Billie Eilish can add Michael Stipe to the list of veteran acts who are fans of her work.

The former R.E.M. singer tells Vulture that as gay artist he appreciates when younger performers like Eilish don’t feel the need to have a specific vision of sexuality. He says, “It’s really beautiful to me, that idea of fluidity, not only within sexuality but also gender, gender identity and desire. Desire is something that can shift from day to day. You know who embodies that in a way I find very, very interesting is Billie Eilish. It’s less about her sexuality; I don’t know a thing about her sexuality. She’s a teenager… I like that Billie Eilish presents herself in these kind of baggy sweatshirts and the scary makeup. She’s not playing this kind of male-gaze idea of what a woman should be that I think a lot of people do, a lot of women.”

He’d like to think he helped pave the way for her. “I’m glad that I’ve always been a kind of vulnerable male figure and that it maybe helped some people to make sense of that — if they had a certain way of thinking about what that means — and that we’re now at a place where it’s a given that you can be whatever and whoever you wanna be and no one’s gonna really question it that much.”