After roughly four years of teasing and delays, Michael Stipe has given his long-awaited first solo album a concrete timeline.

In a joint interview with producer Andrew Watt published by the Los Angeles Times, Stipe said the first song arrives on New Year's Eve, adding: "Five seconds into the new year, there will be a new song with a video setting up the album. And the album will be released in May."

Pitchfork and Far Out Magazine both picked up the interview, with Far Out noting the LP remains untitled.

It has been 15 years since R.E.M. broke up, and Stipe — who told the New York Times Magazine in 2023 he was "in no rush" — has spent the interim on photography books, producing Fischerspooner, and other projects, admitting he "just gets distracted by everything."

Far Out Magazine reports that the timeline also appears to confirm a delay: on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in April, Stipe had suggested the album would come out in 2026. Instead, fans get a New Year's Eve single and a May 2027 album.

The partnership with Watt grew out of "I Played the Fool," the theme Stipe wrote and recorded for the HBO dramedy "Rooster" after Watt cold-texted him with an assist from Elton John.

Stipe told the Los Angeles Times that "I Played the Fool" will not be on the album, but that Watt restored his faith in electric guitar after 32 years alongside Peter Buck.

He is also mixing tracks with Andy LeMaster and describes his collaborators as "a gallery of thieves," saying he has "pulled together a really exceptional group of people."

Stipe offered an unusual framing of the album's themes, per the Los Angeles Times.

Recalling a dinner conversation in which a friend asked whether the record was political, he said: "No, not at all... In fact, just by dint of it being me and my place in pop culture and my reputation as an activist and the kind of songs that I wrote in the past with my former band, it is deeply, deeply political. But it's not topical."

Pitchfork and Far Out both quoted the same passage, with Stipe saying he is "responding to instinct" in what he needs from and can offer through music.

The rollout begins at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, when the first single and a video meant to set up the album arrive — five seconds into the new year, by Stipe's own description to the Los Angeles Times.

Stipe says he is keeping the rest of the tracklist "a little bit of a surprise," and the as-yet-untitled LP follows in May 2027. For listeners who have waited out the R.E.M. frontman for years, the countdown is now measurable in weeks rather than vague promises.