R.E.M. – Losing My Religion

“Losing My Religion” – Single by R.E.M. from the album Out of Time, released on February 19, 1991.

Built on a mandolin riff, the song was an unlikely hit for the group, garnering extensive airplay on radio as well as on MTV and VH1 due to its critically acclaimed music video. The single became R.E.M.’s highest-charting hit in the United States, reaching No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and expanding the group’s popularity beyond its original fanbase. At the 1992 Grammy Awards, “Losing My Religion” won two awards: Best Short Form Music Video and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.

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04:25

R.E.M.

Bill Berry – drums, percussion
Peter Buck – electric guitar, mandolin
Mike Mills – bass guitar, backing vocals, keyboards and arrangement
Michael Stipe – lead vocals
Additional musician: Peter Holsapple – acoustic guitar

The lyric comes from an old Southern colloquialism meaning that something so upsetting has happened “that you might lose your religion.” Stipe used that old-time notion as a metaphor for unrequited love, a different kind of faith, one he describes in painfully tentative terms: “holding back, then reaching forward, then pulling back again, then reaching forward again.”

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