Michael Stipe couldn’t take it anymore. He had to do something for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the catastrophic issues they have been facing. “I felt like I had to do something as a Southerner;” he says. “I had to do something as a public figure. The one thing I can do is sing, and it’s maybe the best way to get people to pay attention.”
The R.E.M. leader rallied some friends and went into a studio to cut a cover of Joseph Arthur’s “In The Sun,” with proceeds from the iTunes-exclusive track going to Mercy Corps, an organization fighting the good fight in a colossally overwhelming situation.
When it came time to record, it wasn’t hard for Stipe to recruit artists to participate. “I tried to involve people who would not only add to the project, but also maybe lift it into different areas,” he says. “I can’t expect that everyone would be interested in me, but a lot of people would be interested in Chris Martin; a lot of people would be interested in Justin Timberlake.”
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