Michael Stipe of R.E.M. is making progress on his new solo album. He says he’s currently working on “18 pieces of music. Some of them are much more complete than others. Some have lyrics, others don’t.”
He’s trying something different and says that he “threw a bunch of barricades in his path” by deciding to compose the music himself and explained it this way: “I’ve never written music before, which means I’m coming from a completely different vantage point than I ever did with R.E.M.”
Stipe says that makes it exciting and added: “I can’t play an instrument, so that makes composing for me that much more thrilling, because I really don’t know what I’m doing and I’m not afraid of stupid sounds. So banging around on synthesizers is, for me, an easy way to create.”
