Some might call Michael Stipe remiss for releasing his Hurricane Katrina charity single "In the Sun" several months after the tragedy. But he'd say those critics are missing the point.

"The news cycle may have moved on," Stipe said recently, "but this is going to be with us for years and years. A lot of people have forgotten about those affected or assumed or believed that they're now OK, that things are fine. They're not. There are still people who need a lot of help."

The R.E.M. frontman said he was completely floored when — after having been out of the country for months on tour with his band — he came home to find the Gulf Coast decimated. "I was watching the news like everyone," he said, "and I saw a pretty pathetic response from the government. I saw people in the most desperate situations. I saw racism, classism. It made me really sad, for how far we've come, how far we've not come from the civil-rights movement. I was sad that [poor people were] living in those conditions anyway, and it made me angry that they had no choice."

Stipe said he wanted to do something to help and, naturally, turned to music. "The one thing I can do is sing," he said.

For the charity effort, Stipe chose to cover Joseph Arthur's "In the Sun," a song he had grown attached to before Katrina. The disaster changed his interpretation of the song "dramatically," however, especially the lyrics "A nightmare comes/ You can't keep awake." "That for me was the clincher," Stipe said. "Here's a song about something that happened to someone else, and my reaction to that, and how observing that has changed me forever. It's beautiful and it's thought-provoking."

Stipe then enlisted Coldplay's Chris Martin and ex-Smashing Pumpkin James Iha to respectively sing along and produce a new recording of the song (see "Chris Martin, Justin Timberlake Help Michael Stipe Raise Katrina Funds"). ("Of course I said, 'Yeah!' " Iha said.) Luckily Martin was already in Georgia and in the middle of trying to enlist Stipe to sing with him at a concert. "I told him, 'I'll come sing with you in Atlanta if you come to Athens and do this song with me,' " Stipe said.

He then recruited Justin Timberlake to do a remix version through their mutual friend Lukas Haas; Timberlake brought in Will.I.Am to help out as well. "I didn't even think about it, I just did it," Will said.

"I really loved the elements they brought in, the way their ears heard the song," Stipe said. "If you listen really close, you can hear Justin singing backup in the chorus."

Stipe wound up with six versions of the song, each with a different vocal (all six versions are available on iTunes). One hundred percent of the proceeds benefit Mercy Corps, a nonprofit group working with community leaders to help the reconstruction effort. "They don't drop powdered milk and leave," Stipe said. "They stay and rebuild."

"Other things come up and our attention gets pulled away, but that doesn't mean it's over or tied up in a neat package," he added about the relief effort. "It's been five months, and I was just in New Orleans two weeks ago, and it's still a disaster. Nothing can prepare you for being there and seeing it firsthand. I used to think I knew what they needed. After I arrived there, I realized that that I was being arrogant, that my ideas had nothing to do with reality. They don't need our pity or a handout, they need us to say, 'We are here with you.' They want our partnership. And they want people to remember."

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