Michael Stipe Announces Solo Debut Album, Shares New Song on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Michael Stipe confirmed on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert that his debut solo album will be released at the end of 2026, debuting a new track from the record during his appearance.

The R.E.M. Frontman performed “The Rest of Ever” with the show’s house band, Louis Cato and the Great Big Joy Machine, marking the first public airing of the song from his long-anticipated solo debut.

Stipe revealed that one song on the album is “the sound of a tree hearing itself for the first time,” explaining that a friend recorded a tree in his backyard in Georgia and played the recording back to itself, which he said “sounds like Daft Punk.” He noted that he reworked the lyrics to the traditional sea shanty “Drunken Sailor” to accompany the piece, mishearing part of the original as “tie him to the mast and shave his belly” before his own lyrics enter with “duct tape, donkey ears, jelly wellies early in the morning.”

When asked who should portray him in a potential R.E.M. Biopic, Stipe initially said “someone really hot” before suggesting Billie Eilish, recounting that she once held a door open for him at a Manhattan restaurant without him realizing who she was at the time. He described her as “incredibly polite and sweet.”

Stipe reflected on R.E.M.’s 2024 reunion at the Songwriters Hall of Fame, where the band’s four original members performed together for the first time in 17 years, emphasizing their enduring friendship: “We split the band up in 2011. We remain best friends. We have dinners with each other. We text each other all the time. When we’re working on projects, we invite each other to participate. They’re friends for life and my best friends. I’m really honored to have that.”

He also expressed admiration for Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy’s ongoing R.E.M. Tribute project, which has performed the band’s early albums in full since 2024, noting that he joined them onstage in February 2025 in Athens, Georgia, for a spontaneous half-song reunion during a performance of “Pretty Persuasion,” a track he wrote at age 22 about trans rights.

Stipe had previously released “I Played the Fool” in March 2026 as the theme to the HBO series Rooster, though he shared few additional details about the full solo album beyond confirming its late-2026 release window.