper on the wind at that point, the former REM frontman was feeling a tad optimistic about the year ahead, maybe even motivated to release that first long-rumoured solo album he’d supposedly been working on for a decade.
In the end, no full-length album would be forthcoming (we’re still waiting), as Stipe would wind up spending the majority of 2020 holed up in Athens, Georgia, living the same surreal, paused existence as the rest of us. Before lockdown, however, he did set aside a moment to celebrate his 60th birthday, taking stock of the milestone and making use of it the best way he knew how, by returning to his music.
“It’s super weird to be 60 years old,” Stipe told The Current in early February 2020, “I don’t feel it. But I have to say 60 was easier than 50… I wanted to give myself a birthday present, and the thing that I could think of that would give me the most joy would be to release a song, and then to give all my proceeds for the first year to an organisation that I really love, Pathway to Paris. And so that was my birthday present to myself.”
Stipe has always been among the most socially conscious rock stars of his generation, and little has changed since his retirement from REM. As such, his birthday gift song needed to be about something meaningful to him, a subject affecting the whole planet. Not having the foresight to write about a worldwide pandemic, he chose the one threat that still looms the largest.
He released the single ‘Drive to the Ocean’ that winter, announcing that all sales would support the nonprofit Pathway to Paris, an organisation focused on the climate change crisis. The song certainly had a corresponding message, but the singer wanted to make it clear that he didn’t look at his music as a vehicle for educating listeners or making stump speeches.
Stipe made it a point to outline that trying to deliberately write a song about any global issue, such as climate change, would be a boring endeavour and not yield the best results, adding, “I personally don’t go to music or art to be lectured or hectored, so that’s not what I want to contribute as an artist. I’m an ‘instinctual,’ and if I write a song that had a particular political message, it’s just what was coming through me as an artist, whether it’s conscious or unconscious thought. That’s what was percolating inside of me.”
Stipe did continue to work throughout the pandemic, recording a song with Aaron Dessner’s band Big Red Machine and releasing a book of portrait photography.
His experiments with recording as a solo artist continued, as well, though it remains to be seen if a proper solo album will ever surface, about which he rightly highlighted that working on his own and composing music is still a novel experience for him.
He further stated, “I’m composing on synthesiser mostly, and looping things, and then dropping them out when they’re not absolutely essential… I’m proud to say right now there is no plan whatsoever. I’m taking it a song at a time. I’m taking it a day at a time.”
