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Michael Stipe made a rare stage appearance at the Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy concert in Brooklyn on Saturday to sing two REM songs.
Shannon and Narducy have been touring as a REM tribute band for several years, and actual members of the Rock Hall-inducted band have occasionally joined them on stage – including at a 2024 gig in REM’s hometown of Athens, Georgia, which brought together all four of the band’s core members.
At two concerts in 2025, in Athens and Brooklyn, Stipe joined Shannon and Narducy for a version of “Pretty Persuasion.” To close Saturday’s show at Brooklyn Steel, Stipe chose two more REM songs: “These Days” from “Lifes Rich Pageant” (Shannon and Narducy’s tour celebrating the 40th anniversary of the 1986 album) and “The Great Beyond” from the soundtrack to “Man on the Moon”:
Live for the first time since 2008
The performance marked the first time since 2008 that Stipe sang both songs live.
Although REM have remained cautious about a full reunion, the band is celebrating their legacy in unexpected ways – including their guest appearances at the Shannon and Narducy shows, as well as their surprise solo appearance at the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony in June 2024.
“It would never be this good,” guitarist Peter Buck previously said of a reunion, explaining that the band rightly called it quits in 2011. “At that point, there wasn’t really anything we could agree on, musically: what kind of music, how we would record it, whether we would go on tour. We could barely agree on where to go out to eat. And now we can at least agree on where to go out to eat.”
