Michael Stipe Quotes

I made video art for quite a long time, and I made this video covering myself in burgers and dancing to Major Lazer and doing covers of Britney Spears songs... I can't remember how I got there, but my teacher said he'd have to fail me because it had mild nudity.

Even if it's a song I know isn't gonna do that well, I'm dropping it as a piece of art, so I always want sick visuals to go with it.

I can’t wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it.

When alternative music - which is supposed to be the standard-bearer of where white rock is headed - becomes either too cute or too manufactured, that's just really not good.

I am a black new wave artist.

I'm a text artist. It's an unsung art form because it's so ahead of its time.

Sometimes I love the marriage of art and commerce; I love Donna Summer; I like the Rolling Stones.

The world is full of bands and bullshit, and if I'm doing a stupid art project like rock 'n' roll then I want to spare my audience as much as possible.

The Pumpkins love rock-and-roll, we absolutely love it, but we also think it's a flatulent, ego-serving kiddie playground. You can have your cake and eat it too.

To me, it doesn't feel like it's just another rock record that somebody put out. It feels like we taped into the culture a little bit

I tried to stick with what I knew best, which is writing rock n' roll songs and melodies. I am as passionate as I was when I was 20.

I don't think rock n' roll songwriters should worry about art. I don't think it comes into it...as far as I'm concerned, Art is just short for Arthur.

You can fool some of the people part of the time in a rock and roll song, fifty million Elvis Presley fans can't be all wrong.

My voice likes rock music. My problem is, I can do a lot of things, but I have to find my own voice.

There are so many bad songs that have incredible videos. It's pretty amazing, actually. The power of putting images to music is hypnotizing. It's a real power. That's a realm that I've failed at completely.

I am fascinated a) by transgressive art and b) what happens beyond the boundaries.

I think in the world of rock music or whatever it's called - anything outside of Nashville - there's a lot more freedom within that industry to do whatever you want to do.

This is serious business, sex, violence, and rock and roll.

I hate cliché. And when you're a rock singer in 1966, or whatever it was, psychedelic blues, through to the '70s, which we know all about, and the '80s, which was a scramble to hang on in, and the '90s, which was a great time for experimentation... and I'm really still excited. The huge vast diagonals within the music that I've been involved with.

Experiment is actually doing the art. That's the experiment and then you get to experience the experiment.

Anything that has to do with rock seems to be on the decline. There's not a lot of rock stations or MTV anymore, you just go on Youtube.

I once asked [John] Lennon what he thought of what I do. He said 'it's great, but its just rock and roll with lipstick on'.

Even as a teenager we got interested in the Beats, Dada, and Surrealism, and so on. What drew us to those was that their lives were their art. It wasn't something they did separately. Reading biographies of artists of that kind was what was fascinating to me, more than the stuff they made. We became convinced that life and art is really the same thing.

Rock music is stronger than sports. That's why. Rock rules. Around the world, who's more famous: Willie Mays or Paul McCartney?

It's basically against the whole idea of what always made rock&roll music interesting to me. I thought it was an unassailable outlet for some pure and natural expressions of rebellion. It was one channel you could take without havin' to kiss ass, you know? And right now it just seems like they're on a big daisy chain, each kissin' each other's asses.