R.E.M.‘s Michael Stipe has joined forces with Andrew Watt, Josh Klinghoffer and Travis Barker to share the new theme song for the show Rooster.
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Titled ‘I Played The Fool’, the collaborative track is out now via Watertower Music and marks the first new song from Stipe in three years – seeing him team up with fellow Grammy winner Watt.
It is made as the official main title theme from the brand-new HBO Original series Rooster created by Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses, and available now on all major digital streaming platforms.
In the song, Stipe’s unmistakable vocals are paired with Watt’s bold contemporary production, and it also features guitar and piano melodies from Josh Klinghoffer (Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers), and drums from Blink-182 icon Travis Barker.
“I’m thrilled to lend my voice to Rooster – as a giant fan of everyone involved, it’s a real honour to be included with ‘I Played The Fool’,” Stipe said, while Watt spoke about what it meant to join forces with the R.E.M. legend.
“Michael Stipe is a hero of mine. A chance to write a song with him was that of a dream…He is one of the true great songwriters of this lifetime and he did what only he could do on this song,” the producer and multi-instrumentalist said. “He sets Rooster off to the moon by making you laugh and cry at the same time with the best clapping TV theme song since Friends.”
The show is made by Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses, and comes as a comedy set on a college campus. The story centres on an author’s (Steve Carell) complicated relationship with his daughter (Charly Clive).
The HBO Original debuted on Sunday (March 8) on HBO, and is available to stream on HBO Max. New episodes of the 10-episode season will debut weekly through Sunday, May 10.
Speaking about enlisting Stipe and Watt for the theme, Tarses said: “Our plan had always been to use music from our own time in college in the 80s. No band was more important to me then than REM.
“When Andrew Watt told us he thought he could get Michael Stipe to write and record a new song for us, we said, ‘Cool, good luck with that’. We knew this would never happen. But a few months later, Andrew sent an early demo of ‘I Played the Fool’. And when I listened to it on my phone, I cried. I really did. Saying we are excited to have this great song and this iconic voice on our main title is a huge understatement.”
The new song from Stipe comes following him and R.E.M. bandmates – guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry – appearing together in summer 2024 as they were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
The band split amicably in 2011, while Berry had left the group during the height of their commercial success in 1997. However, at the ceremony, the quartet gave a surprise acoustic performance of their 1991 classic ‘Losing My Religion’. That marked the first time the four played live together since their 2007 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.
Ahead of the ceremony, the band gave a rare interview to CBS News, and dismissed any hopes of coming back together for a full-blown reunion – saying “it’d never be as good”.
Stipe has done some solo work since the band’s split, and in 2020 he joined up with Aaron Dessner of The National to share a demo track called ‘No Time for Love Like Now’.
Before then, he also shared a brief rendition of R.E.M.’s seminal hit ‘It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)’ in a coronavirus safety video, as well as new songs ‘Your Capricious Soul’ last October and ‘Drive to the Ocean’ that same year.
In 2023, the singer went on to reveal that he was still working on his long-anticipated solo debut album, despite a number of delays.
He first spoke about the project in 2022, and said that it was seeing him “collaborating with a bunch of different musicians” and making something “very different” to his past work.
At that same time he said that he shared studio space with Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff and Matty Healy during his recording process – with them all working at Electric Lady in New York at the same time. A release date has still not been set for the record.
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