“I have a great idea for an anti-smoking advertisement…”

… one that will work even better than the commercial that shows how cigarettes contain the same chemicals found in dog feces.

The TV spot will begin by showing a clip from an R.E.M. music video made before 1996’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi. Viewers will be reminded of lead singer Michael Stipe’s rich, crystalline vocals. Suddenly, the music video will cut out, and a quick montage of pictures showing Stipe chain-smoking cigarettes will flash on screen. During this portion of the commercial sinister music will be heard, suggesting something terrible is in store.

Next, a music video from R.E.M.’s latest album, Around the Sun, will appear. Just as viewers begin to notice that Stipe’s voice doesn’t sound as good as it did in the first video, a grave voiceover will say: “Michael Stipe used to be the best pop singer in the world. Now he sounds like a groveling old man. Smoking is to blame.” The end.

On Sept. 28, Coldplay called Michael Stipe on stage to sing a song on the Atlanta stop of the band’s American tour. Lead-singer Chris Martin introduced Stipe as one of the great American singers, alongside Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. This may seem like an exaggerated statement considering R.E.M.’s current irrelevance in United States., but it’s actually dead on. In his prime, Stipe was the best white American pop vocalist ever.

Like Dylan’s and Cash’s, Stipe’s voice is rooted in country music, and its sound is uniquely American. Badly Drawn Boy once said that while growing up in England he marveled at Johnny Cash records, wondering what a strange place America must be to produce a man who could vocalize so exotically. Stipe’s voice combined the gritty spaciousness of Cash’s with the earnestness of Dylan’s, but possessed a range and melodiousness that was uniquely beautiful. Nobody else sounded like Michael Stipe. Listen to “Half a World Away” off 1991’s Out of Time or “Strange Currencies” off 1994’s Monster for proof.

Unfortunately, R.E.M. will never again make a classic album. Not because the quality of the music has declined (although it has), but because in the last 10 years Michael Stipe has devolved into a limp rock singer. If anything, his vocals are now a barrier to the success of the band’s music. Ten years ago, Stipe could have sung a Fall Out Boy song and made it sound great. Now, can barely manage his way through old R.E.M. hits.

Stipe is 45-years-old, and aging surely factors into his diminished skills. The speed at which his voice has deteriorated, however, suggests that smoking is mostly responsible.

So why does Stipe, a man whose career rests entirely on the quality of his voice, chain smoke? I don’t have an exact answer, but there is no denying that smoking has enjoyed a resurgence in cool in the last decade.

Smoking is fringe. It’s not mainstream. You won’t see the King of Queens smoking on the tube, but you will see rockers lighting up in tiny clubs and characters in indie films regularly sucking down nicotine sticks. Any time of day you can walk by the College of Fine Arts, the most self-consciously hip college at BU, or the School of Management, the most stylish, and see students smoking outside. This doesn’t hold true for, say, the School of Education.

All of this is ironic because smoking is the primary reason Michael Stipe and his band are no longer considered to be cool in America. As the quality of R.E.M.’s music has fell off, so has the radio play and CD sales. If you despised cigarettes for taking thousands of lives each year to cancer, now you can now hate them for one more reason – taking Michael Stipe’s voice.