MICHAEL STIPE

They always want me to play myself and that's a big snooze.

So, when you divide the world into music lovers, music fans and then those people who are just very casual about their music, it's wallpaper to them, it's elevator music, it's just the thing that's playing in the background that helps them through their day.

I'm tired of being this solemn poet of the masses, the enigma shrouded in a mystery.

And I don't expect anyone can bring about a revolution in the way that Bob Dylan did - and really didn't - in the 1960s.

But we're very much an American band and that's that. I think that's part of the appeal outside of this country and it might be part of the reason people turned away from us within this country, because familiarity breeds contempt.

Sometimes before we make a record I go back and listen to a few. It's equally humbling and uplifting.

My iPod that was programmed by Peter Buck. It has 7,000 songs hand-picked for me by him.

Because the casual music listeners are the ones who turn on the radio and they don't really care what's playing, they just know that they kinda like it or it's easy to drive to or it's easy to sing along to or whatever.

Super casual music listeners. That's most of the people in the world. And you have to understand, that's why Top 40 radio exists. It's not there for people who seek out music and who love music.

On planes I always cry. Something about altitude, the lack of oxygen and the bad movies. I cried over a St. Bernard movie once on a plane. That was really embarrassing.

There was a point in the '80s when I looked out at my audience and I saw people that - were I not on the stage - they'd sooner slug me as they walked by me on the sidewalk. And I realized that I was way beyond the choir.

There are people that very strongly identify themselves as gay and then lesbian, and then I think there are a lot of people who are kind of some percentage or some version of that.

So, we went from being an Athens band to being a Georgia band to being a Southern band to being an American band from the East Coast to being an American band and now we're kind of an international phenomenon.

We made part of the record in Miami, and I would go down to the beach, and not 20 feet from the water I see a fish that is at least seven feet long swimming close to the shore. I did not go back in the ocean the entire month.

I think there were early critics who wanted us to change the world because the Sex Pistols failed.

I'm not homosexual, I'm not hetrosexual, I'm just sexual.

I went through a period where I was really tired of seeing and reading about myself.

I've always felt that sexuality is a really slippery thing. In this day and age, it tends to get categorized and labeled, and I think labels are for food. Canned food.

If I'm tired of me, I'm sure the public is as well.

I really wanted to be on Six Feet Under as a corpse. That would be hysterical.

We're absolutely American and distinctly so, I think. That's part of what people respond to outside of this country, part of the reason that we're such a huge band outside of the U.S., where we're not so popular now as we were 10 or 12 years ago.

When we first started, we were a band from Athens and that was so off the map.

So, we just kind of created our own thing and that's part of the beauty of Athens: is that it's so off the map and there's no way you could ever be the East Village or an L.A. scene or a San Francisco scene, that it just became its own thing.

My feeling is that labels are for canned food... I am what I am - and I know what I am.

When you meet a stranger, look at his shoes. Keep your money in your shoes.