Buck: We'll be out doing things. There will be some type of performance somewhere. We're talking about all kinds of interesting stuff, but I doubt very much we're gonna go someplace where someone's gonna pay a lot of money and go sit in an amphitheater and watch us perform a two-hour show. ... We've done that. And we're kind of at the age where we're more interested in the creative aspect of it. And also I'm trying to do things that are more fun and interesting. And you know, if we have a proposal to do something that we've maybe never done, you think, well, that'd be a lot more fun than maybe playing Cleveland for the 28th time.

MTV: How did going from a band with a small but dedicated audience to a very large audience affect your music?

Stipe: I don't think having a larger audience, or the idea that more people around the world are listening to something and picking it apart and are trying to interpret it has really changed the trajectory of my maturity as a lyricist. That was a lot of big words.

Buck: That was really impressive.

Stipe: But appropriate.

Buck: You can tell why he writes the lyrics and we write the music.

Stipe: No, really, what I'm trying to do each time is like, write "Moby Dick." I very rarely quite get there. But I want something [where] there will be one clue in an entire song. And [our] songs are not very long. I mean, I see them on a page, they're like this (showing the size with his hands). You have that much space to get a whole story across, or a whole idea. Maybe the way that I write, there's a lot of kind of tangential aspects to it that maybe don't make any kind of direct or linear sense. Songs that I like are the ones that just kind of fly out of me like vomit. The instinct songs are the ones that I don't think about. ... When I don't use my brain I think I write better songs. On this record it's about half or maybe a little more, which is probably the highest percentage of vomit songs on any record that we've ever made.

MTV: I noticed that you (Mills) aren't singing too often on this album.

Mills: Yeah. Actually, I sang a lot, but they erased it.

Stipe: Maybe that's my fault.

Mills: I mean, it comes and goes. You know, some songs seem to need it more than others, and it did end up that way. There is less singing on this record, but I wouldn't call it a trend.

MTV: Do you guys have an opinion about Napster? Is that something you think about?

Buck: File sharing is here to stay. People are gonna do it. And I think if people wanna ... exchange files, it's great. I kind of resent a major corporation becoming billionaires by giving my music away, but not to the point where I'd sue. I think it's kind of neat to have the stuff out there. I've got a lot of my own little home things that I may want to put up and just put out for free for fun sometime, as opposed to doing an instrumental solo record. I think it might be kind of cool to sneak your solo record out, you know?

Stipe: I like it as a subvert. Not Napster per se, and not the decision per se, but the whole thing, the whole trend I think is really healthy for the industry. I think that the kind of power has been weighed a little too heavily toward business and commerce, and it subverts that in a very, very profound way. And I think that that's a good thing.

Buck: Let's face it. Anything that helps destroy the music industry is probably going to be a good thing.