duh but still

Michael Stipe: YouTube Has Replaced MTV, ‘And That’s Fine’

Promoting R.E.M.’s fifteenth studio album, Collapse Into Now, Michael Stipe weighed in on the musical issues of our time: YouTube and Lady Gaga. Refreshingly, Stipe, an artist who blossomed in the nineties, isn’t bitter about What The Internet Has Wrought. “The revolution MTV brought in the 1980s and ‘90s is profound,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “[It] provided a common language for all the countries of Europe to be able to speak English when there wasn’t a go-to language. But the time of music video is gone, it’s passed. Not for Lady Gaga, who I love, or Kanye West, who I love. They write pop songs and they do these videos that are seen by millions of people, but now we have online as our go-to medium. Your 9-year-old daughter would not know what an album is. It’s a concept from the ’70s. [But the MTV shoestring music video] has been replaced by YouTube. Its moment has come and gone, and that’s good and fine.” [Risky Business/HR]

Michael Stipe: YouTube Has Replaced MTV, ‘And That’s Fine’