Due to his father's military commission, his family moved constantly, with Stipe spending part of his childhood in West Germany before finishing high school in suburban St Louis.

Stipe attended the University of Georgia in Athens, where he became involved in the local college rock and jangle pop scene.

As a singer-songwriter, Stipe influenced a wide range of artists, including Kurt Cobain of Nirvana and Thom Yorke of Radiohead.

[3] Bono of U2 has described his voice as "extraordinary",[4][5] and Yorke told The Guardian that Stipe is his favorite lyricist, saying "I loved the way he would take an emotion and then take a step back from it and in doing so make it so much more powerful".

[15] At age 14, Stipe was turned on to punk rock by an article in Creem magazine by Lisa Robinson on the CBGB scene.

[17][18][19] While attending the University of Georgia in Athens, Stipe frequented the Wuxtry record shop, where he met store clerk Peter Buck in 1980.

The two became friends; they eventually decided to form a band[21] and started writing music together,[22] although at the time Stipe was also in a local group named Gangster.

[2] Murmur went on to win the Rolling Stone Critics Poll Album of the Year over Michael Jackson's Thriller.

traveled to England to record their third album, Fables of the Reconstruction, a difficult process that brought the band to the verge of a break up.

Gaining weight and acting eccentrically (such as by shaving his hair into a monk's tonsure), Stipe later identified himself as suffering from depression and exhaustion during this period, saying "I was well on my way to losing my mind.

's debut album, Stipe participated in a low-budget, forty-five-minute Super-8 film called Just Like a Movie, shot in Athens by New York Rocker magazine photographer Laura Levine, who was a friend of the band.

[36] Stipe was once very close to fellow alternative rock singer Natalie Merchant and has recorded a few songs with her, including one titled "Photograph," which appeared on a pro-choice benefit album titled Born to Choose, and they appeared live with Peter Gabriel singing Gabriel's single "Red Rain" at the 1996 VH1 Honors and a few other times.

[37] Stipe and Tori Amos became friends in the mid-1990s and recorded a duet in 1994 called "It Might Hurt a Bit" for the Don Juan DeMarco motion picture soundtrack.

In 2006, Stipe released an EP that comprised six different cover versions of Joseph Arthur's "In The Sun" for the Hurricane Katrina disaster relief fund.

[39] He appeared with Chris Martin of Coldplay live at Madison Square Garden and online to perform "Losing My Religion" in the 12-12-12 concert raising money for relief from Hurricane Sandy.

[42] Stipe inducted the American grunge band Nirvana into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 10, 2014.

[49] Photography has long been a passion for Stipe and he has been carrying a camera with him since his teenage years when he photographed shows featuring Ramones, The Runaways and Queen.

[50] In 2018, Stipe released a book of his photography entitled Volume 1,[51] which featured 35 photographs of such celebrities as River Phoenix and Kurt Cobain.

[52] In 2019, Stipe collaborated with Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon's band Big Red Machine on the single "No Time For Love Like Now."

[53] Stipe began recording his first solo album at Electric Lady Studios in New York City in 2023, writing and producing "synth-infused, poppy" songs with longtime collaborator Andy LeMaster.

He signed an October 2023 open letter of artists to President Joe Biden urging a ceasefire in Gaza.

[69][70] In 1983, Stipe met Natalie Merchant of the band 10,000 Maniacs; the two started a friendship, and eventually had a romantic relationship for a period of time.

[72]In 1994, with questions remaining, Stipe described himself as "an equal opportunity lech," and said he did not define himself as gay, straight or bisexual, but that he was attracted to, and had relationships with, both men and women.

Stipe described himself as a "queer artist" in Time in 2001 and revealed that he had been in a relationship with "an amazing man" for three years at that point.

"[74] In 1999, author Douglas A. Martin published a novel, Outline of My Lover, in which the narrator has a six-year romantic relationship with the unnamed lead singer of a successful Athens, Georgia-based, rock band; the book was widely speculated, and later confirmed by its author, to have been a roman à clef based on a real relationship between Martin and Stipe.

[79] While each member was given an equal vote in the songwriting process, Peter Buck has conceded that Stipe, as the band's lyricist, could rarely be persuaded to follow an idea he did not favor.

[81] Early articles about the band focused on Stipe's singing style (described as "mumbling" by The Washington Post), which often rendered his lyrics indecipherable.

"[83] In the mid-1980s, as Stipe's pronunciation while singing became clearer, the band decided that its lyrics should convey ideas on a more literal level.

"[88] While Stipe continued to write songs with political subject matter like "Ignoreland" and "Final Straw," later albums have focused on other topics.

Pretty turgid stuff," according to Stipe;[72] Monster, meanwhile, critiqued love and mass culture,[88] and Reveal dipped into mysticism.